[lamford]

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This one passed me by, although it was on Bridge Base. The hands are "goulash-dealt" according to a special algorithm which takes a previous completed board at random and deals it without shuffling 5-5-5-5, 5-5-5-5 and 3-3-3-3. So very wild hands abound. If this is not your cup-of-tea, then get a coffee, but goulash was the order of the day in Moscow in the NN Cup in November with 6,000 USD in prize money.

Your call on the above hand, folks.

[wank]

6s - no way to invite 7 sadly

[neilkaz]

 wank, on 2018-March-09, 17:54, said:

6s - no way to invite 7 sadly

Sad that you can't invite 7, mate? Seriously?!!??. If you wanted to invite 7, the time to try to do so was by bidding something the first go.

Here we are on a complete guess since all we know is that PD didn't bid 6♠.

[wank]

 neilkaz, on 2018-March-09, 21:46, said:

Sad that you can't invite 7, mate? Seriously?!!??. If you wanted to invite 7, the time to try to do so was by bidding something the first go.

Here we are on a complete guess since all we know is that PD didn't bid 6♠.

it's not at all a guess. lho has either 12 hearts or 11 plus kx of diamonds. either way we're unlikely to lose a heart trick at t1 and therefore at all. as for whether or not you should have bid over 4S, tactitcally this has worked fine. you were worried that partner would lose the first 3 or 4 hearts as you can't ruff, but now the opps have told you otherwise.

partner's spades should be at worst 1 loser at this vulnerability.

btw justifiably or otherwise i consider myself to be rather good at goulash. the last time i played in the event in question partner and i were +4.5 imps per board for the event (the variance is much higher obviously).

[lamford]

 wank, on 2018-March-10, 08:14, said:

it's not at all a guess. lho has either 12 hearts or 11 plus kx of diamonds. either way we're unlikely to lose a heart trick at t1 and therefore at all. as for whether or not you should have bid over 4S, tactitcally this has worked fine. you were worried that partner would lose the first 3 or 4 hearts as you can't ruff, but now the opps have told you otherwise.

partner's spades should be at worst 1 loser at this vulnerability.

btw justifiably or otherwise i consider myself to be rather good at goulash. the last time i played in the event in question partner and i were +4.5 imps per board for the event (the variance is much higher obviously).

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was the full deal. On the king of spades lead, 6H makes. On a diamond lead it makes prettily when North is thrown in with the three of hearts despite his efforts to unblock the jack. But declarer has a guess whether hearts are 2-0 or 1-1 with North having a stiff jack. On a trump lead 6H is one off. Six Spades, wank's excellent choice, cannot be beaten. 7Cx was three off, much as expected, and was an awful bid. But Sjoert Brink, who chose it, was in the winning team, so what do I know.

I think 6S would be absolutely "auto" even if it were not a goulash.

[pescetom]

 lamford, on 2018-March-09, 16:55, said:

This one passed me by, although it was on Bridge Base. The hands are "goulash-dealt" according to a special algorithm which takes a previous completed board at random and deals it without shuffling 5-5-5-5, 5-5-5-5 and 3-3-3-3.

Couldn't this be done to automate the BBO Goulash Madness tournament, which is currently run with pre-dealt hands and weary human hosts?

[lamford]

 pescetom, on 2018-March-11, 11:28, said:

Couldn't this be done to automate the BBO Goulash Madness tournament, which is currently run with pre-dealt hands and weary human hosts?

I am sure it could be. I didn't think any BBO tournaments were manually dealt!

[pescetom]

 lamford, on 2018-March-11, 14:14, said:

I am sure it could be. I didn't think any BBO tournaments were manually dealt!

I'm not sure what manual passages are involved to load such hands, but the tournament is not automated and I guess that the hands are the reason.
It is obviously hard and ungrateful work to run such a tournament manually, it would make sense to automate things.

[wank]

 lamford, on 2018-March-11, 07:11, said:

7Cx was three off, much as expected, and was an awful bid. But Sjoert Brink, who chose it, was in the winning team, so what do I know.

ghoulash is a different game. there are plenty of very good bridge players but who are crap at goulash.

playing in this tournament gunnar opened 5C with 5-8 in the minors. the bidding continued p p X p 5S x p, i.e. partner doubled the opps' 5S. gunnar pulled the double. partner was 76 in the majors.

in a similar vein, i opened 5D, garozzo doubled, my partner asked garozzo what the double was [it was a portland club tournament so things were done a little differently]. garozzo said loudly, and chiefly to his partner, 'penalties'. my partner bid 5S, this was doubled and with 0148 garozzo pulled to 6C. this was going for 1400 but my partner tried 6h and i had the joy of giving preference between my voids at the 6 level for -1700. i also got a bollocking from my partner for not having the strong hand with honours in the majors that my 5D opener had 'promised'.