[pilowsky]

After playing Bridge for a few months, and learning what a transfer was. I quickly realised that preempts and NT bids were simply two sides of the same coin, balanced precariously on the law of total tricks.
Every few days a hand comes along to remind me that I still have a lot to learn. I call the interval between these hands "really annoying". Hopefully, it's getting shorter. I set myself a limit of a few hours to crack it and then I pass it over the experts.
Here's the latest one.
Suddenly, after deciding that the hand that it held was not good enough for a weak 2 in ♠, my partner the ever excitable North robot suddenly upgraded his hand and made a Texas transfer leaving me in an apparently makeable 4♠ contract.
I tried more than 15 times the best I can do is 4♠-1, usually -2.
Every time I play it West leads the ♣6.

---

fwiw - not much I know, if North had opened a weak 2♠ and South had applied the dreaded rule of 17 , it passes.


minor edits to repair over-zealous spell-checker

[Cyberyeti]

Essentially you pitch a heart on this, and in no particular order, ruff a small club, play 3 rounds of hearts ruffing and play a small diamond off the deck, nothing E can do can hurt you now although you have to be a little careful.

[Tramticket]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-September-09, 03:06, said:

Essentially you pitch a heart on this, and in no particular order, ruff a small club, play 3 rounds of hearts ruffing and play a small diamond off the deck, nothing E can do can hurt you now although you have to be a little careful.

So the idea is that you need to reduce to the same number of trumps as West. You lose king of diamonds and two trumps?

[pilowsky]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-September-09, 03:06, said:

Essentially you pitch a heart on this, and in no particular order, ruff a small club, play 3 rounds of hearts ruffing and play a small diamond off the deck, nothing E can do can hurt you now although you have to be a little careful.

Thanks for that, so I arrived at this position -

---

and East just played the ♠4 at me so that my trumps are going to be endplayed and I go -1 again.
No wait - my diamonds came good! thanks for that!

[Cyberyeti]

pilowsky, on 2020-September-09, 03:26, said:

Thanks for that, so I arrived at this position -

---

and East just played the ♠4 at me so that my trumps are going to be endplayed and I go -1 again.
No wait - my diamonds came good! thanks for that!

Win the A, cash 2 diamonds finishing in hand and table the top club, if he ruffs low, there's no problem, if he discards, so do you, ruff a club and play a spade to the 10. If he ruffs high, what can he do, pitch your diamond and play a spade to the 10.

[DavidKok]

Surprisingly excellent bidding by North. The suit quality and two defensive tricks make the hand inappropriate for a 2♠ opening, especially V against NV. However, opposite a 1NT opening 4♠ rates to be a good contract.

I think you might be slightly confused about the rule of 17 (dreaded or no) - with 17 points and 2 trumps the south hand should definitely look for game opposite 2♠. Also while the law is a very useful tool for competitive and preemptive bidding I'm afraid there is far more to it than that. As an interesting example, the law condones opening weak 2's on most 5-card suits (you have 5 trumps, of the missing 8 partner rates to have about 2 2/3, which adds up to 7 2/3 which averages out to 'law protection' at the two level), but this is not the current standard.*

*However, this approach of opening weak 5-card hands does seem to be gaining in popularity. Provided you warn partner, opponents and possibly the tournament director ahead of time, of course.

[Vampyr]

pilowsky, on 2020-September-09, 02:47, said:

After playing Bridge for a few months, and learned what a transfer was. I quickly realised that preempts and NT bids were simply two sides of the same coin, blanched precariously on the law of total tricks.
Every few days a hand comes along to remind me that I still have a lot to learn. I call the interval between these hands "really annoying". Hopefully, it's getting shorter. I set myself a limit of a few hours to crack it and then I pass it over the experts.
Here's the latest one.
Suddenly, after deciding that the hand that it held was not good enough for a weak 2 in ♠, my partner the ever excitable North robot suddenly upgraded his hand and made a Texas transfer leaving me in an apparently makeable 4♠ contract.
I tried more than 15 times the best I can do is 4♠-1, usually -2.
Every time I play it West leads the ♣6.

---

fwiw - not much I know, if North had opened a weak 2♠ and South had applied the dreaded rule of 17 , it passes.

If the hand is on BBO you can use GIB, and it will show you the right play at every trick.

[FelicityR]

If your partner opens 2♠ vulnerable in first position and I have the South hand I am always bidding 4♠ 100% of the time here.

The rule of 17 is complete nonsense here. Three aces, the ♠A10 and the position and vulnerability just cry out for game to be bid immediately without any investigation if you trust partner to bid sensibly.

Like all rules in bridge there are exceptions.

As for the play it's easy seeing all four hands. I think most of us would have gone wrong without knowing the East-West distribution.

[Cyberyeti]

K&R gives the south hand as 18.2, I thought it was heavy for 1N and certainly is worth 4♠ opposite a classical weak 2. I would also open 1♣ rather than a 15-17 NT, but then I wouldn't be able to, as the N hand is rule of 19 with a void, so I'd have opened that 1♠ although many wouldn't.

[Vampyr]

FelicityR, on 2020-September-09, 08:10, said:

As for the play it's easy seeing all four hands. I think most of us would have gone wrong without knowing the East-West distribution.

Yes.

[Cyberyeti]

FelicityR, on 2020-September-09, 08:10, said:

As for the play it's easy seeing all four hands. I think most of us would have gone wrong without knowing the East-West distribution.

It's one of those inconsequential things, but if W had ♣8x rather than 6x, you might pick the club distribution from the lead, but the 6 can easily be a long suit so gives no strong clues.

