[mikl_plkcc]

 mikeh, on 2025-April-29, 21:34, said:

My take is that he thinks, for reasons that I can’t even imagine, that he is a fairly good player. He has his rules, which he believes provide him with a useful structure. I’m not sure whether he actually plays bridge with and against humans, but most human players are poor players with limited understanding of the game so, given his obvious ignorance, the odds are he wouldn’t be playing with humans able to educate him.

It’s incredibly difficult to learn this game by oneself. It’s not impossible….i learned a great deal from reading but one has to have certain attributes for that to work:

1. Awareness that books are a good resource
2. Ability to find books
3. Ability to read them with some useful degree of comprehension
4. A strong desire to learn….most importantly, a strong desire to learn how and where one is wrong
5. The ability to ask stronger players to help when struggling with a book
6. A degree of humility


Ok, I don’t often display attribute 6, lol. However, if you’d known me 40 years ago, you’d have known someone with a burning desire to learn. Plus several expert players spent time playing with me and I was under no illusions about my relative ignorance.

My partner used to play splinter with 8-11 and I insisted in 13-16 because it must be a game force. I asked how he thought that he could game force with 8-11. He got clarification that it actually meant HCP rather than total points. This hand then came up, it had 7 HCP only, then we started to get arguments that he thought that we should shift the range of splinters even lower, i.e. for hands which do not have the strength of a game force, so an invite can't have a shortness, and I thought that the problem is that this hand could be a game force rather than an invite.

And we are not good players and I am evaluating hands by summing up HCPs and distributional points because it is too difficult for me to imagine what the partner's hand will look like and count tricks directly in this situation (a 1-opening is wide ranging).

Unless there is a systematic way to tell S's hand is a game force, I can't really see how we can adopt it into our system.

[hrothgar]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-30, 03:37, said:

Unless there is a systematic way to tell S's hand is a game force, I can't really see how we can adopt it into our system.

Back in one of your very first threads, in my very first post, I suggested that the most fundamental skill that you need to be able to develop is to be able to look at a pair of hands and understand what contract you want to be playing in and, until you can do this all the various intricacies around bidding are pretty much useless.

For the most part, bidding is about judgement, not the rote application of various rules.

When looking at this hand, you shouldn't be thinking 7 HCPS.

You should be thinking

1. We have a 10 card trump fit

Assume partner has the Ace of Hearts and nothing else

2. If partner has two or fewer Spades, how many tricks do we have ruffing Spades in hand + my long Hearts
3. If partner has three spades, then we have a double fit.

There is reason that folks are pointing you at different hand generators.

Deal a whole bunch of 1!H openers oppose this one.
Look at the until you have a good feeling about the odds for this particularly hand.

> (a 1-opening is wide ranging)

You don't need to worry about the right tail of the distribution. You need to worry about what might happen opposite the a typical hand or even a minimum strength opening.

If you listen to a whole bunch of threats in which expert level players are discussing hand evaluation, slam exploration, and the like you'll often hear people say something like "Picture a perfect minimum for partner". This is a basic skill that you need to develop.

[P_Marlowe]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-30, 03:37, said:

My partner used to play splinter with 8-11 and I insisted in 13-16 because it must be a game force. I asked how he thought that he could game force with 8-11. He got clarification that it actually meant HCP rather than total points. This hand then came up, it had 7 HCP only, then we started to get arguments that he thought that we should shift the range of splinters even lower, i.e. for hands which do not have the strength of a game force, so an invite can't have a shortness, and I thought that the problem is that this hand could be a game force rather than an invite.

And we are not good players and I am evaluating hands by summing up HCPs and distributional points because it is too difficult for me to imagine what the partner's hand will look like and count tricks directly in this situation (a 1-opening is wide ranging).

Unless there is a systematic way to tell S's hand is a game force, I can't really see how we can adopt it into our system.

I fully understand your confusion and those of your partner , HCP / total points / distribution points / ...
Anyway 8-11 HCP, 4+ trump support and a shortage basically translate to your 13-16 range, the distributional factors I have listed
basically add up to 4-5, and when you add those 4-5 to the 8-11 range, you basically have your 13-16 range. (1)
What those ranges really mean is, that you know, what to do, if p signs of in game, i.e. if he says No, not interested, that you
have a clear idea, what to do. Which translates to If you are in the 15-18 range, you may feel, that slam is still possible,
but you are not quite sure, that the 5 level is safe.
And it is ok to play game with less than 50% making chances, if you go to the 5 level the making chance should be 80% (I have made up
this value, but you hopefully understand, the 5 level contract should make most of the time. )

If you use LTC, you come up with 7, some adjustments will bring this to 6 ( or 6.5 loosers ) which again translates basically to a
playing strength of an opening bid with 13-16.
But I am not sure you should add another metric to your arsenal. The trouble is, what do you you, when the metrics disagree, which
value do you choose.

