[fred]

Click for giant bidding problem

Interested in learning how to make presentations like this?

Click for Handviewer documentation

For the above problem the URL looks like this:

www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?v=b&d=w&s=s752h65dkt96caqj3&a=1s2hp?&sn=You%20hold

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Mosene]

Double (shows other 2 suits)

[JLOL]

What is the vulnerability and form of scoring?

3H or 2N both seem reasonable, I think I like 2N. Partner might try to get back to hearts anyways via 4H or 3S, and if he bids 3m thats obviously great. If he bids 3N RHOs failure to raise and our big HCP majority favors partner having a stopper. 3H is probably fine, we are a bit heavy on overall values but it's fine given our missing trump. Depending on the form of scoring and vulnerability partner rates to have a very good 5 card suit or 6 anyways.

2S and pass both might be possible also, pass only if you are white at MP with an aggressive pard, but I still would never do it (probably because of my 2 level overcalling style). 2S I think is an overbid but it gives partner room to bid 2N or 3m which will help us find the right strain while never getting to 3N with no stopper (unlike a 2N bid).

[mtvesuvius]

2NT for me. For the reasons Justin stated... Besides, stoppers are for old people .

[fred]

JLOL, on Feb 3 2009, 09:56 PM, said:

What is the vulnerability and form of scoring?

3H or 2N both seem reasonable, I think I like 2N. Partner might try to get back to hearts anyways via 4H or 3S, and if he bids 3m thats obviously great. If he bids 3N RHOs failure to raise and our big HCP majority favors partner having a stopper. 3H is probably fine, we are a bit heavy on overall values but it's fine given our missing trump. Depending on the form of scoring and vulnerability partner rates to have a very good 5 card suit or 6 anyways.

2S and pass both might be possible also, pass only if you are white at MP with an aggressive pard, but I still would never do it (probably because of my 2 level overcalling style). 2S I think is an overbid but it gives partner room to bid 2N or 3m which will help us find the right strain while never getting to 3N with no stopper (unlike a 2N bid).

Both vul (you can see by the colors at the top of the bidding diagram - I guess that is not obvious ) and IMPs.

One thing I found interesting about this problem is that some excellent players I know thought that Pass and 2S were the only reasonable choices. That doesn't make any sense to me (because it implies that you are only willing to consider the strongest or the weakest actions as opposed to the 2 other actions which are in the middle).

Granted that the 2 in between choices, 2NT and 3H, both suffer from glaring flaws, but I think that Pass and 2S are flawed to a similar degree, even if the flaws of these calls are not quite so glaring.

Does that make sense?

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[JLOL]

Yeah I agree with that, it really doesn't make sense. I guess a lot of it is psychology, some people just feel like you have to commit to something right now and others are more prone to try and make a call that hedges your bets and keeps partner involved.

What do you like on this hand, I'm guessing you would not pass from what I know about you (actually I'll guess you like 3H).

[Apollo81]

I would bid either 3♥ or 2♠

[fred]

JLOL, on Feb 3 2009, 10:18 PM, said:

Yeah I agree with that, it really doesn't make sense. I guess a lot of it is psychology, some people just feel like you have to commit to something right now and others are more prone to try and make a call that hedges your bets and keeps partner involved.

What do you like on this hand, I'm guessing you would not pass from what I know about you (actually I'll guess you like 3H).

A recent first time partner (Drew Casen) bid 3H at the table. This resulted in a complete disaster when I held:

Click for Fred's hand

I bid 4H (would you? would you have bid Michaels?), got doubled by LHO who had Q108xx of trump and I was lucky to go for only 500.

At the time (and still now) I thought that neither Drew nor I had done anything outrageous, but Drew did receive some abuse for bidding 3H.

I don't have any strong feelings as to what the best call with Drew's hand is, but you are right that I would not Pass

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[matmat]

Apollo81, on Feb 3 2009, 05:23 PM, said:

I would bid either 3♥ or 2♠

hmmm... quantum bridge, anyone?

1/Sqrt(2) ( 3♥ + 2♠ )

[kenrexford]

2NT sounds good, but shouldn't a giant problem receive a giant answer?

[Cascade]

Over the past few months I have been doing some mind experiments with this sort of situation (after a two-level overcall) where I think that there is some merit in a 2♠ cue-bid showing a useful hand without necessarily having clear direction has some merit. Otherwise with a moderate hand your only choices are a NT bid and a raise.

I haven't yet convinced myself that it is better than the utility of a cue-raise but it would solve a problem on this hand.

I hope it is GCC legal

[JLOL]

I think your bidding was auto Fred.

[hotShot]

If your partner can not catch your throw, maybe it was a bad throw.

