Brian Davies
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Michael, great suggestion for volunteers. I don’t have the technical computer knowledge to coordinate, but I would happily volunteer to do some of the leg work.
Carolyn, thanks for the tip that the Mr Bridge site has indexing and yes it would be good to have it on this site.
I would echo the request for some kind of indexing. There is a lot on the site and it will grow! The content includes the seminars, live broadcast, hands of the week (often with a theme), expert advice from Julian and David and the magazine archive. It would be a huge undertaking to include the magazine’s in an index, but my guess is that an article has been written to cover negative doubles – probably more than one!
I’ve mixed feelings on this.
My main partnership has now lasted 13 years. We do regularly discuss things as we go along – particularly if playing in a club setting. But our conversations tend to not to start “why did you …” but are more likely to start “should I have …”. This is the way that we hone our partnership understandings. We tend to discuss things less when we play in county-level competitions.
On the other hand, if playing with my wife (marriage has lasted three years), discussions of hands tend to go less well …
Hi Hilary, yes I absolutely agree. In the 1C-1NT auction that you describe, I play that the 1NT bid denies holding four diamonds as well as denying a four-card major. This of course means that 1NT shows club support and I play that 1C-2C shows 5-7 HCPs and 1C-1NT shows 8-10 HCPs.
But the expression is generally used in the type of auction that I describe and where bidding a minor before a major would deny holding a major. This is not recommended in Acol.
Also:
- Unauthorised Information – Gossip
- Misinformation – The daughter of Mr and Mrs Information
- Stop Bid – The beverages have arrived
- Sacrificing – Partnering your wife instead of watching the football
Most of these are great Alison.
BUT, if you are playing Bernard’s version of Acol – where you open a four-card major before a four-card – the “Never deny a 4 card major” manta is not recommended.
Here is the type of hand:
S 97
H A942
D KJ107
C 562
Partner opens one club and you need to decide what to respond. Playing “Never Deny a 4 Card Major” you will respond one heart. But in Bernard’s style of Acol it is better to “Respond Up The Line” with four-card suits – i.e. to respond one diamond. Note that you will never lose the heart suit playing these methods because either (1) partner would have opened one heart with four-card suits in both hearts and clubs or (2) partner has a five or more clubs and four hearts and will be unbalanced – so partner will rebid one heart.
The mantra that you quote is imported from five-card major systems, because they never open one of a major with a four-card suit and need to bid the major or risk losing it. Not bidding a major is said to “Deny a 4 Card Major”. There is also some merit in the mantra if you play Acol, but choose to open the lower of two four-card suits (this is not Bernard’s preferred system, but is played by some experts).
Hi Ken,
There are probably a number of things going on in your perception that BBO hands are more extreme than hand dealt hands at a club. It is a proven fact that poorly shuffled hands tend to be more evenly distributed – particularly if you are playing rubber bridge. At rubber bridge, players tend to follow suit and each trick is stored together and gather as an adjacent set of cards in the pack. Then a poor shuffle will leave many or all of these four cards adjacent to each other and as a consequence will be dealt to separate players rather than to a single player. Note that this effect is much less extreme, playing duplicate pairs because the cards are not gathered together in tricks – but players do tend to play multiple rounds of a suit (e.g. drawing trumps) so that cards of the same suit still become adjacent to some extent. Hand dealt cards at a club can be made more random by longer shuffling; using riffle shuffles instead of hand over hand and also requiring players to shuffle their individual hands before returning to the board (as required in the regulations).
I find it unlikely that BBO’s hands are more extreme than other computer dealt hands. Even if their algorithm is worse (possible), it would have to be pretty bad to have a noticeable effect. But people are not very good at perceiving randomness – and I mean all people, not specifically Ken. If I select two four digit numbers: 6729 and 0000, you will find that people perceive the first as random and the second as not random. But both numbers are equally likely and in this case, I have selected both numbers and neither is random. In a similar way it is easy to perceive that deals are extreme – if we get a few extreme deals we start to look out for more extreme deals. Because we are looking out for these extreme deals we tend to notice them, but we can be blind to the flatter deals that come up in between!
It isn’t easy but you need to just trust that BBO hands are sufficiently random.
Good and bad features Charles. The doubleton honours are down-grades, but the excellent six-card suit headed by AK10 is a major upgrade. Overall this is still worth 17 in my opinion.
I make a penalty double with 16 points or 15 and a good lead. This hand is an obvious double for me, notwithstanding that 1NT happens to make on this hand.
The reason that you need to double is that partner will never believe that you are this strong if you don’t. I would not expect partner to raise to game if you limit your hand with a 2D call.
As well as agreeing whether a double following partner’s penalty double of 1NT is for penalties or takeout, a partnerships also need to decide whether a pass in this situation is forcing and at what level it is no longer forcing. Some play that pass is forcing after 1NT-Dbl-2x where x is a minor, some extend the forcing pass to 2H and some play a pass is forcing after any 2-level response. But I can’t see that a pass can be forcing over 1NT-Dbl=3x.
So if you play penalty doubles in this situation, South has no way to ask North to bid and a 3H bid from North without any call from South would be over-stating the hand.
For what it is worth, I prefer to play that after 1NT-Dbl-2x (or 3x) the first double by either side is takeout (and subsequent doubles are penalties) and a pass is non-committal, but forcing if a minor is bid.
Since it is topical:
- O’Gust – Paddy O’Gust of Limerick first invented a 2NT asking bid with responses 3C= 6-8 one top honour; 3D= 6-8 two top honours; 3H= 9-10 one top honour; 3S= 9-10 two top honours. This invention was 20 years before Harald Ogust of the USA invented a similar convention. Unfortunately it was 10 years before Weak Twos were invented and hence it found little favour.
Ok, point taken about the use of Ogust rather than OGUST. I typed the former, but my Android tablet’ s autocorrect feature changed it! I have sometimes come across these responses described as “Blue Club Responses” – might be safer! 🙂
In a hypothetical face to face game, South opens 2H and North responds 2NT intended as asking for features. South alerts the bid and when asked correctly describes as “Ogust, game try, asking” in accordance with the partnership agreement and using your wording. I presume that this would be unauthorised information and North is not allowed to wake up to the error?
Or a lousy 3NT on:
Six diamonds is cold.
In each of my three examples, you would finish in a better place if you open one diamond!
