thx chris. i passed thinking it was great at the time but it turned out awful. i guess i shouldnt have thought partner had likely 5 diamonds. i will not pass this in the future.

What Chris said.

Partner's pass says he is indifferent between the majors. Bid yours. It is possible but unusual to play that the pass of the redouble shows a willingness to play 1DXX.

And no, you shouldn't pass the first time. The double was fine.

And any hand that could actually bid 1NT here, you'd probably just float the redouble with.

The problem with playing that partner's pass is for business is that you can't really have that hand: the bad guys have half the points, responder says he has no particular fit for his partner, and opener is still happy to sit for the redouble... you're betting on your partner, whose trumps are under the opener's, knowing more about the hand than they do.

As I said, it's possible to play it that way, but probably not best and definitely unusual.

I just looked it up. In Mike Lawrence's book on takeout doubles, he suggests the following agreement:

• Passing a redouble at the two level or higher is for business.
• Passing a redouble at the one level is for business if the pass is made by the player sitting over the one with suit, but is for takeout if made by the player under the bidder.

I'm not sure this is the best agreement, but it's reasonable.

To clarify the above, it means that in

1D X XX P

the pass is for takeout, but in

1D P P X
XX P

the last pass is for penalty. The logic is that if your trumps are sitting over the bidder's, it's much more likely that you can hold a hand that would want to defend.

ok gang last word on this thing. just got home from the reisingers and no we did not go thru. gave this hand to jeff meckstroth and eric rodwell. both agreed that if they were going to open it it would be 1 club. both said they would open it only if there partners agreed to open hands like these or else they would just pass. as a side note i also gave the hand to martin dejneif and he said he would pass and try to come back in with a 2 suited bid.and hes not only a really good poker player but he also just finished second in the blue ribbon pairs.:

I agree; with no agreement, pard's pass of the redbl just says he doesn't have any obvious bid (no 4-card major {or maybe 4 of each}, not 5 of the other minor). I know that some pairs play that, when opener's suit is a minor (as in this case) that the pass shows length (at least 5) in that minor and suggests that defending 1 of the minor redoubled may be the least of evils (since it's not game). For example, xx xx JTxxxx xxx -- even if they make an overtrick, it's less than a game their way, and the penalty if your side plays it might be brutal. Probably this treatment should be alerted.

As an aside, did you know that alerting a double or redouble for any reason at any point in the auction is forbidden under Australian Bridge Federation rules? Back when we played a weak NT, my partner and I used to regularly disobey this rule to alert redoubles in the complicated convention we used to extricate ourselves from penalty doubles. So far we have not had a director called on us for our flagrant attempts to disclose our agreements to the opponents.

Heh. In the Dutch alerting regulation, this rule also exists, but only for doubles. My partner and I also regularly disobey this, for the DONT double of 1NT specifically.

(I am also a director. During the course for directors I did, it was generally agreed that this rule was flat out wrong, but it's kind of hard to formulate a rule that is better and also understandable to most players.
Here we already have the problem that many players (~80% of the population at the club levels) doesn;t understand when transfers should be and shouldn't be alerted. The alert regs are about one page. I would prefer one line: if it's a conventional bid, alert.
Then we just have the people left who don't understand that transfers over 1NT are a convention ...)

Any bid that is not natural or normal is alertable.

If 2H means 10-12 points and promising 3 clubs, then that is alertable.

Blackwood, cue bidding, gerber and such are considered normal, and therefore not alertable.

Defense to NT opening hands are usually alertable unless just playing natural.

This looks vaguely like part of the ACBL alert regulation, which easily qualifies as just about the worst imaginable alert regulation.
Over on rec.games.bridge (a high quality Usenet newsgroup) there are regular discussions between expert players over whether or not a certain bid is alertable. These discussions can take days. How on earth such a regulation is going to help normal players at the table mystifies me.

