[Phil]

---

Important note: You play Flannery so if you choose to bid 2♠, partner will know you have only 3.

I'll probably start another thread on this at some point, but when you play Flannery, how do you feel this affects your negative doubles in an auction like 1♥ - (2m) - ?

[aguahombre]

Way back when we played Flannery, we decided the neg double here was more frequently useful to just show a responding hand, more frequent than the times when we had 5+spades and couldn't freebid.

If that is the agreement, then I would just use the default 2H rebid. Partner might be able to bid 2S himself on second chance if the double was either/or.

Obvious 2S if the neg double shows 5+ spades under the Flannery conditions.

[wank]

2♥

[JLOGIC]

2H seems completely normal

[gnasher]

Phil, on 2012-July-26, 14:38, said:

when you play Flannery, how do you feel this affects your negative doubles in an auction like 1♥ - (2m) - ?

I think it affects responder's choices only at the margins: with five spades and a borderline 2♠ bid, he should be inclined to double instead.

In reply, opener's 2♠ is assumed to be three cards (but not xxx and AQJ10x). With four spades and a better hand, opener jumps in spades as normal.

[the hog]

2H. Really what option have you?

[rduran1216]

the hog, on 2012-July-27, 02:08, said:

2H. Really what option have you?

2S comes to mind, 2H could be ugly opposite a stiff and decent spades in partner's hand. P's cards are well placed, so i dont wanna shut this down in 2H

[the_clown]

2♥. I cant imagine bidding anything else

[Phil]

---

Playing Flannery, 2♠ is safe, since partner knows you don't have four, and when he has a 5 spades this is where you want to be. Perhaps he should pass, but 3♣ looks normal. I'm not sure what I would Mark would have done over 2♥. Probably pass, and that plays very lousy.

3♣ played poorly as well for -200.

What I was considering was checking it out. Partner has short hearts, and our hand looks defensive? Feels extreme.

-200 is a 33. -300 would have been a 13. -100 is a 51. +200 is a 68.

[JLOGIC]

They also bid 2S against me, which went down 3. They (reasonably?) won the diamond and went heart heart for a ruffing finesse, pitching 2 diamonds. My partner tapped dummy with a diamond, so now they played club club and I ruffed and the world came crashing down on them.

It does not matter that 2S shows 3 when you have AQJTx of hearts. You have 4 heart tricks and an ace, as opposed to 3 small spades. This time partner had a 6 card club suit to run to but on other normal hands you will be stuck playing a 4-3 spade fit with 3 small spades instead of your AQJTx suit.

Passing it out is again a hero move and would be pretty terrible. By the way, how are you defending 2D that you are getting plus 200? CA lead seems pretty normal. Then a trump shift. On a trump back you will easily make by pulling trumps, ace of spades spade hook (if south covers there are 4 spades tricks), then duck a heart to north.

I suppose you can beat it by shifting to a low heart at trick 3 to give your partner a ruff, lol, if you are making plays like that routinely I would definitely not be passing 2D X, you are gonna win the event with normal bidding no problem!

So in reality you would get -180 which would be a fine score on this layout, but still they are making even when the overcaller has only a 5 card suit vul, partner has a 9 count with 3 diamonds and very short hearts...that should say something. Passing just risks getting ridiculous results fairly often when we have a perfectly fine bid available in 2H and we can play bridge from there, not to mention we just don't have the upside that we are beating them that often and when we do beat them we might be making game (since partner will probably have a very good hand).

I think the actual hand is influencing you too much: partner has a void, and deep finesse tells you 2D is down, and the overcaller has a yarborough, oh well.

[Phil]

Don't take me too literally. I'm looking at this flat game and trying to see where we coulda improved.

Not disappointed that I made reasonable decisions most f the time.

[JLOGIC]

Sorry to be on you Phil, IMO in these hands you are doing the right things (well, except I strongly prefer 2H to 2S but same idea, you were attempting to make a normal bid). In all of these hands you got 33-35 % of the MP or something by doing normal things, when you might have gotten 65-70 by doing something heroic (except on this hand, you would likely get 45 or something unless you are gonna tell me that the double dummy defense would automatically have been found vs 2D X).

You have to accept that in a national pair game, sometimes you will do normalish things and have the worst of it. If you look at my estimates on my card it is usually littered with ave - or ave estimates, but hopefully I will have more ave + estimates, and I will have a few tops (usually from lucky gifts, or from doing something awesome in the cardplay when I had lots of info, rarely from something heroic in the bidding). To me the hands you posted are normal "just doing business." In each case, the opps did something good that might have damaged you that everyone didn't do (2D overcall, 3H balance in the other hand, competing to 2S in the other hand, and playing well for down 1 though you could have made it tougher).

I am not saying that you can afford to be on the wrong end of all of these type of hands, but generally if your decision making is better than theirs on these type of hands, you will wind up with 60 % or w/e. Even a 58 is a pretty big game in a national pair game. If you are playing your cards well, and doing your best on these type of hands, you will be crushing it. A few 35 %s do not crush your 58 % game, they are basically accounted for. Keep doing high percentage things that have low risk of getting zeroes imo.

[JLOGIC]

Phil, on 2012-July-27, 13:42, said:

Don't take me too literally. I'm looking at this flat game and trying to see where we coulda improved.

Not disappointed that I made reasonable decisions most f the time.

The margins are small between a 50 and a 58. I would guessed you dropped some tricks along the way and that is always a killer. FWIW I had 2 48s or something and didnt Q for day 3 in this event lol, it does happen that you get fixed a lot, but of course we coulda qualified easily if we had played better also, but sometimes you just get a lot more 35 % boards than 65 % boards, and you make a normal number of mistakes, combined with a few good slams going down and a few burns for zeroes, and all of the sudden you can't even Q .

[cherdano]

Playing Flannery, do you really have to double with the South hand?

[Phil]

cherdano, on 2012-July-27, 18:39, said:

Playing Flannery, do you really have to double with the South hand?

Pass?

[JLOGIC]

cherdano, on 2012-July-27, 18:39, said:

Playing Flannery, do you really have to double with the South hand?

I think we still have to double planning to bid 3C, but maybe not? Interesting thought

[ColdCrayon]

I think you're kind of obliged to play 2S if your conventions are "standard" - partner is bidding a 4-card spade suit, so like the Balrog, you cannot pass. There's no sense in 2♥ when you can show your partner support in spades. 4-3 fits aren't the end of the world, and I think you mentioned that if your partner would know your raise wasn't showing 4 card support.

If you go down, you go down, but I'm pretty sure 2S is the by-the-book response.