1st hand is tough, but lacking specific agreements, you have no other choice but 3C. 3D would not be forcing.

The second hand you have a really strong hand considering the action and 2H is the minimum. I suppose 3H is some general game try and so it is time to quickly bid 4H with your 5 trumps, ace, singleton and useful spade queen.

Okay, long post coming.

Over the last few months a number of general bridge questions have come up in discussions with my partners/other players. I know that general questions like these often can't be answered without reference to a specific hand or type of hand, but hopefully I explain them in sufficient detail to at least spark discussion.

(1) When is it a good idea to lead trump? I have two conflicting sources.

One regular partner (slightly more experienced than me) thinks that leading trump is often good, and will consider a trump lead whenever he doesn't have an affirmatively "good" lead from another suit (obviously "good" is a bit vague here and it would probably help if I provided examples to flesh that out. I can do that in a follow-up post if it becomes important).

A stronger player has said that leading trump is rarely a good lead, and it only makes sense to lead trump when there is a specific reason to think it will be productive. For instance, dummy is likely to be short in trump and leading trump will deprive declarer of a ruff later on (I think he provided one other example where leading trump is good but I can't think of it now).

Who is right here? In situations where this is no strong affirmative reason to lead trump, but there is no attractive holding in the other three suits from which to lead, how strongly should we consider leading trump?

(2) Playing in 3NT or 4M with an eight-card major suit fit at matchpoints.

Same two conflicting sources here as in (1). Partner thinks that 3NT is frequently a better contract than 4M with an eight-card fit at matchpoints because 4NT scores better than 4M, and very often the hand will make 4 tricks in both strains. Stronger player thinks that 4M is almost always better than 3NT with an eight-card fit. The question arose in the contexts of a Stayman auction, I think, and it was suggested with some balanced hands it might make sense to pick 3NT instead of playing in the 4-4 fit. He said that as the responder he would only really consider 3NT with a 4-3-3-3 distribution. Who is right here?

(3) Here is one where I am hoping that you all can reassure me that I am thinking about this correctly, and everybody else I have talked to (who all disagree with me) is wrong.

At IMPs, should we compete less often then we would at matchpoints for fear of pushing our opponents into a making game contract?

(4) At this point, regular partner (the same one as mentioned above) and I have hammered out most of the basics of standard 2/1, and are looking for areas to tackle in more detail. What are some bidding topics where we can get the most bang for our buck in terms of time invested? For instance, we could add all kinds of ace-asking bells and whistles and other slam conventions, but I'm guessing there are more important things to focus on. Some candidates:

Lebensohl when they interfere with our no trump. Right now we play systems on after a double, double as stolen bid over 2C, and if they interfere at 2D or higher we make our system bid at the 2-level if it's available, or the 3-level if the 2-level is not available (so after 1NT - (2D), 3C would be Stayman and 3D would be a transfer to hearts). I suspect that this is bad (possibly very bad), but it has not been disastrous yet.

Game tries. We play simple help-suit game tries right now. Worth adding anything fancier?

Kokish over 2C-2D. Right now we play a 2M or 3m response as a 5+ card suit and 8+ points, and if we don't have a hand that's suitable for one of those bids we bid 2D. After a 2D response, opener bids a suit with an unbalanced hand, bids 2NT with 22-24, and 3NT with 25-27. After a suit rebid, 3C by responder is a bust, raising the suit one level shows slam interest, and going directly to game is enough for game but no more. I don't think we have any other agreements.

Doubles, generally. We play takeout and negative through 4D (I'd like that to be higher, as recommended by Larry Cohen) and support doubles. We don't yet play maximal doubles or responsive doubles. And we play lead-directing doubles, but have not discussed them in depth. In addition to adding responsive doubles, at some point I think we need to more formally spell out when a double is penalty and when it is asking partner to bid something.