You hold 14 HCP and opener has 12+ HCP, that leaves your LHO and partner with an average of 7- HCP. Opener has 5+ ♠ and you hold 2, leaving LHO and partner with an average of 3♠ cards. So LHO is likely to have an easy 2♠ bid and neither side is likely to have game. You know that 4 of the 10 honors you don't have would be wasted (♠J and ♣KQJ) in partners hand.

The 2♥ bid conceals a lot of that knowledge and leaves the 2♠ bid for LHO.
Your partner won't be able to evaluate his hand without the knowledge of your shape.
Now parters got a giant bidding problem.

If your aim is to find the best 3-level contract your side can have, bidding
2♠ instead seems a reasonable move. Partners bidding problem is much smaller now.

[dicklont]

fred, on Feb 3 2009, 07:59 PM, said:

Interested in learning how to make presentations like this?

This presentation is shocking at first.
The "giantness" of the problem is so ugly......., only nearly blind people can be happy with that.
But then I found out that the image adjusts itself to the size of the browser window and when that window is small enough the presentation is ok.

Would it be a good idea to let the link open in a smaller sized window?

[fred]

dicklont, on Feb 4 2009, 08:34 AM, said:

fred, on Feb 3 2009, 07:59 PM, said:

Interested in learning how to make presentations like this?

This presentation is shocking at first.
The "giantness" of the problem is so ugly......., only nearly blind people can be happy with that.
But then I found out that the image adjusts itself to the size of the browser window and when that window is small enough the presentation is ok.

Would it be a good idea to let the link open in a smaller sized window?

Warning: the following rates to be confusing if you don't have a rough idea how web pages and web browsers work (and perhaps even if you do):

If there is an easy way to control the size of the browser window that appears when you click a link in a Forums post, I don't know what it is.

As you figured out, the program that generates the bridge diagrams is designed to fit these diagrams into whatever space it is given. If one has the ability to create and upload one's own web pages (html files), it is easy to control how much space is given to instances of the Handviewer program that reside on your web pages (and thus how big the diagrams will be). The Handviewer documentation describes how to do this (search for: iframe).

So I could have created a web page that links to the Handviewer program (while allocing a smaller space for it), uploaded that web page to one of our servers, and then linked to it in my Forums post. This would have resulted in a smaller diagram (but not by way of a smaller browser window). There would be been a little more work than what I actually did, but the main reason I did not do this is because I like the novelty of the giant diagrams (though I do understand how some might see them as shocking!).

A better solution for Forums purposes would be to create tools (like the ones people now use to insert hand diagrams into Forums posts) to create appropriate html for inserting Handviewer diagrams of a more appropriate size directly into Forums posts. Then there would be no need for a new browser window at all as well as no need for Forums posters to need to know about html or Handviewer parameters in order to create these nice presentations.

I suspect that will happen before too long. I would have done it already, but I am not familiar with the relevant technology. Most likely I will wait until someone else on our staff who knows what they are doing in this area has a chance to do the work (as opposed to my figuring out how to do it myself).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[awm]

I've noticed this sort of bidding problem coming up reasonable often. At a tournament about a year back, I had some arguments with a partner who didn't like the way I dealt with similar hands (although basically, on two very similar problems I tried opposite approaches and each time he told me I should've used the other approach).

In any case, the action I've found to be most palatable is to simply show the cheapest unbid suit. With regular partners I tend to have the understanding that in such situations, this call could be based on a four-card holding with a good hand and no other sensible action. So on the given hand I would bid 3♣ (actually I usually play transfer advances here, and would bid 2♠ showing clubs). Obviously if partner takes it into his head to raise or pass this call on doubleton it is a disaster, but this is exactly what the agreement is supposed to fix. Even lacking such discussion, I think that bidding 3♣ is quite possibly the least of evils.

The problem is that a "raising" call like 2♠ or 3♥ is likely to be taken seriously. It is essentially a commitment to play in hearts, which could easily be wrong. Bidding a new minor is not that likely to lead to a minor suit contract unless partner has four-plus support in any case; usually partner will angle towards 3NT or 4♥ if these are reasonable contracts. With something like 1543 or 1552 partner can introduce diamonds (our best fit). Even if partner does try to raise clubs on three, typically such an action denies a spade control (else why not try 3NT) and we can correct to hearts to reach what is likely our best game.

[helene_t]

Great tool, Fred! If/when I find time to do some bridge blogging I will certainly use it!

[benlessard]

I think 2H and 3H are pretty automatic. I surely dont want to play with a partner that pass 2H and i dont see why i would want to bid a new suit or a cue bid wich tend to show stronger hands. I could live with 2Nt but since we are making serious overcall when red 3H seems better.

Fred hand really look like a minimum red 2 level overcall for me KQ tight isnt worth full values. So passing 3H is surely possible.