David Stevenson
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
When I was editing the above post the last edit failed and I was no longer able to do any edits. The third, fourth and fifth paragraph should read as below.
In the case of the first hand the 2H bid was in the protective position, and a lot of players protect very light because they expect their partners to have something based on their RHO’s pass. The range for an overcall in this position is usually quite vague and maybe this pair, being more aggressive than some, think it normal to bid on six points and a poor suit in this position. There again, even if partner expects a bit more, it is not unreasonable to decide to make a bid on this hand.
One point about both these bids is that they are part of defensive bidding. Defensive bidding as opposed to offensive bidding covers bids and doubles by both partners once the opposition have opened the bidding at the one level or with a strong bid, and opening bids at the two level or higher to show weak hands. In general, defensive bids are not nearly as well defined as to strength as offensive bids. You and the opponents to whom you referred are going to have to stop assuming that opponents bid as you do and for defensive bids especially you must stop assuming they will necessarily show strength.
As for your comment that experienced players considered these bids psyches, experienced players often have very little idea of the laws and regulations and you should only accept comments of this sort from directors.
Let us deal with this step by step. A psyche is a gross misstatement of values and/or suit lengths as compared to the system played by the pair. Psyches are legal in club bridge and higher levels of bridge. It is not unreasonable to limit the use of psyches in restricted events, such as those for beginners or novices, even though the laws do not really permit this. But in an ordinary club game psyches are perfectly legal. So these bids are not illegal even if they are psyches.
But are they psyches? A continuing theme in this forum and in its predecessor in BRIDGE, Mr Bridge’s magazine, is that players expect other players to bid in the way that they do, or in the way that they have been taught. Players often write to me because they are upset that an opponent has done something that they would not do, like opening a preempt on 12 points. But there is an awful lot of freedom in what you are allowed to play and assuming opponents will bid as you do will cause you a lot of heartache.Consider your second hand. The opponents described it as weak. What would they have said if you had asked the range? Perhaps they would have said from 2 to 10 points. Not only is that perfectly legal, but that means that the bid is as described as the partnership plays, and is certainly not a psyche. Even if they play it a normal 5 to 9 points and he has just decided to bid it on this hand so long as his partner is expecting 5 to 9, that is perfectly legal.
In the case of the first hand the 2H bid was in the protective position, and a lot of players protect very light because they expect their partners to have something based on their RHO’s pass. The range for an overcall in this position is usually quite vague and maybe this pair, being more aggressive than some, think it normal to bid on six points in this position. There again, even if partner expects a bit more, it is not unreasonable to decide to make a bid on this hand.
One point about both these bids is that they are defensive bidding. Defensive bidding covers bids and doubles by both partners once the opposition have opened the bidding at the one level or with a strong bid, and opening bids at the two level or higher to show weak hands. In general, defensive bids are not nearly as well defined as to strength as offensive bids. You and the opponents to whom you referred are going to have to stop assuming that opponents bid as you do and for defensive bids especially you must stop assuming they will necessarily show strength.
As for your comment that experienced players considered these bids psyches, experienced players often have very little idea of the laws and regulations and you should only accept comments of this sort from directors.
The advantage of playing a card for unblock above the missing card is that it makes it easy for partner: you see a king, you play the queen; you see a queen, you play the jack. The disadvantage of that method is it does not fit well with ace (or ace/queen) for attitude, king for count. To be honest, I find myself in a minority since I neither play nor understand this approach. I play king for attitude, anything else for count, at trick one in part score or game contracts. Not only does that seem to work but the unblock approach fits perfectly into it. Of course since mine is a minority view I do not particularly suggest you play it, but if you are considering your honour leads generally you might consider it.
I have not heard of Lead Captain but Google has. It looked interesting until I reached the bottom line which read $25.00! I would have led ♠️7 at teams and possibly pairs but I might lead ♦️J or ♣️9 at pairs.
It is really an excellent fit. It is extraordinarily difficult to bid accurate slams without real slam values and I would expect not many pairs to bid this slam. This is not the sort of hand you should worry about.
Traditionally playing strong twos a 2H opening shows 8+ playing tricks. This hand has 6.5 (6 in hearts and 0.5 for the club king) so it is not close to a strong two. It is not correct to take length and shortness into account when deciding how strong a hand is.
If your partner had a normal 13 count, sayKJx
xxxx
KQxx
Ax
then there is no slam. Slams on a combined 29 count do occur but they are difficult to evaluate and are usually based on more than just one fit and if you start bidding slam every time you have a fit and 29 points you will go off much more than you will make.