Signals, generally. We play standard count and attitude, lavinthal on the first discard, and are trying to incorporate the obvious suit preference situations (e.g. when dummy has a singleton in the suit that was led, third seat signals which suit he'd like leader to switch to). Many questions remain. For instance, should an encouraging attitude signal tell partner about honors in the suit, or should it say "based on my knowledge of all the relevant circumstances, I think you should lead this suit"? Should we incorporate Smith Echoes? We can give count signals fairly reliable but kind of suck at using them, should we keep trying or wait until we are better at drawing inferences about handshapes to incorporate them? How much time should we spend thinking about signals anyways?

Control bids. We play that all control bids are first-round controls, and have some rudimentary agreements about when a bid is a control (and how strong a hand it shows in addition to showing a control), but there is a lot of room for further discussion.

Lots going on here but in general listen to the stronger player.

Responding from phone so some things may be lost.

1. Don't make rules, do things with a purpose. Lead trumps because (a) you think opponents will not be able to build the requisite tricks on their own AND have trump control so you aren't blowing up a trick (this is a "passive" lead, as opposed to an "active" lead like QTxx where you're looking to hit partner's honor and "build" a trick) or (b) you think that the hand is likely to require ruffs for declarer and you want to cut that down. I played a hand yesterday with a club void in dummy and diamond void in hand and few HCP - guess how I got all my tricks.

2. You want to play in 3n when ruffing won't help and 4m otherwise. That's why 4333 is interesting. In general the field will play in its 8 card major.

3. At matchpoints -100 is a lot better than -110, at imps they push. In general there's not as much value at imps in competing vs low level contracts. You'll defend 2M a lot more at imps for example. Likewise bidding 7D over their making 6S and going for 1400 vs 1430 has minimal value and doing so when you're beating 6s is a disaster. It's really just that the rules are different and you want to force your opponents to make bad decisions in different ways and at different times. Preempting and going for 800 vs a likely 620/650 isn't a bad deal at imps if sometimes they miss 1430 and other times they bid 6 and go down. Different calculus at MPs.

4.
Lebensohl is great but ask good players what they do. You probably don't want to just shift your bids up a level.

Game tries: play whatever flavor you can remember and are comfortable with.

Doubles are hard. In our system notes I have 9 situations where dbls are penalty. Otherwise takeout. You should have low level doubles be super duper takeout and high level doubles be more card-showing. Except in the "penalty" scenarios, doubles don't say that we have trumps.

You should play maximal and responsive doubles.

For a talented beginner I'd recommend just focusing on counting down the hand. Yes you should smith but that too can be complicated.

I think it's more useful to cue 1st and 2nd rd controls but whatever works.

You're thinking about the right things from an agreements perspective but definitely focus on "what is declarer doing" and "what are the hand shapes around the table" and "what high cards can I identify already" - you have all those tools.

Also re NT defense we play that systems are on over a dbl or 2c (x=Stayman) where 2c isn't majors or 3c (x = Stayman), otherwise off. We play lebensohl. Doubles of known two-suiters suggest a willingness to penalize. Other doubles are takeout and we takeout aggressively even as the NT bidder. Not uncommon for
1n (2h) p (p)
X for takeout -- usually like 42(34)

And
1n (2d majors) X is penalty-oriented in at least one of the majors

Extremely helpful, thanks.

1) Yeah, I was worried that this one would be too general. I will try to post specific hands that illustrate my question when they arise. I'm not looking for a hard-and-fast rule, but rather more clarity on how to calibrate the various factors at play in choosing an opening lead: holding in the suit, considerations from the bidding about which suit to lead, and whether we think we should be defending actively or passively.

I think my question relates to the scenario described in your (1) above. If it's the case both that we think opponents will not be able to make their contract unless we give away a trick, and that opponents have trump control, then should we always lead trump unless there is a strong reason to lead another suit (e.g. we have AK or KQJ or QJT in that suit)? Maybe it depends on how likely we think it is that the opponents will not make their contract unless we give away a trick, and how likely the best non-trump lead is to either build or give away a trick, and so this question can't be answered without reference to a concrete example.

