[Quartic]

Playing in an individual (butler scoring):

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Should South not keycard, or was North's 4♠ an overbid? Just bad luck?

[aguahombre]

I know I have misbid earlier when I show zero or 3 key cards, and pard doesn't know which it is.

[Bbradley62]

aguahombre, on 2012-September-09, 06:57, said:

I know I have misbid earlier when I show zero or 3 key cards, and pard doesn't know which it is.

What is North supposed to bid over 1♠? Certainly, he has to force to game; he did that in the weakest way possible.

South should know that North has only shown 11 of the missing 28 HCP (and, I think, a maximum of about 14 of them). It's silly to think that with 40-50% of the missing HCP he has all 3 of the missing keycards.

[Fluffy]

5♠ over 5♦ doesn't normally get you to grand opposite AKQx A in the majors, but that hand is a lot less likelly than what happened here. And even if he has that grand is not fully cold yet, and also grand might still be bid althou ♠Q is a card you will never locate.

[lalldonn]

South should not keycard. Nor should south ask for the queen, he should bid 5♠ counting on north to keep bidding with the higher amount. Nor REALLY should south redouble, he should see what has obviously happened here!

[ggwhiz]

Hmmm. North shows at least 8 cards in the majors and the opponents are silent vs. my stiff ♦.

That screams wasted red suit cards, short clubs or both and I echo that this is the weakest of game forces. With the shape in the South hand the possibility of a bad trump break is higher than usual too. South got carried away and carried out on a stretcher.

[rhm]

Bbradley62, on 2012-September-09, 09:16, said:

What is North supposed to bid over 1♠? Certainly, he has to force to game; he did that in the weakest way possible.

Why?
North has no first round control and weak trumps. Opponents will likely lead diamonds. You are not vulnerable. Time to put on the brakes.
By today's opening standards inviting by bidding 3♠ is prudent. If opener passes 3♠ I doubt that game will have 50% chances.
If South has the same hand but the ♣Q instead of the ace he will raise to 4♠ and you still have no play for your contract.

I am not claiming that 4♠ is a reckless overbid, but it is certainly borderline and quite aggressive.
The game force did cost in an unexpected way. Unexpected because it is often overlooked.
South asking for key-cards is understandable (just aggressive too) and 5♠ has no play.

Rainer Herrmann

[Quantumcat]

lalldonn, on 2012-September-09, 09:24, said:

South should not keycard. Nor should south ask for the queen, he should bid 5♠ counting on north to keep bidding with the higher amount. Nor REALLY should south redouble, he should see what has obviously happened here!

If North has zero keycards, then 5♠ is not making anyway and he may as well use his bids in a productive way. Also the redouble costs 300 if North has zero keycards and gains 510 points if North has three (and 410 if things go badly and you only make 6). So it's not clear cut to pass the double, hoping to minimise losses.

[MrAce]

Quantumcat, on 2012-September-09, 19:48, said:

If North has zero keycards, then 5♠ is not making anyway and he may as well use his bids in a productive way. Also the redouble costs 300 if North has zero keycards and gains 510 points if North has three (and 410 if things go badly and you only make 6). So it's not clear cut to pass the double, hoping to minimise losses.

LOL

Are you trying to sell us that there is not much difference between -50 -100 and -1000 in buttler scoring ?

Had south applied the logic Josh said he could have gone +420 or -50, had he applied it a little later at 5 level he could have ended up -50 or -100. Had he applied it much later he could have ended up -500. He ended up going down 3 redoubled which requires 3 errors on row and you are trying to defend this, wow.

I haven't played RL bridge for almost a decade now, but as far as i know buttler scoring is a mean scoring, especially for those who bails out big numbers. If i remember correctly it takes out the TOP and BOTTOM scores off of the score pool (sometimes top 2 and bottom 2 or more depending on how large the field is) and takes the avreage of remaining scores. At the end you see something like;

Board 14 : -220

Board 15 : +410

If you are NS and have a -100 score in board 14, while the average is -220 you gain imps for 120 (3 or 4 imps i guess but i dont remember the scale)

Note that in a small field, lets say 10 tables if the scores were like

+450
+420
+420
+420
+420
+420
+420
+420
+420
-1000

This board would have +420 average, your -1000 doesn't even take down this average because it is (-1000 and +450 ) thrown out of pool. I know my example is way too simple but just trying to make my point.

On this board i would expect the board average to be +250 or w/e (apprx), so -50 would be losing 5 imps while -1000 would be losing 15 imps. Hard to really justify your logic imo.

[RMB1]

Quantumcat, on 2012-September-09, 19:48, said:

Also the redouble costs 300 if North has zero keycards and gains 510 points if North has three (and 410 if things go badly and you only make 6). So it's not clear cut to pass the double, hoping to minimise losses.

There are lots of thing that can go wrong when North has 3 key cards. But this ignores the obvious risk that partner does not have 0 or 3 key cards - lots of partnerships have misunderstandings about RKCB - in an individual the risks are greater.

[phil_20686]

Seems normal to bid 4s with the north hand due to the powerful hears suit.
Souths keycard bid was aggressive but understandable. However, it is routine in this situation to bid 5s and expec partner to rase with three. With three plus the trump queen he can bid 5n on the way.
Redoubling was beyond absurd. He just failed to appreciate that zero keycards were a live possibility. The double should have woken him up, but clearly it did not.