If you show us your partner’s hand we might be able to give further advice.In general if a pass is forcing by general bridge logic it need not be alerted, but if a pass is forcing where you have agreed with partner and not everyone plays it as forcing then it needs an alert.
Looking at Brian’s examples, in the first case not everyone plays this as forcing (I don’t!) so it needs an alert. In the second case you are in a game forcing auction so every pass over intervention would be forcing but they would not need alerting.I would open 1H in any position. There seems to be a growing dislike of opening at the one level on distributional hands with a lot of tricks. However the whole idea of the approach forcing idea developed in the middle of the last century was to open at the one level on a lot of hands and develop a description of the hand for partner in your first and sometimes second rebid.
As to missing a game I cannot ever remember a game missed when a distributional hand opened at the one level, and I have played a lot of bridge over a very long time.An interesting idea but looks unlikely to me. If he used the Call Director facility you cannot easily reply without going to the table.
It is only recently that I have realised that when a bid is made by the robot or his partner the robot’s explanation is visible to the partner. I think this is a very very bad feature of BBO.
I suppose it is possible but that means the director has not done his job. That would mean that he has responded by private chat to Bruce but not visited the table. It is difficult to see why a director would do this.
While everything written above is true, in fact it gets quite difficult to bid if you are going to look for another fit when you know you have got one. So in general if you have an eight card fit in a major it is best to just assume you are playing in it and not worry about anything else. You may occasionally lose out, for example in Brian’s hand above if South opens 1H it is easiest to assume you are playing in hearts and reach the wrong contract. But in my opinion you will lose more than you will gain over time if you start considering alternatives once you have found a major fit.
While I am sure that Zoe was trying to be helpful I think you should be very careful with her advice since I think it is wrong in certain respects. Incidentally I am assuming this was on BBO as most queries are that are about online bridge. If in fact it was on another of the online bridge sites then my reply needs to be somewhat adjusted.
As far as Undos are concerned they are in the menu which has three horizontal lines. But not all duplicates allow Undos so it is perfectly possible that as you said no Undo was permitted. However you can ask for an Undo after your partner has called if Undos are allowed.
When the director came to the table and asked what the problem was it is very important that you reply to him by private chat so your partner cannot see it. This is easy to do because once he has spoken you just click on his name. The opponent was perfectly correct that your remark gave Unauthorised Information (UI) to your partner because you chatted to the table instead of to the director. Of course the director will see chat to the table and I am very surprised that he did not explain to you what your options were. In fact, if he did not then I am afraid he did not do his job properly. He also should have warned your partner about the effects of UI, but since that would be by private chat we do not know whether he did or not.
Once you have made your mistake and assuming that you do not get an Undo you can do what you like and try to repair the damage. If you had not made your remark to the table then your partner would be at liberty to guess what you meant when you bid 2S. However the UI that you gave to your partner has complicated matters for him.
It is important that at all levels of the game players have some idea of their responsibilities when they have received UI from partner. When a remark or hesitation or a frown or a smile or anything else gives some impression of partner’s hand the player receiving this has a responsibility to avoid taking any advantage as far as possible. To take the present case as an example if the bidding goes 1N 2D 2H 2S without any UI opener can decide whether this is a forcing bid showing spades and longer hearts, or perhaps just encouraging but definitely with longer hearts. But at some levels of the game opener may think that perhaps it just means that the 2D bid was a mistake. So without the UI opener could legitimately guess which of these three it is. But with the UI he must not take any advantage so he is required to treat it as a forcing bid with spades and longer hearts: because of your remark he is no longer allowed to pass 2S, and if the opponents had called the director back he might well adjust the score, perhaps to 3H going off.
So the moral of the story is that if you make a mistake do not do anything to let partner know because it makes difficulties for him. This applies just as much to live bridge as to online bridge.
The director would rule one trick to the defence. When there is only one missing trump and there is a claim and the claimant makes no mention of the missing trump despite the fact they always say afterwards they were going to draw it it is the general opinion of directors that they have forgotten the outstanding trump in over 80% of cases. So you assume they have forgotten the trump.
It is a generally accepted principle that if declarer claims all the tricks he is as likely to play one suit as another so the director rules on the basis that he would play the suit most unfortunate for him. So in this case the director would assume the declarer would play the CK first.
These days people have a lot of different arrangements for the minimum number of cards in a suit when they open it and something like 5542 gives a good description of this. It is in the normal order of suits so 5542 means that when they open 1S or 1H they have at least five cards in that suit, 1D shows at least four cards and 1C shows at least two cards. Of course a lot of Acol players who play a weak no trump throughout play 4444 but those who play a variable no trump sometimes have to open a three card minor so they are playing 4433. It is really quite a helpful method of describing the opening bids.