[pilowsky]

And then, just when you think it's safe to go back into the water...
This time it only took me 15 minutes (and 5 tries) to work it out .

I open 1NT and North bids 2♣ "Stayman" - I don't have a five-card major so I cluelessly bid 3NT and collect 12.04 IMP's.
It's just as well I don't understand how to play bridge, or know who Smolen is, because all of the people except one who ended in 4♥ missed it. Except for one person.
We have 60 minutes to play 12 boards so I'm rating this hand as intermediate.
I was only able to work it out thanks to the excellent help from this thread (ty Cyberyeti) and the double-dummy.

I was completely unaware that partner would not transfer with a five-card major so I just jumped to 3NT: my usual practice in robot tourneys.
The others were in 4♥ with West leading the ♠10.

---

fwiw this is what the Traveller looked like.
4♥ 1
4♥-1 9
4♥-2 11
4♥-3 2

[Zelandakh]

Tramticket, on 2020-September-09, 03:09, said:

So the idea is that you need to reduce to the same number of trumps as West.

I have not looked at the specific hand but this is an extremely common theme whenever you are dealing with a (potential or known) bad break. Here it goes under the saying "Schlechte Verteilung, Trümpfe verkürzen"; "bad breaks, shorten trumps" does not quite have the same ring.

[pilowsky]

Zelandakh, on 2020-September-10, 00:50, said:

I have not looked at the specific hand but this is an extremely common theme whenever you are dealing with a (potential or known) bad break. Here it goes under the saying "Schlechte Verteilung, Trümpfe verkürzen"; "bad breaks, shorten trumps" does not quite have the same ring.

Pretty apt in the current political climate as well .

[Cyberyeti]

pilowsky, on 2020-September-09, 20:48, said:

And then, just when you think it's safe to go back into the water...
This time it only took me 15 minutes (and 5 tries) to work it out .

I open 1NT and North bids 2♣ "Stayman" - I don't have a five-card major so I cluelessly bid 3NT and collect 12.04 IMP's.
It's just as well I don't understand how to play bridge, or know who Smolen is, because all of the people except one who ended in 4♥ missed it. Except for one person.
We have 60 minutes to play 12 boards so I'm rating this hand as intermediate.
I was only able to work it out thanks to the excellent help from this thread (ty Cyberyeti) and the double-dummy.

I was completely unaware that partner would not transfer with a five-card major so I just jumped to 3NT: my usual practice in robot tourneys.
The others were in 4♥ with West leading the ♠10.

---

fwiw this is what the Traveller looked like.
4♥ 1
4♥-1 9
4♥-2 11
4♥-3 2

4♥(S) is going to get some help from the lead, and what help you get may determine how you play it, but this one is just scoring all dummy's small trumps, 2 spades, 2 diamonds, one club via the ruffing finesse and 5 trumps, the AK and 3 club ruffs.

[pilowsky]

Cyberyeti, on 2020-September-10, 02:34, said:

4♥(S) is going to get some help from the lead, and what help you get may determine how you play it, but this one is just scoring all dummy's small trumps, 2 spades, 2 diamonds, one club via the ruffing finesse and 5 trumps, the AK and 3 club ruffs.

Just! , And people say I lived in an ivory tower! As they say, when you know how to do it everything is easy.
I think that this hand would be at least intermediate - maybe advanced - given that in a group of players who seemed to self-rate themselves, on average, as intermediate, none of them made the contract.
Interestingly though they all knew how to bid it: I wonder what that says about the way that Bridge is taught?

[Cyberyeti]

pilowsky, on 2020-September-10, 03:09, said:

Just! , And people say I lived in an ivory tower! As they say, when you know how to do it everything is easy.
I think that this hand would be at least intermediate - maybe advanced - given that in a group of players who seemed to self-rate themselves, on average, as intermediate, none of them made the contract.
Interestingly though they all knew how to bid it: I wonder what that says about the way that Bridge is taught?

Well if you play smolen it's a routine auction.

Also with this lead people might be trying to give themselves the best chance of 11 tricks when the trumps break and the ♣A is right, and then failing to make 10 when the trumps don't break.

I'm not sure whether you can try all the right things in the right order to accomplsh safety for 10 tricks while not compromising the best chance of 11 if things are friendlier.

It looks like you sort of can.

1: ♠10JKA
2: ♦2510Q
3: ♠5Q23
4: ♣KA♥42
5: ♥5QA2 - This should worry you
6: ♣Q6♠44
7: ♦9KA8
8: ♦37♥76

This leaves this position:

---

with you having 7 tricks and opps 1

Now cashing K♥ then playing side suit winners leaves you with 10 tricks as it is, but 11 if trumps split.

[pilowsky]

Maybe that's the point - it's an IMP's, best-hand, challenge format, so I'm always looking for the best, easiest, contract. Slams are a rare (but valuable) beast, and overtricks less important.

I'm pretty sure in this cohort we're all just happy to make the contract.

[Cyberyeti]

pilowsky, on 2020-September-10, 04:23, said:

Maybe that's the point - it's an IMP's, best-hand, challenge format, so I'm always looking for the best, easiest, contract. Slams are a rare (but valuable) beast, and overtricks less important.

I'm pretty sure in this cohort we're all just happy to make the contract.

If it's IMPs you should make this contract, but don't think overtricks are unimportant. I've both won and lost 48 board knockout matches by 1 IMP.

The line I suggested for 10/11 depending on the trump break is safe against most distributions for 10 tricks once the ♣ A is right because you have the ♥9876 so there is not too much danger of the defenders scoring one of their small trumps and the J10 and you can afford to lose to the J and 10.

[pilowsky]

OK - thanks