BBO Discussion Forums: An ominous hand - BBO Discussion Forums

Matchpoints, all vul
♠Q5
♥T73
♦AKQJxx
♣Q2

p-(p)-?
to you in third seat. Do you consider an opening other than 1♦?

p-(p)-1♦-(p)
1♠-(p)-2♦-(p)
or should you rebid 1NT?

3♣-(p)-?
Now what? 2♥ by responder would've been natural, btw.

Bid 3nt and hope your partner has ak a(or at least aj a) in the black suits and the hearts split 4-4. You are almost certainty going to go down in something, might as well be a game just incase you don't go down.

Partner's bidding gives some pause for thought. They have a maximum pass so cannot have 6 spades or 5 clubs or they would have opened. Similarly any 5-4 hand with a heart stopper would surely have bid 2NT. So partner must have something like Kxxxx/x/xxx/AKxx if that is not an opening in your style (it would be for me) or more likely something a little worse. I am going low and just bidding 3♦ - yes 3NT or 5♦ might be ok but I would not call either high percentage and this is MP.

Yes an ominous hand where I think this is a pure guess. Partner is bidding like he has 5 spades and 4 clubs with 10 or 11 points. Opps have not overcalled and partner did not try 2NT so likely has 3 small. So possibly: AKxxx, xxx, x, Kxxx and 3NT a likely make. OR KJxxx, xxx, x, AKxx OR KJxxx, Qxx, x, AJxx where there is not much hope for 3NT. Nevertheless, partner made a game try and I have a very good hand for my minimum rebid so I am going for 3NT.

first of all, I would consider opening 1NT, but I would not, values too concentrated.

Second, rebidding 3♦ is again reasonable instead of 2♦ but agian I wouldn't.


Third problem: partner cannot bid 3♣ GF when he is a passed hand, He has misbid one way or another. If he wasn't a passed hand I would bid 3♥ as a last train to 3NT. But now I think 3♠ and live with it can be the only answer since his shape is probably pretty extreme (6-5)

I will open 1N.

ya I would open yet another offshape 1nt.

this is a tough bidding problem given pard is a passed hand.

I cant believe pard is 5-5 here and a passed hand with anything.

so if you play walsh then my guess is something such as:

KTxx...xx...void...Axxxxxx

Very close. AJTxx xx x Axxxx was the actual hand.

Antrax, on 2012-January-25, 09:30, said:

He should pass 2♦. 3♣ was a terrible action.

As for your choice of opening, I have some respect for 1N, but I have never been that unilateral even at mps....maybe I should loosen up....but were I to have opened 1N, we'd have reached a horrendous game....partner has a easy gf over 1N.

Edit: let me expand: you won't have 4 ♣ so he won't usually be improving the contract by trying to play in clubs, assuming that the passed hand status makes 3♣ passable. And if it isn't passable, then where is the percentage in reaching 3♦? Of course, he is hoping for 3N, but you didn't open 1N, and didn't jump rebid diamonds, so if your hand is strong enough to bid 3N, the diamonds are probably not strong enough to make it. IOW, he is aiming at a very small target playing a form of the game, mps, where frequency of good scores is better than size of big scores.

There is a compromise available if he wants to try to improve the contract.....2♠. Even opposite a stiff, his suit looks like it will play reasonably well for 8 or 9 tricks...and it shows some values....he'd pass with a bust.

I'm curious: 1NT opening is a possibility, so why is the best course of action not to rebid 1NT after 1♠?

Antrax, on 2012-January-25, 11:35, said:

It is the right strength for 1NT (and much too strong to rebid 1NT). The reason people prefer 1♦ is to emphasise the diamond suit. The upper limit (in terms of playing strength) of a 2♦ rebid quite a lot higher than the upper limit of a 1NT rebid, so rebidding 2♦ is better than 3♦. I would probably open 1NT though.

I am very comfortable saying that I know without a doubt that it is better to open 1N than 1D on hands like this. It's not even a matter of opinion/style, opening 1D is an extremely losing style.

You are easily within strength to open 1N, and opening 1N has tons of additional upside. You could make it impossible for them to find their fit, convince them not to bid game, convince them not to compete once it goes, say, 1N (2H) X P 3D, when a standard auction might go 1D 1H X 2H 3D 3H.

People will tell you things like opening 1N is matchpointitis or "too unilateral" or "misdescriptive/anti-partnership", but honestly those are just meaningless buzzwords and they just have not seen how amazing it is to open 1N on a hand like this. You have almost the perfect hand too, 6 solid and very little outside. I would consider it automatic to open 1N with Jx Txx AKQJxx Qx, and I would even do it with xx Txx AKQJxx Qx but that is more controversial.

rogerclee, on 2012-January-25, 13:55, said:

You are undoubtedly better at mps than I am, and I concede that there are a lot of upsides to 1N, as you describe, but are you not overlooking the rather obvious downsides as well? I mean, just look at what responder held. Are you not going to game as responder? Heck, opposite a good fitting non-max, such as Kx Axx Axx KJxxx, we have a play for 7♣....not that we're thinking along those lines, but I make the point just to show how clear it is for N to gf opposite 1N.

And there will be other hands on which the opps compete and your partner makes the wrong decision..or you end up over-competing or under-competing...and still others on which they simply run a bunch of winners, while you pitch increasingly high diamonds away.

I'm open to being persuaded that on a frequency basis, 1N wins, but I don't think you are being even-handed in your portrayal of the pros (well-stated) and the cons (ignored).

