[gnasher]

The only action I really hate is 5♥. East has lots of defence, no extra trump length, and no reason to think he can make eleven tricks.

You can criticise 4♥ and 1♠ for stylistic reasons, but both of them worked: 4♥ pushed the opponents into something that was going for 800, and 1♠ led to +50 when the opponents had a game on. If you push the opponents around, they're more likely to make a mistake.

[rhm]

gnasher, on 2011-September-08, 02:34, said:

The only action I really hate is 5♥. East has lots of defence, no extra trump length, and no reason to think he can make eleven tricks.

You can criticise 4♥ and 1♠ for stylistic reasons, but both of them worked: 4♥ pushed the opponents into something that was going for 800, and 1♠ led to +50 when the opponents had a game on. If you push the opponents around, they're more likely to make a mistake.

To say the 4♥ bid "worked" seems to me a strange interpretation to what happened at the table.
But of course if you find 4♥ defensible you must find 5♥ indefensible.
Unfortunately feeding your partner with wrong information, does not make it likely that he will find the best bid.
I prefer Pass to 5♥ but consider it close after the 4♥ bid. If South has ♣AQ you may not have that many defensive tricks.
DBL is dubious after the 4♥ raise and from East perspective you are not getting rich by playing 4♠ undoubled. .
I do not criticize 4♥ for "stylistic" reasons, but because the offensive value of the hand is too low and the defensive value of the hand is too high for preempting with 4♥.
Even Larry Cohen would have corrected the LAW here. Favorable vulnerability is no license for overbidding with the wrong hands.
If West would have bid 3♥ (not ideal, but much better in my opinion), North would probably bid 3♠ and East 4♥.
If opponents now bid on East can double, which in my book is only a suggestion after West has raised, but which West would gladly accept here.

Rainer Herrmann

[jdeegan]

Bbradley62, on 2011-September-07, 23:13, said:

So, your answer is that E/W "should" let N/S play 4♠ undoubled?

Alas, South's semi-psychic 1♠ overcall has worked. At least I'm going to get 300 as against 420 in 4♥. I'm missing out of +800 but not losing 100 in 5♥. Many would say that West has to bid 5♥ or double on the grounds that when opps bid over our freely bid game he must not pass. In that case, we get 800 since given that choice West has a clear double.

[Onedown]

Bbradley62, on 2011-September-07, 23:20, said:

Actually, two of us have...

Right, my bad. I REALLY think the complete auction is less (very) than solid bridge. No offense to anyone!

[gnasher]

rhm, on 2011-September-08, 06:32, said:

To say the 4♥ bid "worked" seems to me a strange interpretation to what happened at the table.
But of course if you find 4♥ defensible you must find 5♥ indefensible.
Unfortunately feeding your partner with wrong information, does not make it likely that he will find the best bid.
I prefer Pass to 5♥ but consider it close after the 4♥ bid. If South has ♣AQ you may not have that many defensive tricks.
DBL is dubious after the 4♥ raise and from East perspective you are not getting rich by playing 4♠ undoubled. .

If you bid 5♥ as East, what sort of dummy would you be hoping for?

[rhm]

gnasher, on 2011-September-08, 10:32, said:

If you bid 5♥ as East, what sort of dummy would you be hoping for?

What about

♠xxx,♥Kxxxx,♦x,♣Qxxx or
♠xx,♥Kxxxx,♦Qxxxx,♣x.

The last one could easily be a double game swing. Would you overrule your partner and bid 5♥ if your partner doubled 4♠?

Rainer Herrmann

[gnasher]

rhm, on 2011-September-08, 15:30, said:

What about

♠xxx,♥Kxxxx,♦x,♣Qxxx or
♠xx,♥Kxxxx,♦Qxxxx,♣x.

The last one could easily be a double game swing. Would you overrule your partner and bid 5♥ if your partner doubled 4♠?

Rainer Herrmann

On the first of those, aren't we getting about 800 from 4♠?

On the second, yes it might be a double game swing. That's the sort of thing that happens when we unexpectedly find that we have a 9-card fit in a side suit. I don't think it's with the odds to play for that, though.

[Vampyr]

rogerclee, on 2011-September-07, 13:09, said:

By the way, you are not the first person who has tried to lend power to his argument by attempting to discreadit the speaker. but you may well be the stupidest.