The problem with it is that "normal bids are not alertable", but every player has different ideas about which bids are normal.
For example, in The Netherlands about 75% of all players play the multi-colored 2 opening, where a 2 opening shows one of:
(1) a weak 2 in hearts
(2) a weak 2 in spades
(3) a 9+ trick hand in diamonds
(4) a 9+ trick hand in clubs
(5) 23-24 balanced

All perfectly normal, but not when you play in the US, where it is outlawed ot most levels.

So, I just learned today that my dad will come down to Houston to play in NABC Nats in March. We can probably play the last Thursday-Sunday of the event. Neither of us have more than 100 MPs, so I think we're bottom tier in any event we can enter (except maybe the 299ers?)

What are some of the events you guys would recommend?

Tournament Schedule (PDF)

Play some compact KOs (you can pick up teammates at the partnership desk); those are bracketed, so you'll be in the low bracket against other low bracket teams (unless you pick up a partnership that has enough points to bump you a bracket).

Play in a B/C/D pairs (or teams) game. This will be much higher-level than the 299ers, but you won't get served as badly (as in the A/X flight). Plus you'll get paid for scratching in the D flight, which should be like 0-500 MPs.

Also, pick up teammates and play in the Zip KOs at least one night. Bring a bottle of wine. It's a lot of fun.

You could probably win the NABC 49er pairs (lol).

You should play in at least one national event. Either the Silodor Open Pairs or the Lebhar Imp Pairs. You'll play two sessions trying to qualify to play the final two sessions the next day (probably won't happen, but if you have a good day and do a little luckboxing, it's awesome when it does).

Also, we should talk more around that time. Atakdog is down there, and I'll be down there for at least a few days for NA Pairs, which I think are at the end of the week. We should definitely have dinner or play a Zip or something.

Does winning that count towards platinum life master? Because it would royally suck that I have 65 MPs.

No. Platinums are available only in NABC+ events with no masterpoint limits. (BTW -- I assume you mean platinum points -- all points count toward all LM levels.)

Don't play it. I did the non-LM pairs once, and it was horribly disappointing; I can only imagine how awful the 49ers would be.

Spring Nationals kind of blow unless you're doing the Vanderbilt (because there are not as many good NABC+ events - this shouldn't be a concern for you). Still, you'll find tons of stuff to play.

My advice:

• Decide how much pairs you're going to play, and how much teams. If you need to pick up another pair to make a team, assume they will suck, because you have few enough masterpoints that decent pairs won't play with you (sad but true). I heartily recommend some of each.
• Decide what days you're available.
• Each day you get to play, play in either B/C/D pairs, bracketed KOs, or stratified (or stratiflighted) Swiss, whatever floats your boat. A nice combo is to do a morning session (pairs, or a KO that extends over several days), and then an afternoon-evening combo, though I warn you this is a lot of bridge.
• Choose one NABC+ event. Really. I'd choose either the Silodor Open Pairs (the first Fri/Sat) or the Jacoby Open Swiss (the last weekend). You're not playing it to win, you're doing it for the experience. In choosing between these, the advantage of the pairs game is you are guaranteed to play against at least a few people you've seen on magazine covers; the advantage of the Swiss is you get platinum points for winning even a single match (though that's a little silly to worry about tbh). If you get blown out the first match or two in the Swiss, you won't be running into the top players.
• If you have a red ribbon qual (unlikely but possible), you can consider the Red Ribbon Pairs, the only limited MP event that's worth doing. Good players play in it. (Bad ones too, but whatever.)
• Play the midnight game very day you can. Have fun. Play loose. Laugh at the people who care who wins, because they really don't get it.

If I am still in Texas when these roll around, I will be there. If you or anyone want to play we'll do that. (Meanwhile, I know we still need to play a club game -- we will soon.)

individual bbo tourney. both hands are at mp's. what's our bidding in these:

r/w

s: AQJ632
h:
d: 43
c: KQ865

lho - p - rho - 64
...... 4h - X - ?

r/r

s: QT
h: A9
d: QJ2
c: A97632
lho - p - rho - 64
....................1c
1h - 1s - p - 1nt
2h - X - p - ?

