[Winstonm]

mike777, on Mar 25 2007, 07:12 PM, said:

If this is the worst 3nt I am ever in at imps..thank God. If you are that worried, assuming 1nt is 8-10 for you just bid 2nt invite with this minimum 4441 hand which will play poorly. Pard will bid 3nt with anything above a dead minimum.

Mike, if I have this hand I'm not going to give partner a chance to pass 2N at imps.

If you want to play this 1N as 6-10, that is fine. All I am saying is that if your agreement is 8-10, then it can't suddenly change to 5-6 because you have a problem hand to bid.

[jikl]

This all depends on your AGREED NT range, if it is 8-11 as Justin said, even with every 10 and 9 in the deck it still won't be strong enough. So it now comes down to which lie you will make in tempo, personally I would probably do 1♦ on maybe both of them, although I do lean further towards 1♥ on the first one.

Sean

[mike777]

My bet as usual that out of 25 million bridge players and many more than that partnerships, less than .01% have discussed this.

The other 99.99%+ bid something. I can only pray when this is why lose at bridge.

If we have great detailed agreements this cannot be a problem, I just bid whatever our agreement is. I assumed this was a pickup partnership and we, for some reason, discussed other stuff first.

[pclayton]

8-11 for 1N is what I play, and I think thats pretty standard. If you play light shapely doubles, I can even live with a 9-12 range.

[Winstonm]

Quote

My bet as usual that out of 25 million bridge players and many more than that partnerships, less than .01% have discussed this

This is curious to me, as I've always believed there was some sort of "expert" or maybe "good player" consensus on what certain bids mean. For example, if I were to sit down in a cut-around bridge game and got lucky enough to cut Paul Soloway as my partner, I'd assume him to hold 8+ to 11- to bid 1N in this auction, even undiscussed, just as I'd assume around 11-14 for a balancing 1N bid, undiscussed.

[jdonn]

Yup Justin wins, I still would want to be able to bid 1NT with this range and the poll results surprised me but it is what it is.

Mike, why is 4432 more likely than 4342? I can't think of a hand where I'd double with one of those shapes but not the other.

[inquiry]

1♥ and NO

[mikeh]

jdonn, on Mar 26 2007, 01:10 AM, said:

Yup Justin wins, I still would want to be able to bid 1NT with this range and the poll results surprised me but it is what it is.

Mike, why is 4432 more likely than 4342? I can't think of a hand where I'd double with one of those shapes but not the other.

I am not suggesting that the number of hands that would double with 4432 is enormously greater than with 4342, but a couple of examples:

AKJ9 Jxx Kxxx xx: I would probably bid 1♠ rather than double, but with AKJ9 Jxxx Kxx xx, I'd double

With whatever your rock-bottom minimum takeout double hand is, I suggest that many would make the pass/double decision based on 4=4 in the majors or 4=3: I am not setting out an example because I am speaking of a subjective topic when I say 'rock-bottom', and if I were to give an example, some would say that this was a clear double, others a clear pass and so on: where one draws the line is one's own decision, but we all draw a line somewhere.

[whereagles]

Both 1♥ and 1NT are good bids. I really don't see any point in trying to prove one is better than the other