[fuzzyquack]

What was 2♦? I play controls, so 2♦ shows 0-1. In my bidding culture, 2♣-2♦-3m shows a monster, which happens to be a good start for the actual hand. In this culture, 2♣-2♦-3N shows a solid minor and no interest in slam opposite a 0-1 controls.

[jillybean]

Good to know 4♣ is stayman

2♣:2♦
3nt:4♣

[kereru67]

jillybean, on 2024-December-06, 15:32, said:

Good to know 4♣ is stayman

2♣:2♦
3nt:4♣

I like your sig. Point count is a poor way to measure trick taking potential in suit contracts.

[Zelandakh]

Sorry David but here you are being a complete idiot.

DavidKok, on 2024-December-06, 01:08, said:

I think the Baron and 3♣ suggestions are both poor, as is treating the hand as 25-27. In my opinion these are great examples of resulting, i.e. people deciding the final contract first and the auction after.

You think treating this hand as 25-27 is idiotic? Seriously? What range do you think it is then, 0-24 or 28+? I would love to hear your logic for such an upgrade/downgrade. The reason for upgrading it from 26 to 27 is because it has hard values (missing cards are JJJJQQKK as opposed to say AAAQ or AAKK) and the 5332 shape including a AKQxx suit. You and the Walrus might think that AQT AKx Ax AKQxx and KQJ KQJ AQJ AQJ are equal but not everyone leaves the bridge logic behind when they get a good hand. Similarly Baron 4♠ is a convention that simply replaces a natural 4NT quantitative invite. The auction I gave is functionally identical to that of CY. I explicitly laid out how it works in detail so that everyone would understand. The suggestion that these ideas constitute resulting is quite frankly insulting and suggests you have a complete lack of bridge understanding. This makes me quite sad because I had thought you might be one of the better posters remaining here. Sadly I am sometimes wrong.

DavidKok, on 2024-December-06, 01:08, said:

2♣ openings are a mess, and everybody is all too ready to explain how they would of course not have had any problems. Funny how, at the club, people never quite seem to bid these hands well.

I deliberately did not offer a solution or a miracle cure, but instead suggest discussing 2♣ auctions in general.

Just because you think the hand is insoluble does not mean that others do. There is no miracle here - if the range is 25+ then North invites a slam and South accepts; if it is 26+ or even 27+ then Baron is just a way of exploring alternative strains. The upgrade from 26 to 27 makes no difference at all in this. It is just sensible bidding with 1950s technology.

DavidKok, on 2024-December-06, 01:08, said:

P.S.: Eric Kokish called the convention he invented 'Birthright', even if his own name is the more popular one for it these days. Given the forum this is in I'm not sure it's very relevant though.

I am aware of the original convention name and have probably used it here myself if one looks back through posts from many years ago. However, when offering someone look up a convention name then it is usually best to provide the name that is most commonly in use, in this case Kokish Relay. Would you tell a beginner to google Pottage rather than Cappelletti? or Marx instead of Stayman? Are you also IT-illiterate as well as bridge-stupid? I strongly suggest you look back at some of my (rather long) posting history before bringing up this type of argument again. I think my body of bidding posts speaks for itself in this. If this is going to be the level of yours, I suggest you head back to B/I.

[DavidKok]

I'm sorry. In my first reply to this thread I wrote

DavidKok, on 2024-December-05, 16:31, said:

How much is the East hand worth? A quick count shows 26 HCP per Milton Work, but the hand is significantly stronger than that. The hand is full of aces and kings (in fact, contains all the aces). It has an amazing five card suit. Even that ♠T is an unusually good asset in a hand where so many slots are already taken up by honours. I'd rate the hand to be worth closer to 28, and East has seriously underbid their hand by showing 25-26. What's more, this far in the tail of the HCP distribution, the lower end of the range is much more likely than the upper range. Even in the two-point range of 25-26 the distribution is approximately 70%-30% in favour of 25 HCP (based on 4,353,876 randomly generated hands, of which 1,000 were of the requisite shape and strength). So that's the strength partner will assume on close decisions. We're simply too strong for that.

I understand that it was still unclear that I thought that the hand was worth 28 points, I'll do my best to be clearer in the future in the Novice and Beginner forum.

I also want to be very clear that I chose to describe the actions quoted as 'poor', not your 'idiotic'. In my opinion, any worse descriptor is overstating the case. These 2♣ auctions are very difficult, and in general I think it is good to not come down harshly on actions even if you disagree with them.

My issue with Baron isn't the way the convention works, but simply that it is not a popular convention. All the way in the first post the OP indicated that

kereru67, on 2024-December-05, 16:03, said:

E dealer, nobody vulnerable. This (2♣-2♦; 3NT) was a typical auction, 3NT usually means 25-26.

I took your suggestion of

Zelandakh, on 2024-December-05, 19:42, said:

As West, the easiest way is probably to respond 4S (Baron).

to mean that you thought this treatment is the best way to bid these hands. In my opinion the bidding has already gone suboptimally at this point, and earlier intervention is warranted. What's more, I would not adopt the Baron 4♠ convention to deal with these situations even if the start of the auction is fixed - it is simply a tool I think comes up too infrequently and doesn't gain enough when it comes up.

Zelandakh, on 2024-December-14, 14:49, said:

Sorry David but here you are being a complete idiot.

[..]

The suggestion that these ideas constitute resulting is quite frankly insulting and suggests you have a complete lack of bridge understanding.

[..]

Just because you think the hand is insoluble does not mean that others do.

[..]