[Codo]

I liked the bidding till 4♠.
4 Nt is an overbid. Partner showed something like 12 HCPS... How big is the likelyhood that these points are AKQ of spades and the ace of hearts and zero wasted points and the opps not preempting in diamonds? So 4 NT was at least aggressive.
5 ♥ is plain silly, so is the XX.

[Quantumcat]

MrAce, on 2012-September-10, 00:17, said:

Had south applied the logic Josh said he could have gone +420 or -50, had he applied it a little later at 5 level he could have ended up -50 or -100. Had he applied it much later he could have ended up -500. He ended up going down 3 redoubled which requires 3 errors on row and you are trying to defend this, wow.

I am not defending any of the auction except asking for the queen and redoubling. Asking for the queen will cost 50 points if pard has zero keycards, and gain 500 points if there is a grand slam on (if you don't ask you will end in a small slam) and break even if he has three keycards but no queen of trumps. So shouldn't you ask if there is a one in ten chance of him having three? The numbers are closer for the redouble, and the double would make it more likely that pard has zero, but the redouble still deserves thinking about and that's all I wanted to say.

[Fluffy]

rhm, on 2012-September-09, 15:50, said:

North has no first round control and weak trumps. Opponents will likely lead diamonds. You are not vulnerable. Time to put on the brakes.
By today's opening standards inviting by bidding 3♠ is prudent. If opener passes 3♠ I doubt that game will have 50% chances.
If South has the same hand but the ♣Q instead of the ace he will raise to 4♠ and you still have no play for your contract.

Its an 11 count with a side KQJ10x and a singleton, if 3♠ does justice to this bid you need 2 ways to bid invitational hands then.

Inviting with this hand is already wrong on regular IMPs, but here we have individual butler (and anonymous, from BBig, but that is something I know for being Quartic who posts, not in the OP), bidding games is best strategy here for a numer of reasons:

-opponents might suck and you want the bonus price then.
-partner's evaluation might suck, his card play might suck accordingly, but it is often not the case, or it doesn't matter.
-opponents are no regular pair and defensive signals are not the best, this leads to declarer making more tricks in average than compared to other types of bridge.

[Codo]

Quantumcat, on 2012-September-10, 04:25, said:

I am not defending any of the auction except asking for the queen and redoubling. Asking for the queen will cost 50 points if pard has zero keycards, and gain 500 points if there is a grand slam on (if you don't ask you will end in a small slam) and break even if he has three keycards but no queen of trumps. So shouldn't you ask if there is a one in ten chance of him having three? The numbers are closer for the redouble, and the double would make it more likely that pard has zero, but the redouble still deserves thinking about and that's all I wanted to say.

If partner holds 3 KCs and the queen of spades, aka as AKQx, Axxxx,xxx,x (or similar), he must (and will) continue over your 5 ♠ anyway. So 5 ♥ was wrong and at least turned -50 into -300 or - 500. They had not doubled 5 Spade...
And no, the XX is not worth thinking about, or to put it another way: If you think about it, you better don't redouble. Why did East double? Is he an idiot? Maybe he looks at five trumps, maybe you had a misunderstanding, maybe partner really has just zero key cards. What do you know? You made a slam try with at most 24 HCPS on a 4-4 fit. It is possible that 3 KCS are missing...

[Quantumcat]

Codo, on 2012-September-10, 05:53, said:

If partner holds 3 KCs and the queen of spades, aka as AKQx, Axxxx,xxx,x (or similar), he must (and will) continue over your 5 ♠ anyway. So 5 ♥ was wrong and at least turned -50 into -300 or - 500.

If you don't ask, you will end in a small slam when pard has three keycards and the queen of trumps. If pard has three keycards you will end in a small slam no matter what you do. There is no harm in asking, at worst you turn -50 into-100 when pard has the queen and no keycards, and at best you gain 500 points for the grand slam bonus when you have a grand on. There is no gain to bidding 5♠ except saving a measley 50 points when pard has no keycards and the queen of trumps. Freely bid slams don't often get doubled so you shouldn't assume this possibility (if the same opponent has two tricks it may not be obvious to them {e.g. A bad finesse plus trump trick} and even if both tricks are obvious the gain is so low that it is not worth the risk it tells the opponents how to play the trump suit or they change to a more successful strain.)

Edit: I was trying to politely say that you were resulting but you didn't pick up on that, so here it is explicitly.

[Codo]

You may repeat your statement as often as you want to, it stays wrong. You turned - 50 into - 500, so don't tell me that it is just -50 into -100. 6 ♠ was doubled...
And partner will show you his 3 KCS and the queen of spades right after you bid 5 ♠, so you can still reach the grand if he has the 4 magical cards you need.

Besides this: Whether you should go for the grand after this bidding isn't clear anyway. You play partner for AKQx,Axxxx,xx,xx or so. A 4-1 break in trumps may hurt you immense.And your opps will most likely play this hand in game.... And if partner has a singleton club, you seems to need both black suits breaking to come home, so the GS is no good goal anyway.