[Raivis]

Scoring: IMP

P-(P)-1♦-(1♠)
X-(P)-3NT...

---

Spade lead to king.
Run all diamonds and discards all clubs.
LHO too discard two clubs.
Successfully heart finesse and await 9.trick from LHO (clubs blocked).

Scoring: IMP

P-(P)-1♦-(1♠)
X-(P)-3NT...

---

Club lead to ace.
Small spade to LHO. Club... 9 tricks.

Scoring: IMP

P-(P)-1♦-(1♠)
X-(P)-3NT...

---

Spade jack lead to queen.
Club to queen, return club to king. Clubs marked 2-2. RHO take the ace and spade. 10 tricks.

Lucky?

Analyse show in all boards 8 NT tricks and no more possible contract.
Plus easy declarer play and hard defender play.
What's do you mean about this? (Boards played with 10-15 minutes interval)

[Apollo81]

As you "move up" and play against better competition, you will find your opponents misdefending less and less. Actions like #2 will start to cost you more often than you see gains like this one.

[han]

While I agree with Noble, even at the highest levels game contracts are made that shouldn't be made. It pays to be somewhat aggressive.

The bidding on hands 1 and 2 seems just bad though, and the defense you encountered on hand 3 is very poor.

[Apollo81]

Hannie, on Dec 17 2007, 12:39 PM, said:

While I agree with Noble, even at the highest levels game contracts are made that shouldn't be made. It pays to be somewhat aggressive.

The bidding on hands 1 and 2 seems just bad though, and the defense you encountered on hand 3 is very poor.

#2 is the worst by far. #1 is just wrong hand valuation, and #3 is actually a reasonable bid IMO (though I would probably cuebid)

[han]

Yeah, just wrong hand evaluation by a king or so.

[Apollo81]

Hannie, on Dec 17 2007, 12:50 PM, said:

Yeah, just wrong hand evaluation by a king or so.

Right. Try expressing everything that is wrong with #2 in just a short phrase like that =)

[Raivis]

Wait, wait young and powerfull bridgist's!
Im know your good defender play!
But ...

You played 40+ boards.
Last 12 still and 3/12 presented here.

Actually you much better drive to home, eat, talk with grandfather, play with kids, loves wife, watch TV or BBO vugraph .
But you need stay at table (you showed in BBO vugraph ).


Variant 1 - defenders mistake all times, i'm win 21 IMPs.
Variant 2 - defenders beat 1/3, im win 9 IMPs.
Variant 3 - defenders beat 1/3 with double, im win 8 IMPs.
Variant 4 - defenders beat 2/3, im lose 3 IMPs.
Variant 5 - defenders beat 2/3,one with double, im lose 4 IMPs.
Variant 6 - defenders beat 2/3, both with double, im lose 5 IMPs.
Variant 7 - defenders beat 3/3, im lose 15 IMPs.
Variant 8 - defenders beat 3/3,one with double, im lose 16 IMPs.
Variant 9 - defenders beat 3/3,two with doubles, im lose 17 IMPs.
Variant 10 - defenders beat 3/3,all with doubles, im lose 18 IMPs.

This not good bridge?

[Codo]

I won´t worry about the bidding as much as Noble and Han.

In Hand 1 you show a running minor with a spade stopper. Quite precisly what you have. But after you draw all diamonds, the defenders should have been able to find the right defence, so this was a very lucky make.

Hand 2: You have 8 running tricks if diamonds are breaking, so 3 NT is a gamble, but still okay for me. However it should not have worked this time, because pd holds the wrong black king. If the defenders had thought about your hand, the right defense had been easy enough.

Hand 3: Normal contract, unlucky. And again a horrible defence. They saw that you have at least AKQ in Spade and AK in heart In the meanwhile you try to establish clubs. So which suit must I switch too? Really bad defence makes a lucky declarer.

[Apollo81]

Raivis, on Dec 18 2007, 07:51 AM, said:

Variant 4 - defenders beat 2/3, im lose 3 IMPs.
Variant 7 - defenders beat 3/3, im lose 15 IMPs.

These hands are easy enough to defend that reasonably good players should get them all right. In reality, I'd say the average opponents will get one out of the three wrong.

[awm]

On the first board, you needed diamonds 4-3 and the heart ace onside. This is already not good enough for a NV game, and even when both those things panned out you needed opponents not to figure out to continue hearts or switch to clubs. So even against opponents who couldn't figure out the defense despite having a zillion chances to signal on the run of the diamonds, the game is anti-percentage.

On the second board, opponents again missed a fairly easy defense. But the problem on this hand is that you could have missed an easy game or slam in spades or diamonds in order to play a failing game in 3NT. What if partner didn't put down so many hearts? LHO may have an easy lead from his five card heart suit and the opponents just reel off five heart tricks when you could be cold for a suit game. You were lucky that partner put down the "right" hand, and lucky again that the opponents didn't seem to visualize your running diamonds and the possibility that the club king is trick nine (really quite obvious since 3NT bid in an auction like this is normally a running suit).

On the third hand the bidding and contract are not so strange. You're lucky that your opponents don't play jack denies on the opening lead though, which would have made the correct defense extremely easy to find. Then again, many good players have assured me that jack denies is a terrible convention, and surely they would figure out that the jack lead is from JT9x(x) and four decent diamonds and not AJTx(x) with nothing in diamonds by table feel or something... (smith echo might help, but the club plays do seem like a count situation to me at least).

There is a point to be made that the quality of play in the main bridge club is not very high, and pick-up partnerships (even if decent players) sometimes have trouble reading each other's signals. This may favor overbidding somewhat, because you're more likely to get a misdefense than you would against a regular established partnership. But we have to ask ourselves what we're trying to accomplish -- do you want to make the "right" bids that will work against good players, or make "wrong" bids that may work better than the right bids against bad players in an unestablished partnership but will not work against a reasonably strong pair?

[han]

Raivis, on Dec 18 2007, 07:51 AM, said:

This not good bridge?

That is correct, this not.

With good bridge you would also get to game on hands 1 and 2, but you would stay out of game if partner had crap on 1 and you might get to slam if partner had a suitable hand on 2.

With good bridge you would likely get the same result on 3.

[Raivis]

"Bridge is game of mistakes!"

"If 3NT is possible, tray it!"

[CSGibson]

There seem to be a number of very good players, or at least players whose opinions in these forums that I respect, who do not think that what you did was good bridge, but rather aggressive moves that paid off because the opponents weren't all that great. I find the fact that you are pressing for a particular opinion which is contrary to what they are saying - that 3NT is good bridge on those hands - to be an indication that you did not really want to get people's opinion, what you really wanted was recognition for bold play that worked.

So, with that said, congratulations! Those were wonderful bids that would not have been found by many good players! You deserve every imp for your boldness and insight, and your evaluation that your opponents were likely to make mistakes.

[han]

"Bridge is game of mistakes!"

Correct, but try to learn from them.

"If 3NT is possible, tray it!"

Hamman would turn around in his bed if he saw you use his quote like this. Of course it is possible to bid 3NT on almost every hand yet it is only good on a select number of those. Fortunately bridge bidding is not so simple that a few quotes are sufficient to play good bridge.

[jdonn]

Raivis, on Dec 19 2007, 01:33 AM, said:

"If 3NT is possible, tray it!"

You are totally misapplying that advice. You were at the 1 level each time! 3NT is not going anywhere!