As I have written above, I think the hand is borderline for a splinter, and I dont mind 4H, but the AK 5th suit is certainly worth a
additional point, so you may have found the missing point.
Neither bid is perfect, 4H would be super heavy, a splinter would be sub min.

You should also try to find a common consolidated source, that becomes your Bible, if you ask question to different peoble you
will get different answers, you know: 2 Jews 3 Opinions, and this is not differen with Bridge players.
And if you have found your Bible, ignore the good / valid advice coming from a different source, for some time.


(1) Every time my reg. p explains my bids, giving point ranges, I look at my hand bewildered, trying to find those points, because I only
know HCP, but he is happy, ... most of the time.

[akwoo]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-30, 03:37, said:

And we are not good players and I am evaluating hands by summing up HCPs and distributional points because it is too difficult for me to imagine what the partner's hand will look like and count tricks directly in this situation (a 1-opening is wide ranging).

Unless there is a systematic way to tell S's hand is a game force, I can't really see how we can adopt it into our system.

I think it's past time to have some idea of your overall bridge goals.

If you are aspiring to be eventually as good as mikeh (has represented Canada internationally), or even as good as me (a few rungs of the ladder below mikeh, and probably still below average at the Young Chelsea), then you have to learn these advanced hand evaluation skills. You might as well start learning them now, instead of learning worse methods and having to unlearn them later. Yes this is hard, and yes your results will suffer in the meantime because you'll get it wrong more often.

If you're just aspiring to be consistently better than all the beginners and life novices(*), then you don't need to find these kinds of games and slams, because other beginners and life novices aren't finding them either. You can ignore our advice, aimed at aspiring experts, as being too difficult for you to implement. You should probably also stop playing at the Young Chelsea, because that's simply too hard a game for you, and always will be, and go to clubs where you can beat up on (and keep company with) the retirees desperately staving off dementia.

How to Become an Expert and How to Win Without Becoming an Expert are two different series of books (and both series exist). Which series do you want?

(*) In case you don't know, the primary title in the ACBL is Life Master (though it's been devalued to the point of being only a modest achievement), so "life novice" is a (perhaps mildly derogatory) allusion to this.

[mw64ahw]

akwoo, on 2025-April-30, 09:14, said:

I think it's past time to have some idea of your overall bridge goals.

If you are aspiring to be eventually as good as mikeh (has represented Canada internationally), or even as good as me (a few rungs of the ladder below mikeh, and probably still below average at the Young Chelsea), then you have to learn these advanced hand evaluation skills. You might as well start learning them now, instead of learning worse methods and having to unlearn them later. Yes this is hard, and yes your results will suffer in the meantime because you'll get it wrong more often.

If you're just aspiring to be consistently better than all the beginners and life novices(*), then you don't need to find these kinds of games and slams, because other beginners and life novices aren't finding them either. You can ignore our advice, aimed at aspiring experts, as being too difficult for you to implement. You should probably also stop playing at the Young Chelsea, because that's simply too hard a game for you, and always will be, and go to clubs where you can beat up on (and keep company with) the retirees desperately staving off dementia.

How to Become an Expert and How to Win Without Becoming an Expert are two different series of books (and both series exist). Which series do you want?

(*) In case you don't know, the primary title in the ACBL is Life Master (though it's been devalued to the point of being only a modest achievement), so "life novice" is a (perhaps mildly derogatory) allusion to this.

Its tough when playing with a pick-up partner and i would not expect to be consistently in the top half when improving. I'm sure mikl_plkcc is using these discussions to refine results, but it can take some time until things start to click, just as with many other pastimes. Young Chelsea has some decent players, but there is always a tail at any club. I wouldn't mind popping up there myself to get a better judge of where my own standard is from a broader perspective.

As I've probably communicated in the past my own appreciation was mediocre when i start playing regularly pre-COVID, but then COVID meant that when I couldn't play my racket sports I spent time learning and developing the theory which isn't taught in basic lessons. I find that a key element is the appreciation and style of a particular partner or opponents, but this is a much softer skill to learn.

