[kgr]

IMPs, teams (opps are a bit weaker then your team)

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What do you think of the bidding?
In 6NT LHO starts ♦8 (Opps play small is promising an honor)
Opps are reasonable, but not very strong.
Do you hope to run 12 tricks from top or is it better to play a ♥ to ♥J early in the play? (hoping that it looses to LHO ♥A or to his ♥Q and he does not return a ♥)

[SteveMoe]

I don't want to be in this slam.
If your opponents are sound, the absence of a ♥ lead suggests the suit is not placed well & the ♦8 is a passive lead.
Even if the ♥ finesse works, we still need to find one of the 2 remaining 4-3 suits breaking well.
Rough calculation says two 4-3 splits is 13% while .5(.36+.36(.64)) = 41%

[kgr]

...thinking about it:
If you start on ♥ it is probably best to play a ♥ to the K to reduce the chance that LHO returns ♥ when it looses?

[PhilKing]

Another advantage of a heart to the king is that it sometimes holds even when West has the ace (eg East has QTxx).

[lalldonn]

The bidding was fine until south showed a max that he didn't have. He showed 22-23 and holds a perfectly normal 22. Notice how adding either black jack or increasing either heart honor to the next higher honor makes this slam so much better. Quantitative bidding works really well if you are disciplined, and don't just go around showing a max because it's so exciting to hold 22 points.

I definitely like to lead a heart early. It surely seems best technically since if you try either black suit first and it doesn't break you are just down if the person who wins the heart has the long card. Losing a heart early also sets up any squeeze. I'd win the diamond lead in dummy and lead a heart to the king. Who knows he might duck the ace if it's off.

[ArtK78]

lalldonn, on 2012-December-09, 11:25, said:

The bidding was fine until south showed a max that he didn't have. He showed 22-23 and holds a perfectly normal 22. Notice how adding either black jack or increasing either heart honor to the next higher honor makes this slam so much better. Quantitative bidding works really well if you are disciplined, and don't just go around showing a max because it's so exciting to hold 22 points.

I definitely like to lead a heart early. It surely seems best technically since if you try either black suit first and it doesn't break you are just down if the person who wins the hearts has either long card. Losing a heart early also sets up any squeeze. I'd win the diamond lead in dummy and lead a heart to the king. Who knows he might duck the ace if it's off.

Yes, he might duck if the ♥A if off, but not if it is accompanied by the ♥Q.

Seriously, though, I agree with everything here. I looked over the bidding and I was just astonished that it did not end in 4NT.

You state that the opps are the "slightly weaker" team. Why would you bid an aggressive slam against a team that you perceive is weaker than yours? It is acceptable to bid a 50% slam (although that is not clear against a weaker team). It is not acceptable to bid slams less than 50% unless there are extenuating circumstances. Your partner asked you a simple question - do you have 22 HCP or 23 HCP? Showing a 23 count when you have a 22 count is a sure way to get a negative result.

[kgr]

ArtK78, on 2012-December-09, 11:29, said:

Your partner asked you a simple question - do you have 22 HCP or 23 HCP? Showing a 23 count when you have a 22 count is a sure way to get a negative result.

What made you think I was South?
BTW: Maybe I don't have the hands 100% correctly... Should South also pass 4NT with?:
AKxx
KJ
AKx
Axxx
In that case I had..
Qxx
xxx
QJxx
KQx
He argued that he had only 22 pts, but all top-cards. I told him that that was not very important on this bidding (top cards expected because he is strong, and when he has top cards then I have more of the Qs and Js for my invite).
Did he have a point?

[kgr]

ArtK78, on 2012-December-09, 11:29, said:

You state that the opps are the "slightly weaker" team. Why would you bid an aggressive slam against a team that you perceive is weaker than yours? It is acceptable to bid a 50% slam (although that is not clear against a weaker team).

Another remark:
This is a teams competition in a lower division. We are trying to place first at the end, so that we can go to 2nd division (which is actually 3th because there is also honour division).
So it is not about winning or loosing the matches, but also with as much points as possible.
So we should bid and play normally without taking strength of opps into account? ...bid 50% slams?

[steve2005]

kgr, on 2012-December-09, 12:00, said:

Another remark:
This is a teams competition in a lower division. We are trying to place first at the end, so that we can go to 2nd division (which is actually 3th because there is also honour division).
So it is not about winning or loosing the matches, but also with as much points as possible.
So we should bid and play normally without taking strength of opps into account? ...bid 50% slams?

i dont think bidding 20% slams good way to come first. lol

[Codo]

kgr, on 2012-December-09, 11:56, said:

What made you think I was South?
BTW: Maybe I don't have the hands 100% correctly... Should South also pass 4NT with?:
AKxx
KJ
AKx
Axxx
In that case I had..
Qxx
xxx
QJxx
KQx
He argued that he had only 22 pts, but all top-cards. I told him that that was not very important on this bidding (top cards expected because he is strong, and when he has top cards then I have more of the Qs and Js for my invite).
Did he have a point?

No. To have a good five card suit is a reason to call a 22 HCP hand a 23 point hand. Maybe there are hands with a ton of intermedeates like KQT9, KJT, AKT9,AQTx where you can count 23 points...

[Zelandakh]

You can upgrade a little bit for having an above average amount of points in aces but then you need to downgrade for the KJ bare and poor spots. There is nothing special about this 22 so call a spade a spade and pass 4NT.

[y66]

lalldonn, on 2012-December-09, 11:25, said:

The bidding was fine until south showed a max that he didn't have. He showed 22-23 and holds a perfectly normal 22. Notice how adding either black jack or increasing either heart honor to the next higher honor makes this slam so much better. Quantitative bidding works really well if you are disciplined, and don't just go around showing a max because it's so exciting to hold 22 points.

