[Cyberyeti]

the hog, on 2023-February-16, 22:01, said:

"If the opps. opened 3♠ you would be doubling with this hand"However they did not open. I agree with MikeH. This hand is a minimum, it is aceless so pass is 100% clear cut.
Cyberyeti: "This is nothing like rock bottom minimum opener." Really? What is your "rock bottom" minimum. I think some of you play with bots too much or forget you have a partner on the other side of the table, or mastermind.

Never play with bots, specific partnership agreements what we open and about these doubles.

x, KQxx, xxx, KQxxx is an opening bid, rule of 19 with no wasted points in the short suits (Qxx is not wasted, Qx is for example).

We have specifically agreed this double does not show extras.

[helene_t]

thepossum, on 2023-February-16, 20:19, said:

Whenever I ask anything in these forums is how to bid a hand at least at Intermediate to Advanced level with a half decent human partner

I think that even a half-decent partner deserves to be treated like you would treat a good partner - i.e. bid under the assumption that they understand your bidding as it should be understood according to the system you have agreed to play and according to general bridge knowledge, and assume that they will make sensible decisions.

Of course you can bid a bit more primitively with a weak partner, i.e. try to avoid bids that aren't explicitly discussed. But don't take it too far.

Playing with a robot is quite different from playing with a human. It's not so much that the robots bid worse - in some way they bid better than almost anyone at my local club. But the difference is
- you can psyche (or just make very undisciplined bids) as much as you want with a robot partner. They won't lose trust in you and you won't have ethical issues with implicit agreements to psyche
- you can cater to the robot's mistakes as much as you want. For example doubling as South with this hand because you know it won't bid its 8-card suit again unless encouraged to. You shouldn't do that with a human partner because it will prevent them from learning to bid their 8-card suit. Why should I (North) bid my 8 card suit when The Possum (South) will bid it for me?

I play a lot with robots by I am afraid it has negative impact on my real life bridge, as I may apply some of the lessons from robot bridge to human bridge. Which I generally shouldn't do.