[mikl_plkcc]

 hrothgar, on 2025-April-30, 03:56, said:

If you listen to a whole bunch of threats in which expert level players are discussing hand evaluation, slam exploration, and the like you'll often hear people say something like "Picture a perfect minimum for partner". This is a basic skill that you need to develop.

With the South hand I can picture a minimum opener where a game does NOT make. What is the implication of that? How can I know that the openers which do not make games are in a minority?

And in some other bidding situations, I can picture my partner (after opened a preempt / made a positive response to a 2♣ opening) to have the correct cards and bid slam, then after I posted such hands here I am told that the odds of making a slam isn't that great to be bid because it depends on a certain lie of opponents' cards. What do actually these mean? I can think of typical hands from certain bids but I have no idea if it represents 20% or 80% of the hands a bid can show.

 P_Marlowe, on 2025-April-30, 04:03, said:

Neither bid is perfect, 4H would be super heavy, a splinter would be sub min.

Do you have no bids between a preempt and a splinter? That was also one of my earlier confusion and I think it was not playable, hence the existence of this thread (more than a preempt, but less than (?) a game force). If the preempt is as wide as 0-12 opener is then in blind if a slam investigation should be made or not. The full Bergen structure uses ambiguous splinter, and 4♦ for hands between a preempt and game force (a mixed 5-card raise) however we haven't adopted it yet, and we are still discussing if we need to adopt this structure, as this has turned up to be problematic.

We have agreed to bid strictly to strength as a general principle, e.g. we never open a 1-bid with less than 12 points, and we only preempt with the right shape at the first or second seat, so we can rely on the information shown to bid slam directly after a preempt.

 akwoo, on 2025-April-30, 09:14, said:

I think it's past time to have some idea of your overall bridge goals.

If you are aspiring to be eventually as good as mikeh (has represented Canada internationally), or even as good as me (a few rungs of the ladder below mikeh, and probably still below average at the Young Chelsea), then you have to learn these advanced hand evaluation skills. You might as well start learning them now, instead of learning worse methods and having to unlearn them later. Yes this is hard, and yes your results will suffer in the meantime because you'll get it wrong more often.

If you're just aspiring to be consistently better than all the beginners and life novices(*), then you don't need to find these kinds of games and slams, because other beginners and life novices aren't finding them either. You can ignore our advice, aimed at aspiring experts, as being too difficult for you to implement. You should probably also stop playing at the Young Chelsea, because that's simply too hard a game for you, and always will be, and go to clubs where you can beat up on (and keep company with) the retirees desperately staving off dementia.

My aspiration is the second, to be consistently better than all the beginners and life novices. Therefore one of my other thread is "how to get a consistent plus score in club bridge", yet after 4 months I still haven't broke even, not even once, with my regular partner in the IMP pairs game in my club (I have also joined another club, but I haven't got a regular partner there yet). I have another sport where I have represented my country internationally (trail orienteering) and I don't have such aspiration in bridge (yet), at least not before I get more success in my other sports (orienteering and open water swimming).

[hrothgar]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-30, 13:28, said:

With the South hand I can picture a minimum opener where a game does NOT make. What is the implication of that? How can I know that the openers which do not make games are in a minority?

"Get thee to a nunnery!"

Or, in this case, spin up a hand generator.

Constrain the South hand to be a random 1♥ opener
Constrain the North hand to be this specific holding

Deal a 1000 hands and start looking at the hands and counting tricks / figuring out how the play is going to go...

Players with decades of experience pick this skill up at the table.
The hand generator allows you to (try and) develop this particular skill far more quickly.

Please note: If the question is only of academic interest, you can actually throw a double dummy solver on top of this all and see how many tricks you rate to take, but doing this all by hand will help you actually develop the necessary skills

[P_Marlowe]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-30, 13:28, said:

<snip>


Do you have no bids between a preempt and a splinter? That was also one of my earlier confusion and I think it was not playable, hence the existence of this thread (more than a preempt, but less than (?) a game force). If the preempt is as wide as 0-12 opener is then in blind if a slam investigation should be made or not. The full Bergen structure uses ambiguous splinter, and 4♦ for hands between a preempt and game force (a mixed 5-card raise) however we haven't adopted it yet, and we are still discussing if we need to adopt this structure, as this has turned up to be problematic.

We have agreed to bid strictly to strength as a general principle, e.g. we never open a 1-bid with less than 12 points, and we only preempt with the right shape at the first or second seat, so we can rely on the information shown to bid slam directly after a preempt.