[rogerclee]

Vampyr, on 2011-September-08, 20:12, said:

By the way, you are not the first person who has tried to lend power to his argument by attempting to discreadit the speaker. but you may well be the stupidest.

First of all, my (bridge) analysis had nothing to do with your (non bridge-related) post, so this is nothing but gibberish to me. Instead, I will make three observations:

1) You have now made three posts in this thread without any bridge content whatsoever. I had made two posts in this thread, both thoroughly analyzing questions asked by the original poster.

2) You assumed Hanoi had some weird ulterior motive for posting this hand. Maybe you don't realize that Hanoi is very passionate about bridge, and as a result, he volunteers his time to be the Venezuelan national junior bridge team coach. I have talked to Hanoi in real life on many occasions and it is obvious to me how enthusiastic he is about bridge and that he wants to be the best possible coach he can. However, I think he would admit that he is not a top player, so it is valuable to him to seek advice from others about bridge decisions that are unclear to him, in order to more effectively coach his team. That was the point of this thread, not anything stupid like you assumed.

3) I didn't want to needle you again, since you are not really worth my time, but it actually brings me some satisfaction that you were so perturbed by my one liner that you felt the need to post about it not once, but twice, on two separate days, without any additional prodding by me.

Your post (as usual) was very annoying to me because you attacked someone you know nothing about, who I know for a fact to be a nice guy who would never post something just to bash his teammates. Maybe you didn't know this, but then again, I guess you didn't care. All your posts are basically either boring/useless/repeating others or just outright dumb. I hope you stick to the first type, because the second type is very annoying to read!

Do me a favor and link me (via private message) to a single strong, coherent, bridge-related analysis you have made anywhere on these forums at any time and I am happy to apologize. If you are unable to do this, then...guess I was right!

[awm]

I don't like the 4♥ call here.

If the opponents don't have a big spade fit, you will often simply go down in 4♥ against air. Balanced hands like this one don't produce a lot of offense. If the opponents do have a big spade fit and bid 4♠, partner will quite often go wrong because he will not realize you have so much defense. His pass will not be forcing, he will often fail to double when you are beating 4♠, he will sometimes bid on as a sacrifice when 4♠ wasn't making. Even if you get the auction where LHO bids 4♠ and it passes back to you, are you doubling? It's actually not hard to imagine 4♠ making! Or it could go for 800 (as here). The 4♥ call creates a situation where your side will very often have to make the last guess, and where partner is sufficiently ill-informed about the nature of your hand as to contribute very little help in the process.

With a balanced hand including plenty of defense, I'd just make a 4-card limit raise. Sure, I might occasionally miss the chance at a number when opponents figure out to let us play in 4♥ rather than sacrifice in 4♠... but in exchange, I save myself from partner making bad sacrifices against 4♠ or possibly from doubling a making 4♠... and sometimes I get to play 3♥ making instead of 4♥-1.

Accelerating the auction doesn't always work to your advantage.

[rhm]

awm, on 2011-September-08, 21:41, said:

I don't like the 4♥ call here.

If the opponents don't have a big spade fit, you will often simply go down in 4♥ against air. Balanced hands like this one don't produce a lot of offense. If the opponents do have a big spade fit and bid 4♠, partner will quite often go wrong because he will not realize you have so much defense. His pass will not be forcing, he will often fail to double when you are beating 4♠, he will sometimes bid on as a sacrifice when 4♠ wasn't making. Even if you get the auction where LHO bids 4♠ and it passes back to you, are you doubling? It's actually not hard to imagine 4♠ making! Or it could go for 800 (as here). The 4♥ call creates a situation where your side will very often have to make the last guess, and where partner is sufficiently ill-informed about the nature of your hand as to contribute very little help in the process.

With a balanced hand including plenty of defense, I'd just make a 4-card limit raise. Sure, I might occasionally miss the chance at a number when opponents figure out to let us play in 4♥ rather than sacrifice in 4♠... but in exchange, I save myself from partner making bad sacrifices against 4♠ or possibly from doubling a making 4♠... and sometimes I get to play 3♥ making instead of 4♥-1.

Accelerating the auction doesn't always work to your advantage.