Those are tough.

With the first one I'd pass, in part because LHO is moderately likely to pull to 5D, and it's not as if you have somewhere better to go. The next question will be whether to saw off 5D; I say yes. If the double gets floated pard is in trouble, but you have several tricks and should be able to score at least four or five trump tricks -- down three will probably not happen. Meanwhile, in spades (for example) partner's hand will be worthless, and you could easily go for sticks and wheels or worse.

With the second, if I'm not allowed to go back and bid 2C at my second call, I float the double. You are unlikely to have game in any suit, and if you can make 3NT then 2H is going for a 800 a lot of the time. (Partner will probably have a heart trick, and LHO will be unlikely to have more than one trick outside hearts. If he has more, you aren't making any game, and it would be very unlucky for him to have eight tricks, requiring a seven card heart suit with pard having no help there, and two minor suit tricks. That parlay won't happen very often.)

1) Pass. There isn't any way to improve the situation.

2) Rebid 2C rather than 1NT. Without agreement partner's double should be primarily penalties and your hand is fine for that, so pass.

well reasoned and i agree 100 %

I've decided that I want to learn a precision club system to play around with and get some perspective on standard american bidding. This leads to two questions:

1) Can someone point me towards a good, simple precision system, preferably described online for free?; and
2) Is there anyone else who is either interested in learning a simple precision system with me and playing it some or already familiar with precision and willing to put up with frequent newbie bidding errors?

EDIT: I found this system description, which seems to be OK for my purposes. Any comments?

i read a book on precision ages ago, before i was playing regularly. yeah, might be interested in playing it sometime

The only books I have seen on precision is the CC Wei one, and one by Charles Goren re-explaining the CC Wei system. The link you posted is pretty similar to that system, except Wei used the 2 opening bid to show 11-15 HCP and 4414 or 4405 shape (not Roman).

I kinda want to learn a precision system, so if you're interested, we should play a little on BBO or something.

If you get to the point at which you're considering buying a book, Berkowitz's isn't bad.

The system you linked to uses a multi-2D, which is a bad idea if you want to have a system you can play in ACBL-land (because it's midchart, thus usually not allowed). 2D is a kind of a bastard bid in strong club systems. My recommendation would be to modify the linked-to system as follows, if you want to use it as a basis:

• 2D is a (very) weak 2, or you can play it as a 4-4-4-1 with 4 diamonds (so it's passable or raisable; I have had very good luck with this).
• With a 4=4=1=4 or similar hand, open either a strong major (preferably hearts) or 1NT; 1D (yes, really); or 1NT if the stiff is an honor and you are in the right range. You have to alert this treatment of 1D -- I used to play it in a simple strong club system that we called the "nebulous diamond". With 4=4=0=5 you pretty much have to open in a major, preferably hearts, unless you want to include that in the 1D opening (which causes a few problems).
• Strongly consider shifting the notrump ranges: use 10-12 nv, 11-14 vul; also, do not open 1C with a balanced 16 count, requiring instead 17 for a 1C opening when balanced. Then, your 1NT rebid after a 1C opening is 17-19.

Pick something fairly simple, and try it on BBO with self-alerting -- I
ll be happy to do it with you if you like.

The Lebhar Pairs is an NABC+ event correct? It's probably the most likely one my dad and I can play in. If you would like to play in some events with me in the first weekend, or in the night games during the week, I would be excited to play in those as well.

Secondly,

I may be missing something obvious, but what advantage does this have over the 4-4-1-4 2 opening bid? I guess in the system you outlined, the 2 bid comes up about three times as frequently (plus all the times you're opening with a weak 2), but does it override the nebulous (but more common) 1 opening?

Secondly, is opening 2 with a 4-4-0-5 hand bad if you're playing the above system? Or is opening a 4-card major not as big a liability as I think it is?

No invite req'd, but man IMP pairs is basically like matchpoints, but every so often they throw in a board with a 100 top, and they don't tell you which one it is.

Blah.