I definitely like to lead a heart early. It surely seems best technically since if you try either black suit first and it doesn't break you are just down if the person who wins the heart has the long card. Losing a heart early also sets up any squeeze. I'd win the diamond lead in dummy and lead a heart to the king. Who knows he might duck the ace if it's off.

Thoughtful posts like this one from you and many of your expert colleagues are what keep me coming back to the forum. Much appreciated.

[kgr]

Thanks all for the answers.
For the play: everything was wrong (♥AQ after the K and black suits 4-2)

[ArtK78]

kgr, on 2012-December-09, 11:56, said:

What made you think I was South?

I was not trying to assign blame in my post. From the manner in which the problem was presented, I assumed that you held the strong hand. If that was not the case, my apologies.

As for the issue of playing a weaker team, you should expect to beat them without giving them unnecessary opportunities to beat you. Bidding a 50% slam that you know the opponents won't bid is just such an opportunity. Now, you did not say that the opps would not bid the slam, but I am assuming as much from the tenor of the rest of your posts.

50% slams are just that - 50%. So, if you bid them and the opps don't, you are 50% to gain IMPs and 50% to lose IMPs. If the other team is weaker, then you are giving them an even chance of gaining a significant number of IMPs on the hand when they would normally not have an even chance to gain any IMPs on most hands. You want to be a favorite to gain IMPs on a hand - after all, if you are the stronger team, you would normally be a favorite to gain IMPs on each hand. The only way you can lose to a weaker team (other than playing badly) is if you give your opps a number of 50/50 chances which fail. You could get seriously unlucky on a number of hands on which you rate to gain IMPs but come out on the short end of the probability wheel, such as going down in 75% games and slams that they do not bid, or staying out of bad games and slams that they do bid and make, but you expect to gain on them in the long run.

It is my understanding that the Blue Team had a philosophy about bidding slams. They would try to stay out of 50% slams (or anything approximating a 50% slam) because their ability to compensate for an unfavorable lie of the cards by their superior play is minimized at the slam level. Your options in the play are normally quite limited - for example, losing a trick to end play an opponent is not an optimal line in a grand slam. So, they were conservative in their slam bidding but aggressive in game bidding. This is not a bad philosophy to have. When you are the stronger team, try to minimize the number of contracts that are pure tossups and maximize the number of contracts where your higher skill level is most useful.

[kgr]

ArtK78, on 2012-December-10, 10:41, said:

As for the issue of playing a weaker team, you should expect to beat them without giving them unnecessary opportunities to beat you. Bidding a 50% slam that you know the opponents won't bid is just such an opportunity. Now, you did not say that the opps would not bid the slam, but I am assuming as much from the tenor of the rest of your posts.

I don't know if opps would bid this slam.
They made a 'wrong' opening because they didn't count ♠Q. I think they ended in 3NT.

[ArtK78]

kgr, on 2012-December-10, 12:02, said:

I don't know if opps would bid this slam.
They made a 'wrong' opening because they didn't count ♠Q. I think they ended in 3NT.

That is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. They made a mistake on this very hand, but they survived. That happens.

Your side, on the other hand, made a mistake on this hand and did not survive. You need to avoid making mistakes and allow the weaker team to make the mistakes.

[cherdano]

I have a little more sympathy for South here, and I don't think North's bidding is perfect either (to say I disagree would use words that are stronger than I feel).

As North, I would not use puppet stayman here - you definitely don't want to know about a 5-3 heart fit, and playing a 5-3 spade fit isn't necessarily right either. I would just bid 4NT over 2NT.

On balance, I think the 5♣ bid is wrong, but I think the case it closer than what other posters are suggesting. Given that responder does not have a 4-card major, we are likely to have a fit in a minor. In that case, slam could be very good, and we will find our minor suit fit by bidding 5♣ (partner's 5♦ would be a 5-card suit). However, South shouldn't overvalue his "control-rich" hand - 8 control points is pretty much what you expect for a balanced 22hcp hand (see http://www.bridgehan...ed_Controls.htm). So I think he should pass, but it's close.

Turning the spot light back to North, he knows that partner probably has 4-card major and a 4-card club suit. In other words, we don't have a fit. That's the type of hand where 6NT is not a good contract despite 33 hcp. (If partner could also be 4225, then our ♦Q is wasted.) So I think the right bid is 5NT - if opener is willing to play slam without a fit, he can still bid 6NT. With his actual hand, he should pass. (And the fact that this is still not a success shows that 5♣ is indeed a little too much.)

[Boobytrap]

Actually, the hand was like this :

AKxx / Kx / KQx / AKxx vs Qxx / J10x / AJxx / Qxx

Some of you are changing strategy ?

[Cyberyeti]

Boobytrap, on 2012-December-13, 01:48, said:

Actually, the hand was like this :

AKxx / Kx / KQx / AKxx vs Qxx / J10x / AJxx / Qxx

Some of you are changing strategy ?

On this hand I'm much closer to accepting the invite, to me the honour structure is much better with all the touching honours, I'd probably bid 5N over 4N which partner would pass.

KJ is a horrible holding with not enough compensation in the original hand, easy pass of 4N.

[ArtK78]

Boobytrap, on 2012-December-13, 01:48, said:

Actually, the hand was like this :

AKxx / Kx / KQx / AKxx vs Qxx / J10x / AJxx / Qxx

Some of you are changing strategy ?

Stopping at 4NT seems right to me.