I do. Those bids are called inv. raises.
But I think game chances are high, i.e. I dont want to stop below game, hence I either force, risking to go overboard,
or blast, risking to miss a possible slam.

For me missing game is a lot worse, than missing a borderline slam.
So I make a decision. I hate to go down in senseless contracts, but dont mind missing some slams.
Sometimes I make overtricks fine, I go plus.
You may hate missing slams more, and not minding as much ending up in some obscure / silly contracts. This is fine,
that is a decision you have to make and live with, you play, you need to know, what gives you the most thrill.

Now: You could play 100% forcing NT, and now you could start with a forcing NT, followed by bidding 4H.
Would be perfect on this hand. But I recall a thread, which contained points you raised, why you dont want to play forcing NT.
The points are ok. The thing is, bidding is imperfect, you need to make compromises. Sometimes those comprises hurt.

[mike777]

♠AK872 ♥T7432 ♦85 ♣9

All excellent points by the posters.

I would just strongly disagree this hand is a sub minimum for a splinter bid.

Just the opposite, it is an awkward hand too good for a splinter.

Counting just total points, it has the right amount of points but it also has an extra trump.

A splinter shows a 7 loser hand but....

Using adjusted Losing Trick Count
7 losers but then adjust, deduct 0.5 loser for good controls, deduct one loser for ten card heart fit. = 5.5 loser hand.

You could make a strong argument for taking control and bidding 2NT, gf in hearts, which asks partner to describe their hand.

[hrothgar]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-30, 13:28, said:

The full Bergen structure uses ambiguous splinter, and 4♦ for hands between a preempt and game force (a mixed 5-card raise) however we haven't adopted it yet, and we are still discussing if we need to adopt this structure, as this has turned up to be problematic.

Adding a bunch of conventions before you understand hand evaluation is going to lead to nothing but trouble

[akwoo]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-30, 13:28, said:

My aspiration is the second, to be consistently better than all the beginners and life novices. Therefore one of my other thread is "how to get a consistent plus score in club bridge", yet after 4 months I still haven't broke even, not even once, with my regular partner in the IMP pairs game in my club (I have also joined another club, but I haven't got a regular partner there yet). I have another sport where I have represented my country internationally (trail orienteering) and I don't have such aspiration in bridge (yet), at least not before I get more success in my other sports (orienteering and open water swimming).

The Young Chelsea is not a normal club. An NGS rating of 59% for a game is ridiculously high. It means it's the game that all the experts in London play in because they find all the other games too weak and not interesting. Anywhere (in the UK) outside of London, this club would rapidly die because everyone who isn't an expert would realize they are outclassed and flee, and there wouldn't be enough experts left to sustain the game. (I've actually played in a club session that almost died this way, until a concerted effort was made to recruit a cohort of non-experts (mostly from the other sessions the club ran) to play in the game so that the experts became a minority again and a non-expert could win when they were lucky enough to play flat boards against the non-experts and beat up on swingier boards against the weaker players.) No one who isn't an expert is going to get a consistent plus score in that game. Your score of -52 in the last game might have actually beaten all the beginners and life novices in that game (because you were ahead of the only other pair of them).

We talk about players "getting bad habits" playing in weak games - habits that when they start playing against experts cause them to get bad scores. It also works the other way - if you keep playing in expert games you're going to pick up habits that still on average win against weaker players, but less reliably.

So, seriously, if you want to learn to beat weaker competition, it makes sense to practice playing against actual weaker competition. It might also be less discouraging. Go play in clubs where the NGS rating is close to or below 50%.

Now - it can be hard to get a good partner in a weaker club, because better players generally don't find it interesting to play in weaker games. Playing with a weaker partner (and maintaining a partnership with them) is also an interesting skill.

[shyams]

There are various EBU games online on BBO.

These are member-only clubs and host EBU sanctioned games online. You can find them on BBO with host names in the format vEBU123456 (where the "123456" is replaced by the real EBU number of the person owning or managing the club).

A fair number of these games begin in the evening. Some insist on all-human pairs while others allow human+robot pairs.

You may need to join a couple of clubs. However, as long as you both have an EBU number, the club might (at their discretion) allow you + your partner to participate as guests in their tournament.