I second that, except that I would not consider that West hand a 4 card limit raise. A 4 card mixed raise seems more to the point.
But otherwise my sentiments exactly.

Rainer Herrmann

[rhm]

gnasher, on 2011-September-08, 15:35, said:

On the first of those, aren't we getting about 800 from 4♠?

Maybe, but certainly optimistic.
You seem to assume that your opponents red versus white bid with balanced distribution.
Whith a singleton ♣ I can see 4 tricks and this assumes no ♥ void.

Rainer Herrmann

[the hog]

jdeegan, on 2011-September-08, 09:10, said:

Alas, South's semi-psychic 1♠ overcall has worked. At least I'm going to get 300 as against 420 in 4♥. I'm missing out of +800 but not losing 100 in 5♥. Many would say that West has to bid 5♥ or double on the grounds that when opps bid over our freely bid game he must not pass. In that case, we get 800 since given that choice West has a clear double.

Semi psychic 1S what sort of silly comment is this? Looks like a normal 1S bid to me.
5H is the really poor bid. Why do you expect to make 11 tricks?

[han]

I won't say that 1S is normal. I guess it is mostly a matter of style, but I feel much more comfortable bidding 1S than 2S on such hands.

[FrancesHinden]

rhm, on 2011-September-08, 15:30, said:

What about

♠xxx,♥Kxxxx,♦x,♣Qxxx or
♠xx,♥Kxxxx,♦Qxxxx,♣x.

The last one could easily be a double game swing. Would you overrule your partner and bid 5♥ if your partner doubled 4♠?

Rainer Herrmann

The second of these is a 4D fit bid. That's the whole point of fit bids, to avoid defending when you have a big side suit fit.
I can't get excited about 3H vs 4H on the West hand; I'd bid 3 at the opposite vulnerability, but 4H might successfully push the opponents around. As another poster said elsewhere, 4H tends to be at least semi-balanced because there's no fit bid.

[cherdano]

rhm, on 2011-September-08, 15:30, said:

What about

♠xxx,♥Kxxxx,♦x,♣Qxxx or

gnasher, on 2011-September-08, 15:35, said:

On the first of those, aren't we getting about 800 from 4♠?

rhm, on 2011-September-09, 03:08, said:

Maybe, but certainly optimistic.
You seem to assume that your opponents red versus white bid with balanced distribution.
Whith a singleton ♣ I can see 4 tricks and this assumes no ♥ void.

Rainer Herrmann

Opponents have 20hcp, a 9-card spade fit, and someone among them has a heart singleton. You really think they need more than that to bid 4♠ over 4♥?

Meanwhile, even in your example you are talking about getting +200 instead +450.

[MrAce]

aguahombre, on 2011-September-07, 16:51, said:

This is the best way to get a double of 4S when he has a lot of different hands than he had, double is wrong, and he would never dream you had five pieces in hearts.

If there is some kind of mixed raise available to West, fine, even if he later bids 4 anyway. But, walking the dog with 2H doesn't ever work for me and is usually just annoying to partner. If there isn't a mixed raise to cover the situation, 4H has got to be better than 2H.

I disagree that 2♥ is walking the dog, i would not even consider it remotely relative. I know you seem to be told to jump to 4 each time u have a 5 card support by someone, 5332 hands really don't work well for this and they don't give the correct message to pd imo. You don't even have a weak hand, 8 hcp and you may as well be preempting your pd. I find it interesting that you think 2♥ is walking the dog and 4♥ is standart bid.

[aguahombre]

I said 4H is better than 2H; neither of which would be Standard. You would do well to advance your reasoning, which I understand ----and leave out what someone else might have taught me in the past.

I am not the only one who chose 4H...but I also stated I thought some kind of mixed raise would be better than that, if available.

[MrAce]

aguahombre, on 2011-September-11, 14:06, said:

I said 4H is better than 2H; neither of which would be Standard. You would do well to advance your reasoning, which I understand ----and leave out what someone else might have taught me in the past.

I am not the only one who chose 4H...but I also stated I thought some kind of mixed raise would be better than that, if available.

Fair enough, for some reason i thought u meant 4♥ was standart while 2♥ is as strange as dog walking, i must have misunderstood you.