2) Right. I guess my question is, if responder is balanced but not totally flat (i.e. 4-4-3-2 instead of 4-3-3-3), should 3NT be a serious consideration?

3) That all makes sense. Maybe this is too nitpicky to worry about, but it seems to me that the considerations in your response are different from being afraid of competing to push the opponents into game.

In all of the situations in your response, the tradeoff is between a slight plus for your side and a large minus for your side. That tradeoff may make sense at MPs because the magnitude of the plus or minus doesn't matter, but doesn't make sense at IMPs because you're effectively accepting very unfavorable odds for what is generally close to a toss-up. But deciding not to compete because the IMPs odds are bad is not the same thing as deciding not to compete because the opponents might compete to game and make it. It seems to me that the latter cannot be a reason not to compete. Let's say the auction goes 1S-(2H)-2S-(3H). Bidding 3S may be a bad idea at IMPs for the reasons you discuss (although it's not quite the same because you're never picking between -100 and +110 in this situation). However, we shouldn't be scared of pushing opponents into 4H unless we think they've made a mistake by not bidding that high already. Either 4H is +EV for the opponents or it is not.

Anyways, I've probably spent too much thinking about this already, but does this seem conceptually accurate or am I missing something?

4) All very helpful. To sharpen the question a bit, what I want to know (if there is an answer to this question) is, of the topics listed above, what would be most efficient to spend our limited discussion time on? In an ideal world, we would discuss all of those situations in as much depth as required, but sadly our carding discussions are somewhat sporadic, given work and other commitments.

So to take responsive doubles as an example, is that something that should just go on the list of items to discuss at some point, or is that a really important tool that we are losing lots of value by not playing?

This is very interesting and helpful, because I upgraded my hand based on those factors but clearly not nearly as much as I should have. Partner had:

AT3
AQJ8
J62
QJT

Which is 1-2 points lighter than I would have expected. (separate question: is that hand a double, 1NT overcall, pass, or 1H overcall?). At the time, I told him I thought his 3H bid didn't make any sense because he could count 33 HCP between his hand and the two opponents', so he shouldn't even be thinking about game with at most 22 HCP for our side. Looking at the hands though, we have a pretty reasonable game (and in fact it made 5). At worst, 2 spade losers, 1 heart loser, 1 diamond loser, and 1 club loser, and in each suit except diamonds 1 loser is basically 50/50. So I guess the upshot is I shouldn't be so quick to write off game when the HCP are relatively evenly distributed if the distribution is right.

1. in your example you want to lead passively. There may be an alternative passive lead, but a trump seems fine.

2. As a rule, no. But I play a lot more (and think more in terms of) IMPs than MP.

3. Exactly - i don't usually worry about opponents competitively bidding to a making game that they weren't going to bid. Discussing a hand with a world class player the other day, he said "I have no idea who is making what, so I bid" - slightly different than your example. The actual auction was:

(1S) - p - (3C = 6-9, 4 spades) - X [takeout of spades]
(4S) - p - (p) - ?

and I held void KQx AQT9x AQT8x and bid 4N, which didn't result in a great outcome for our side (though it might well have)

4. Basically bridge is a game of small edges. I think there's a lot of topics you can quickly address in conversation w partner. I think responsive dbls are an easy conversation: (1s) x (2s) x -- i didn't bid hearts and it isn't penalty so it says pick a minor. There. Now you play responsive dbls. A lot of these are easy discussions and you don't need to spend any time on it until you have an accident around something subtle that happens.

IMO all your time now should be spent on cardplay. Bidding will come over time as you play together, and you should write hands down (or remember them) and give bidding questions to good players, and you can then start to learn their thought processes.

