[paulg]

Deciding to use some prepared hands for the Acol Club, I had happily reached the last two hands when I discovered that my movie file was incomplete and I had to revert to random hands.

The system immediately dealt this hand to opener:

Scoring: IMP

---

The intrepid South opened the hand 1♣ and reversed into 2♥ over partner's 1♠ bid. Subsequently 5♣ was reached, doubled by the opponents (who had a balanced 13 and balanced 14 count) and went down -500. But the opps could have made 600 in 3NT.

It's hard to argue with success, but what advice would you give on bidding this hand?

Paul

[Stephen Tu]

Well Grant Baze said something like that it's only a slight exaggeration to keep on bidding with 6-5 shape until someone gets doubled. I imagine this holds even more so with 7-6 ...

Of course if partner shows a misfit & the opps aren't bidding, one could try to stop lower ...

[pclayton]

I can see 2 strategies: open 4♥ or pass and see what happens. Usually nothing good happens when I pass.

My guess is that I'd open 4♥ and compete to 5♣; regardless of whether or not pard doubled 4♠.

[Free]

pclayton, on Sep 24 2006, 11:17 PM, said:

I can see 2 strategies: open 4♥ or pass and see what happens. Usually nothing good happens when I pass.

My guess is that I'd open 4♥ and compete to 5♣; regardless of whether or not pard doubled 4♠.

Agree

[the hog]

Well you could pass, but I don't like it. If you have a 2 suited opening you could use that, but it is a bit extreme. 4H opening coul;d work ok, but if that is X and comes back to you, do you run or bid 5C. I don't know; freaks are hard. I guess to open 4H and take it from there. DON'T open 1C and reverse into H, however - that is by far the worst possible action as it totally overstates the high card strength of the hand.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

I would have passed and got in later
with a 2-suiter overcall.

But that is my preferred way to deal
with weak freak 2-suiters.

Sometimes it works (you learn something
useful from the bidding), sometimes it does
not.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[EricK]

The advice I would give is that bidding extreme freaks is hard. That there is no foolproof method anyway. That the variance on these hands is huge and whatever you do there is a chance that you will do spectacularly well or spectacularly badly. But luckily these sorts of hands are rare so bid what you like and try to enjoy it.

[paulg]

EricK, on Sep 25 2006, 09:47 PM, said:

The advice I would give is that bidding extreme freaks is hard. That there is no foolproof method anyway. That the variance on these hands is huge and whatever you do there is a chance that you will do spectacularly well or spectacularly badly. But luckily these sorts of hands are rare so bid what you like and try to enjoy it.

Sound advice.

Unfortunately last night with the BIL, with many of the same audience, the following 'rare' hand arrived:

---

My second freak in six random hands - luckily it is easier to suggest how to bid this, although there were conflicts on the rebid when partner responded 2♣!!!

Paul

[Limey_p]

The advice from my seat is "bridge is a bidder's game".

And of course Erick is right - distributional hands like these should be fun.

AP

[zasanya]

These deals are good publicity material for using Tartans/RCO/Muiderberg with multi 2♦.I wonder why, not many experts use them.
As for advise to students I would give my personal opinion (whatever it may be) and then impress upon them that such hands will not always yield satisfactory results and ask them to use their gut feeling.

[the hog]

"These deals are good publicity material for using Tartans/RCO/Muiderberg with multi 2D"

Not again. TARTAN 2 BIDS ARE NOT Muiderberg or anything like it.

[zasanya]

The_Hog, on Sep 27 2006, 12:49 AM, said:

"These deals are good publicity material for using Tartans/RCO/Muiderberg with multi 2D"

Not again. TARTAN 2 BIDS ARE NOT Muiderberg or anything like it.

I agree they are not same.What I meant was a system to preemptively show weak ( from the hcp angle ) 2 suiters and also weak single suiters makes a lot of sense.