[pablo2110]

My level is more or less a low intermediate (play mostly in internet). I basically count points and try to imagine how the other people hands will go. With partscores and games I think I can survive with my SAYC knowledge (means I am satisfied in this point). I try not to go so far avoiding complications. When the things gets competitive I act aggresively with good suits and favorable Vul. I need to be better on that but by now I think it is OK.

My problem is with good hands. I feel insecure, not with the tools to reach it, but with the evaluation of slam possibility.

It seems that an answer is to study LTC, "to discover slams with 25 points and game with 20 points".

I read a post about LTC in general discussion here and there was a lot of discussion about the topic. I want to be as better as I could, and I dont believe in shortcut and miracle recipe. I have the Kinger book ( I am reading it) but I wonder if it is going to help me or if I have to take it seriously. There is books of Lawrence on Judgment on Evaluation but I dont know if they are for me in this moment.

[JLOGIC]

Do partnership bidding hands and give yourself 28+ HCP or something (so usually in the slam zone/slam decision). Bid hundreds of slam hands. Your experience and thus judgement will improve. You will see that having a stiff is awesome, but not always as great when you have only an 8 card fit. You will see that good trumps are important, good suits with side aces often make a good slam (2 aces in the side suits, and 2 suits that run is a theme with some low HCP slams). You will feel more confident about knowing that you are in the slam zone, you will be more experienced in visualizing hands for partner, etc.

There is no magic formula for slams with unbalanced hands (HCP is quite good for balanced 6Ns, fwiw). Trying to go from HCP to LTC is just a bad way to approach it. Slam bidding is much more precise than game bidding. The only way to improve is to gain more experience (and also to improve your methods). It is very hard and time consuming to get good in that area, but if you want to do it I really recommend partnership bidding and grinding as the way to do it.

[jillybean]

Hi pablo. I would strongly suggest staying away from "rules" and point count and instead, develop your hand analysis skills.
How? As Justin says the partnership bidding table is a superb tool, you can do it with GIB but having a partner or even better, a willing expert is the best.
And,hang around here, post the hands that you think you could have bid better, read about the ones others had trouble with.

[ArtK78]

Losing trick count is not a replacement for high card points. It is an additional/alternate means of evaluation. I find it very useful in bidding suit games, not so much for slams.

If I were giving you advice, I would suggest that you reach a reasonable level of comfort dealing with HCP evaluation before you venture into the realm of LTC. The concepts are different, and if you are not completely comfortable with HCP evaluation you will wind up getting hopelessly confused.

[Antrax]

I found the Lawrence hand evaluation book to be quite helpful, but also very challenging. However, it won't help you with slam bidding, it's mostly about when to stretch or compete further.

[nigel_k]

Slam bidding is hard, and you definitely can't do it with a rule-based method such as HCP or LTC.

Think about different hands partner can hold that are consistent with the bidding: the worst possible hand, a minimum but perfectly fitting hand, an average hand, the best possible hand, etc. Then evaluate the chances of making slam opposite all of those. You will need well developed analysis skills to do this, but it is what experts do at the table. Somebody (Terence Reese?) once suggested you should invite slam if it will be laydown opposite a perfect minimum.

Definitely read Lawrence rather than Klinger. Klinger's books are for bad players looking for simplistic approaches that will help them be slightly less bad. It sounds like your ambitions are higher than that.

[SteveMoe]

Check out 2 of Marty Bergens books:
Slam Bidding Made Easier
Hand Evaluation: Points Schmoints (paperback)

Also Wirgren and Lawrence published a book titled "I Fought the Law (of Total Tricks)" wherein they disclose an approach emphasizing complementary shortness and working points. Andrew Gumperz has published two articles distilling these ideas on bridgewinners.com at:
http://bridgewinners...or-slam-part-3/
http://bridgewinners...or-slam-part-4/

[mikl_plkcc]

No matter what the tools are, bidding minor suit slams are very difficult (no space!!) such that I just bid it holding 33 points and hope it makes. However, with major suits, I can just easily cuebid when a game-force is created at the 3-level, if just a perfect hand is needed for slam, so there is no difficulty to me.

Actually, slams are too rare so that you don't need to even care about them in MPs!

[SimonFa]

I've recently taken to playing in GIB tournaments because work means I have had to give up real world play and have found it really useful in exploring the sorts of marginal hands you talk about because:

1. As the human you always get the best hand so if there is a slam to be made you are the one who has to make the decision to start exploring; and

2. At the end of each tournament you can look at all the results and where you have missed a slam see how those who bid it got there. Sometimes you will find it was a very low percentage gamble that paid off, other times you will see some interesting bidding to learn from. Conversely when you bid a slam you can compare how you got there with other results so you can try to eliminate the low percentage attempts.

The other advantage of GIB is that you can see what each bid was meant to mean, but be careful because sometimes what GIB thinks it is holding is not what it has in its hand - just like some of my former real world partners.

Simon

PS I know a lot of forum members don't think much of GIB but in the right context I reckon its a useful tool

[pablo2110]

Thank you all for your kind advice. I found your answers very useful.

[Statto]

mikl_plkcc, on 2012-June-22, 10:02, said:

Actually, slams are too rare so that you don't need to even care about them in MPs!

There's usually at least 1 slam for your side in a 24 board session. Finding it will be worth at least an extra 2% on your score, which could make all the difference.

[JLOGIC]

Yes, but improving your slam bidding does not make you go from never finding that slam to always finding that slam. So the EV you gain from serious improvement in the slam zone might make you go from 40 % to 60 % to find a difficult slam (that is a MASSIVE improvement). Many slams you would have been 100 % to find anyways. So maybe you will improve your score by .1 %

Of course, it depends on how bad your slam bidding is to begin with, if you are extremely poor at a certain area it will always pay to become competent at it because you will make massive strides quickly. Conversely, if you are excellent at everything then it will take a long time to improve by a little and nothing in particular will improve your score that much.

[ColdCrayon]

This may seem simplistic, but as a guideline I keep finding it useful in all sorts of hands, and when it's violated it results in a missed slam more often than anything else:

When holding a fit, throttle back a bit on your very good hands, but bid your bad hands more aggressively.

This is just to counter the fact that virtually everyone except for the most experienced bidders overbid their good hands and underbid their bad hands. And in slam bidding, sometimes a king in the right suit makes all the difference. Sure, it's only 3 hcp, but it's a control.

[P_Marlowe]

#1 get a regular partner.
#2 get familar with auctions below game level, learn,
which auctions are forcing to game, which are not.

If you have found a regular partner, and have the trust,
that bothof you have the same understanding with regards
to the forcing nonforcing meaning of bids below game level,
you can incooperate add. tools.

But assuming, you already know this, have a look at the following

http://www.reginabri...oint%20deck.pdf

With kind regards
Marlowe