1. 3C. We're slightly too strong for a nf 3D although that might be the best spot on some days at MP. 3D would be a hand roughly in the 16-18 range so partner is meant to pass with a hand as good as a misfitting 9 count at MP.

2. 3H. At imps very tempted to just bid 4H, but this has a shot to buy the contract, is the level we want to play at, hard for opps to bid 4D vul even though they have likely 10 card.

1. Leads are very situational. When you want to cut ruffs ie because you have strength in declarers 2nd suit a trump lead called for. Also for a low level penalty contract. Otherwise usually no, tempo matters more.

A better general rule is to not lead away from unsupported Kings, unless the auction calls for it. Everyone is told not to lead away from an Ace at suit contracts, but leading away from a K costs a lot of ev too for similar but less extreme reasons.

2. There are chapters written on this in books, can't really condense it, I liked Woolsey's Matchpoints book which covers this. In short playing 3N should be chosen more frequently at imps than MP because 4M has to score 2 tricks better at imps to win, but only 1 trick better at MP. As a quick rule: when you have excess values for game ie 28+ hcp and no weak suit (ie low doubleton/stiff) then opt to play in 3N with an 8 card fit, otherwise pick 4M.

3. Compete more at MP because there is a big difference in scores between -50 and -140. At teams this only swings a few imps most of the time, but there is an infrequent but large cost of getting doubled, or protecting them into game (more of a risk vs bad players), which incentivises being a bit more risk averse in competition.

4. Focus your time on declarer play and hand evaluation rather than extra system. When system becomes a limiting factor in your game you will realise.

3H was optimistic and shows how close you are to a direct 4H bid. You have a really good hand.

I agree with the double, even though the hand has an ugly shape. You have 3+ support in all unbid suits and opening strength, so it is fine.

Thanks all! I know, I know, but that's hard! Going through both the Watson book and Mike Lawrence's How to Read Your Opponents Cards, both of which are excellent, but it's sometimes hard to summon up the requisite mental energy for them at the end of the day.

I love these discussions even though I don’t always understand what’s being discussed, always thought provoking

I also agree w the dbl and don't find it particularly close. I think 3H by the 15 count is optimistic, but I would auto bid 4H w the 15 count if the 3514 bid 3H (which is why I think 3H is a bit much by that hand -- freely bidding 2H should show some values imo). I think 4H by the 3514 hand would be a bit overboard, but i would bid 4H with the 3514 after 2H-3H.

I'm pretty confident 4H is making here, and I obviously want to be there. But often partner will have 4 spades in this auction, and we are almost always going down on 5-1 spades since we have no entry to hand, and RHO likely has a diamond card and the SK, and they'll win a diamond, a club, a spade, and a ruff. We are almost surely making though if RHO has the CK instead of either the HK or a diamond honor.

So the next game I win on BBO as dummy will be my first. It’s like they’re actively sabotaging easily winnable games

And somehow I am always dealt a playable hand heh

Okay I need some advice here as this lesson has me confused

S:
K, Q, 8
K, 9
9, 8, 7, 6, 2
9, 8, 7

N:
A, J, 3
A, 8, 5, 2
Q, 3
A, Q, J, T

Dealer S passes, W passes. What is N’s correct bid here?

I’ll put the “correct” answer here in spoilers per Funbridge along with the reason for my confusion

The short answer is you need 5 hearts or spades to open 1H/1S.

1-minor can be on as few as three in standard bidding. E.g. 4432 (SHDC) you open a diamond, 4423 you open a club. Most players play that 3-3 you open a club and 4-4 you open a diamond.

Here you'll open a diamond and rebid 2n at your next turn showing 18-19, unless partner bids 1 of your major in which case you can raise to 4.

The longer answer is: notrump bids are very narrow so we really shouldn't fudge them without good reason. Minor suits are the hardest to make game in, so 1m is kind of a catchall "I couldn't open a major or NT but needed to open"

Okay that makes sense, thanks. Still a little wonky to me considering we wound up in NT anyway but I suppose these edge cases will appear from time to time.