BTW, if it is your partnership style to open the hands you set out with 1N, do you pre-alert or in any way tell your opps, who are aware that your cc says 15-17, of this? I know.....all experts should know that good players do this, but I don't think that is the test for disclosing partnership agreements that contradict listed descriptions. I am NOT impugning your ethics at all.....I have nothing but regard for you, based on reputation, since I don't think we've ever met. And this is the B/I thread, so we can't assume that our opps will expect this style wherein you may have 3 open suits and only 12 or 13 hcp.

Just to be clear: if we ever play against each other, you need not pre-alert me, or otherwise be worried about the director

If you would always open this 1nt and your partner knows this, isn't that an implicit partnership understanding that you will violate the 15-17 highcard point nt range with a long running suit and thus your 1nt calls should be alerted?

Here are some downsides to opening 1N:

We go -200 when the opponents weren't going to bid game (even if it's cold).
If partner transfers to spades and passes, it's bad. 2H could also play poorly on a similar auction since our hearts are terrible.
Partner gives us an uncomfortable problem, like 1N 2H 2S 3H P P X, where we likely have no winning option.
We make more in diamonds, and could have bought it (notice we often can make more in diamonds, but they will just outbid us in their major, so 1N is the best we can do).

Notice I haven't put down getting to 3N down a few tricks as a downside. To me, getting to 3N by opening 1N when we would have stopped in 2D by opening 1D is an upside, not a downside. I expect to make 3N more often than not if we get there. This is a bigger upside at IMPs, of course.

I didn't want to get into details of MP/vulnerability tactics, but vul at MP is the worst form of scoring to open hands like this 1N. When we are NV it's almost godlike, since I like my position if it goes 1N AP and we take any number of tricks.

My main point is that from the sound of it, you do not have very much experience opening hands like this 1NT, and I have lots of experience opening hands like this 1NT. I understand your concerns but feel like you are either overestimating the likelihoods of the downsides or underestimating the likelihoods of the upsides. You really do buy it a ton of the time, and that is almost always good if the strain is NT or diamonds. You would be a believer too if you just saw how often you buy it in 1N with them cold for 3M/4M, you wrap a light 3N with a bad lead into your Q, etc.

As to the other point, my 1N openers are alerted as 14+-17, and I think a hand like Jx Txx AKQJxx Qx is worth a good 14, so I don't feel any special need to alert it. However, it is true that I like to open 1N tactically in all seats, and especially 3rd. I'll think about whether these 1Ns should really be alerted, I guess I have always discussed bridge with a crowd where this was considered normal, and AFAIK there has never been any high profile (national/WBF) ruling against someone who has opened 1N with lots of playing strength but not the requisite HCP. That does not mean I think you are wrong, just that in the current climate of things that it is considered okay in high level bridge to fudge your points by a considerable amount as long as it is not an out and out psyche.

Thanks for the detailed and courteous response....and you are entirely right in assuming that I have virtually no experience of opening 1N with this type of hand. I think I may give it a try. I have played a few times with a partner prone to doing this and my anecdotal and non-statistically valid experience has been, on the whole, negative. A larger sample may help.

As for alerting or modifying the card, I fully appreciate why, in the Blue Ribbon Pairs, for example, there would be no need to do so.

This thread is, however, in the B/I forum, and as such I expect that many readers (and, even more so, most of their opps) have little exposure to the current state of the art at high level bridge and would be very surprised and completely misjudge their bidding and defence if their opps showed a strong 1N on a 6322 hand with 12-13 hcp and no semblance of defence. Since responder will inevitably learn to recognize when this might be happening, you have obtained an advantage not because of the intrinsic merits of your action but because you are operating with an agreement that is not only concealed from your opps but is different from the agreement you have announced, if you had filled out a CC....and of course in ACBL you are required to have a CC.

SO for you...I very much doubt there is any need to change your practice, unless you play sectionals and startified events at regionals and the like...but for people reading this thread to improve their game...they need to understand that they may be innocently creating ethical problems.

rogerclee, on 2012-January-25, 15:15, said:

Of course it is tactically brilliant and godlike, you are misrepresenting your hand and getting payed off by the opponents playing as if you had a hand that fits a nt bid. Thus they underbid and/or defend passively. Where if they know you open hands like this 1nt they might be more inclined to defend aggressively and/or punish you.

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Saying that you consider 13 points(with an unguarded queen and jack) to be worth a good 14 just sounds like a rationalization. I realize you have a 6 card running suit, thus if you get in you make 1nt, but a 1nt bid is telling the world you have a flat 15-17 count, not a running 6 card suit with 3 unstopped side suits.

If you opened that hand against me 1nt, even with 14+-17 on your card, I would call the director.

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You clearly have far more experience in this venue then do I and obviously those in the 'know' are not being harmed by the UI. It is just the rest of us tournament players who play with full disclosure and expect full disclosure in return that are getting burned by these godlike tactics that are really only godlike because they are in fact systematic undisclosed psyches.

dwar0123, on 2012-January-25, 15:42, said:

Um, MI? (not UI). If you are going to bash someone that is one of the better posters, at least get your terms right.

Even if I played a 15-17 NT (and I do), I would be laughed at if I called the director for opening this 1N.

Do you even understand what a psyche is?

Phil, on 2012-January-25, 15:50, said:

I apologize for my ignorance, I thought that an undisclosed understanding would fall under the realm of unauthorized information. If miss information is a better term I stand corrected.

A psyche is misinformation.

Here is a bridge definition
Psychic bids, psychs, psyches...these are bids made in an attempt to achieve a good score by misleading the opponents into taking losing actions in the bidding and/or play.

As that is one of the main reasons he bid's 1nt with these types of hands, I would call it a pysche. As it is an understood part of their system, it is systematic and undisclosed. Saying good 14 does not describe with enough clarity a 6 card running suit with 3 unstopped side suits. You need to actually say he will open this with a 6 card running suit and nothing else to meet full disclosure.

From the ACBL website:

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