[mycroft]

You are surprised this makes game. Go read "The Law of Total Tricks". Yes, there are mirror hands, and they suck(*), but if you have KQ to 5-5 trump, you can usually get 6 tricks and one loser with them(**). To make 4♥, you need four more, with no more than two losers. This hand has two outside tricks, and "three" losers outside trump (if partner has ♠xxx and not the Q, oh well). And the shape makes it even more likely that you'll be able to either ruff long suit losers or set up the long suit after some ruffs. So partner needs to provide two top honours in their 5 (of 8), and two tricks, one of which covers one of your losers. How likely is that, given that they opened?

You can come up with minimums that don't make game. STOP THINKING THAT WAY. I can think of 18 counts that can't make game opposite this hand (especially if I can set the opponents hands - a 4-0 spade break, anybody?) The world can always come to an end on a hand, and you will get disasters. But you'll share them with others if you're as optimistic as others; if you play pessimist, you win, sure, on those hands. But you lose on many of the 80% of hands where it does make game. You'll also lose on some of the hands where partner saves you with a non-minimum, but you miss slam, or you give them the room for the sacrifice.

Bridge is a bidder's game, they say; because in the long run, a lot more contracts make than don't. It pays to be optimistic, frankly until the results prove to you you've gone too far. Even then, you probably haven't really - it's just that your play isn't good enough yet to make the good but shaky contracts at the ragged edge. That will also come in time, but not if you're accepting your "comfortable plus scores" that don't challenge your play skill.

Yes, hand evaluation is hard. Yes, it's an imprecise science. No, there are no "tools" that will make you an expert hand evaluator; and every tool you do use will be clearly, obviously wrong in some cases. There is no true shortcut to "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." Books can help. Simulations can help. Tools like HCP, LTC, length or shortness "points", "in and out points", and the rest all can help. But the ONLY THING that makes contracts is TRICKS. All of the tools are helping you simulate in your head how many tricks you will take at the table. It's your job to use the tools to "see" the tricks, and/or to bid (and play) in such a way as to help partner "see" the tricks.

You want a splinter to be 13-15 or so HCP. I'm actually with you there (okay, 12-15, but still). But that's not because "you can't make game with a fitting minimum opposite 8-10" (of course you can), it's because you are taking so much room away from "looking for slam" that partner, looking at their hand, should be able to work out if slam is likely or not from simply your description, or whether just game. And sometimes, yeah, partner's going to have KQJx in your splinter suit and you won't make 4. OH WELL, it works more often than it doesn't, and it gets you to slam when it's right and out of it when *that's* right - and you won't have that hand when you don't splinter, and partner can use that information to help them, too. (Of course, I do play mini-splinters with some partners, with that 8-10/11 range; a "fitting minimum" with little wasted in the splinter suit makes game NP, a misfitting minimum can stay in 3)

When you start reading more books, you will eventually run into Mollo's characters. One of whom is the namesake of my nick, and for good (and bad!) reason. Watch out for Walter the Walrus and Molly the Mule. (Note that *all* of Mollo's characters get bit by their own pattern, even the Hideous Hog himself (and, sort of in the opposite way, the Rueful Rabbit!). The key is to see the things to respect in each character and the ones to avoid.)

I strongly recommend hrothgar's strategy of "have the computer make a bunch of hands and work out, between the two, where you would want to be." Note: not "where your tools tell you to be", but where you'd want to be looking at 26 cards. Then see from the other 26 whether you are right. THEN look at your tools and see where you'd get. After 20 or so hands opposite the one you're "looking at", you'll have a good idea if your evaluation is good. You'll also start figuring out where your tricks are coming from; and start valuing those things higher (and seeing the traps for what they are as well).

Repeat for 100 hands, 20 opposite hands for each one. Repeat for all the hands you got bad results on, either at the club or online. Note that the answer can easily be "the breaks were terrible, we were in the right place" or "the breaks were magic, we were in the right place" or even "my evaluation was right, partner's wasn't" (***). Eventually, your native evaluation will get better, and you won't have to do this all the time. There's no substitute for experience, but you can push the process.

(*_Not on this hand, though. Mirror 5521s still likely make LOTS of tricks with you having the ♠AK. Where are his points?
(**)In "worst case", you have 5-5 trumps off the AKQ. You still are more likely to take 5 tricks with that than not, and most of the time you only have two heart losers!
(***)But definitely don't jump to that conclusion. Almost always, even if it's correct, as the Emperor also says: "If you think you played perfectly and your partner was hopeless, you are deluding yourself. Consider how you could have helped partner play better." More often than not in my retrospectives, when partner made a costly mistake, it's been because of something I did or should have done.