It didn’t help that the one “course” on the Carnegie Mellon U site (which is only reachable via Google) has their 1NT range at 16-18 which puts our boy N right in that range.

Yeah these days 14-16 is far more common. Or 15-17 with a lot of 14s that "look like" 15: e.g., Kx AQx KQT9x xxx I would definitely open a 15-17 1N. There's discussion ITT of how a lot of people are pushing a huge amt of their 14s into the 1n range, and how failure to disclose that is unethical.

That is one of the fun issues with learning bridge. There are so many eras and systems to discern, plus the advancement of those systems from inception to present day.

One struggle to keep in mind that others have alluded to is the struggle between improving your card play and your auction accuracy. Improving your card play is the important step right now, getting to the point where you understand what's typically needed to make/defend contracts on normal deals allows you to unlock understanding how the bidding informs you what's happening.

This is a feature, not a bug. The beauty of the 1NT opener is it gives your partner a very clear picture of your hand. You have between 15 and 17 high card points and a balanced distribution (probably no more than one doubleton). Your partner can then make a likely very accurate decision about what the contract should be because your hand is so well-defined. But the more you open hands that don't quite fall within the 15-17 point range (like the North hand in question), the less valuable this 1NT bid becomes. If you open 1NT with an 18 point hand, your partner might pass an eight-pointer opposite which you can make game, reasoning that the most high-card points you could possible have are 25, which is not enough/barely enough for game.

Luckily, there is a another way to show the balanced hand with 18-19 high cards points, which Wyman described: open 1 of a suit, and then rebid 2NT when the bidding comes back around to you. A similar sequence is used to show 12-14 high cards points with a balanced hand, except the rebid is 1NT. The whole system looks like:

1X-1Y-1NT=12-14 HCP, balanced
1NT=15-17 HCP, balanced
1X-1Y-2NT=18-19 HCP, balanaced
2NT=20-21 HCP, balanced
2C-2X-2NT=22-24 HCP, balanced
2C-2X-3NT=25-27 HCP, balanced

Some hands from tonight. All MPs.

1: r/r, 1st seat


Q9763
JT764
K86

P-(P)-1C-(1S)-?

2: r/w, 1st seat

K98
743
Q
AJ8764

P-(P)-1H-(P)-?

3: w/w, 2nd seat

AT62
KQJ85
Q53
2

(1D)-1H-(P)-2H-(3D)-?

4: r/r, 2nd seat

KT95
J765

AQJ65

(1D)-x-(3D)-3H-(P)-P-(4D)-P-(P)-?

5: w/w, 1st seat

842
J98763
Q
972

P-(1D)-2C-(2D)-?

Opps on the last two boards are a bit erratic. In retrospect though, I should have at least asked what 2D on the last board was.

1. Some days you gotta make a negative double with a 5 card suit because nothing else fits. Today is a day.

2. Please tell me we Drury

3. I pass, but 3h could be right. But if right should be up to p

4. Partner pushed them to 4. Let's congrats him if it turns out to be right.

5. If partner balances us back in I'll be more than happy to balance back in. But acting before that point seems crazy aggro

1. dbl
2. 2c. If we play Drury it is Drury. If we don't then it is natural. I will bid until 3h
3. pass. I have my overcall and no surprises. My diamond holding is bad news for a heart contract.
4. pass. As in the previous hand, I have already described my hand perfectly. There is nothing more to say
5. pass. I want to bid 3c but I don't have the values. It happens a lot in bridge that you can choose between an overbid and an underbid. I choose practically always for the underbid, so that I can push later. That is more comfortable than overbidding and needing to push the brakes the rest of the auction. Also if I overbid partner might be pressured by opponents and throw us overboard. I hate that look on his face when I display dummy. I prefer the "that's better than expected" look on his face.