Are you also IT-illiterate as well as bridge-stupid?

[..]

If this is going to be the level of yours, I suggest you head back to B/I.

With feedback like this around, I think maybe it is a win-win if I leave the forums entirely.

[pescetom]

DavidKok, on 2024-December-14, 15:23, said:

With feedback like this around, I think maybe it is a win-win if I leave the forums entirely.

Please do not, we are no longer allowed to downvote posts here but I for one do not accept the tone of the feedback.

[jillybean]

BBFers will go on a tilt from time to time, some more often than others. Give it only the attention it deserves.
No one wants to see you go anywhere.

[Zelandakh]

DavidKok, on 2024-December-14, 15:23, said:

With feedback like this around, I think maybe it is a win-win if I leave the forums entirely.

If you go out of your way to criticise others personally, don't be surprised if you get it back with a cherry on top. As for what you do next - stay or go, it makes no odds to me. We've lost many much better posters here already.

[helene_t]

FWIW, based on Csaba's single dummy regression model, this hand is worth 28.68 points for the purpose of making 6NT, and 30.18 for the purpose of making 6♣,

https://helene-h-thy...and-evaluation/

[helene_t]

Zelandakh, on 2024-December-14, 14:49, said:

complete idiot

What about taking a valium before posting?

[foobar]

 pescetom, on 2024-December-14, 15:52, said:

Please do not, we are no longer allowed to downvote posts here but I for one do not accept the tone of the feedback.

+1...a critique of the methods is kosher, but name calling is totally unwarranted. One may disagree with the feedback, but a discussion of methods is very different from labelling people.

[Zelandakh]

foobar, on 2024-December-21, 00:13, said:

+1...a critique of the methods is kosher, but name calling is totally unwarranted. One may disagree with the feedback, but a discussion of methods is very different from labelling people.

foober, you are a long-standing poster here and I respect you deeply, so please go back and re-read David's comment. He did not provide a critique of the methods. His argument was primarily that the method (Baron) was only being used because the poster (me) is a resulter. As far as I am concerned, that is a far more insulting label than idiot. I strongly object to this and have a large body of posts here to back that up. Honestly, I waited several days before responding precisely because I might have used stronger language otherwise. David's comment was absolutely designed as a personal insult and attack here. It is after all quite a popular posting style to attack the poster rather than the content when trying to discredit an argument, one that is often regarded as crossing the line into trolling. Once again, check out that first insulting comment and tell me which criticism of Baron was presented there. David's post may sound polite if you scan through it but is deeply disrespectful at a personal level when you read it in detail. Given just how much uncontrolled trolling BBF has faced over the years I would have expected that at least the long-standing, respected members such as you and Helene to recognise this for what it was.

[foobar]

 Zelandakh, on 2024-December-21, 07:42, said:

foober, you are a long-standing poster here and I David's post may sound polite if you scan through it but is deeply disrespectful at a personal level when you read it in detail. Given just how much uncontrolled trolling BBF has faced over the years I would have expected that at least the long-standing, respected members such as you and Helene to recognise this for what it was.

FWIW, I have no issues with evaluating the hand as 27+ and K&R agrees: https://www.jeff-gol...qxx+aqT+akx+ax.

In retrospect, I can definitely see why "resulting" might come across as pejorative. I suspect that I might have responded to the original post using the same hand evaluation reasoning as yours had I read it sooner, and David would have made a similar response to my post 😀.

Both Helene and I have known David for a while now, and IMO he isn't the type to resort to personal attacks, so we might have just settled it over an offline chat.

[Zelandakh]

foobar, on 2024-December-21, 08:16, said:

FWIW, I have no issues with evaluating the hand as 27+ and K&R agrees: https://www.jeff-gol...qxx+aqT+akx+ax.

The first sentence from my original post (the one David objected to so strongly) runs

Zelandakh, on 2024-December-05, 19:42, said:

I would treat the East hand as 27 - it is probably worth more than that.

so clearly I agree with this. My issue with upgrading the hand 2 points is more partner than the pure evaluation. In my experience most bridge players would rather sacrifice their firstborn than downgrade a hand, so I generally do not upgrade balanced hands by more than a point. In general, when Mike treats a hand as 26 and you have an issue with 25-27 then you are probably displaying poor bridge judgement. I suspect Mike really thinks the hand is worth more as well but has similar concerns, since when we hold 26, partner is likely to hold a poor hand opposite.

foobar, on 2024-December-21, 08:16, said:

In retrospect, I can definitely see why "resulting" might come across as pejorative. I suspect that I might have responded to the post using the same hand evaluation reasoning as yours had I read the post sooner, and David would have made a similar response to my post 😀.

I doubt that. I strongly suspect that David would have more respect for you and Helene than to be so insulting with you. People use attacks of this type when they lack that respect. The term resulting can be a part of a real argument but here it was not. If David had written "using Baron opposite 25-27 here looks like resulting because the responding hand is clearly not worth a slam try", then I might disagree (and we could discuss the merits) but it would be a bridge discussion. But resulting here was the entire sum of his argument, and was then backed up in the following paragraph with the "Funny how, at the club, people never quite seem to bid these hands well." throwaway comment. This is classic trolling, even if he did not mean it as such at the time of writing.

foobar, on 2024-December-21, 08:16, said:

Both Helene and I have known David for a while now, and IMO he isn't the type to resort to personal attacks, so we might have just settled it over an offline chat.

I am glad to hear it. Prior to this thread I would have said the same. I hope you are right in this though, because if he crosses the line again he will get it back and it will be a considerably stronger response than this one.