[H_KARLUK]

Am i expected to lose my sleep for people living in th edges, going up then down break with their emotional appeals while i evaluate them as 3rd class self issued diplome owners? I forgot how much antisocial personality disorder cases i saw.

Well, not really!

[mikeh]

H_KARLUK, on Feb 8 2009, 11:20 AM, said:

say there were > Kx-AQxx-xxx-Axxx.. I think still can play slam. I want to know what would be th correct bids.
Maybe MFA helps to comment reason/s. Thanks.
Sincerely
Hamdi
ps It was an auction we watched by a tourist guest pair in local club. They could not land slam also.

While I thank you for posting a lot of hands, I agree with the basic criticisms of this particular post.

1. You failed to explain 3♠. Your later comments suggested that you were looking for a 9 card spade fit and therefore intended it as natural and forcing.. a treatment that I suspect is very much a minority position. Many would play 3♠ as a (usually) balanced slam try, agreeing hearts and conveying zero information about spade length. In any event, very few players would agree with the idea that on a borderline hand one looks for the 5-4 rather than the 4-4... the 4-4 often plays a trick better than the 5-4, since if trump are 3-2, one may get a pitch on the 5th card in the long suit, enabling us to score 5 trump tricks from the 4-4 fit.

2. In the context of 3♠ as natural, partner's 4♥ call becomes mystifying, unless 3♠ also confirmed hearts... I guess, if you play transfers and smolen, that maybe it did.. but you should post explanations of the calls. When you don't and the auction is not completely standard, you can expect a lot of criticism and virtually no useful answers.. we are guessing at the context of the problem.

3. While as MFA stated, slam is possible opposite specific cards, most good players learned a long time ago that one should NEVER make a call based on the hope that partner has the perfect cards if by doing so one risks a poor result when he doesn't. Imagine a perfectly normal 1N on Qx AJxx xxx KQxx... yes, this is a minimum, but statistically minimums are more common than maximums.. which was one reason for the change, years ago, from the common 16-18 1N to the present 15-17 strong 1N: I am not sure of the numbers, but I recall reading that balanced 15 counts are 40% more common than balanced 18 counts. So partner will have MORE 12 counts than 14 counts.... and, if we have made a slam try already, and partner has rejected, partner will have FAR more minimums than maximums. Bear in mind that on a bad day, 4♥ can fail... and you are proposing to push to the 5-level opposite a non-co-operative partner.

4. As a companion point to no. 3... trying to retroactively construct auctions that would reach a difficult-to-bid slam is an extremely dangerous habit. You may end up persuading yourself to make bad bids because, on one specific hand, they worked out. You will become a weaker, not a stronger, player this way. Strong players recognize that their methods will sometimes prove inadequate to the handling of a particular hand or combination. In this case, if opener had a magic hand and chose not to co-operate, then either opener made an error or this was one of the hands that the system can't be expected to bid... if the former, don't try to bid partner's hand for him, and if the latter... get on with the next hand... and consider, if you find yourselves being consistently outbid, whether the methods used by the successful bidders are in fact better than yours across the spectrum of hand-types, not merely the one in question.

I think that LOL was a mild criticism for posting this in the A/E forum...

[H_KARLUK]

Mikeh, I thank you for 2 reasons:
1) Spared your time to analyse 2) Enlightened me abt an auction that we (local club members here) 100 pct have no idea.

Some details abt behavioral disorders :
Th difference between a right&wrong spirit in giving criticism is like th difference between manliness&childishness.
LOL might be some kind of culture difference of unusual lifestyles for me.

I have no time for debate stuff. Instead I've an offer. Why don't you follow such simple steps ?

1)Click search, type "arrogance" into top Search by Keywords box
2) Search where : all forums
3) in 90 days show results as posts.

There you'll see threads. It's madness. Even such people shows me zillions gold medals i never pay a dime to hire. I prefer to hire matured & polite professionals.

What i saw on threads abt arrogance : intolerance of competing ideas.

No worries. I am firm vs indifference & gloating & sarcasm. I know they are not wise and only trying to cover weakness with false dilemmas. Demagogy is still trend amongst puppies.

[matmat]

LOL

[H_KARLUK]

matmat, on Feb 9 2009, 12:49 AM, said:

LOL

Wah wah.

So next discussions to be - uh oh, is so, me too, ja ja , oh really?

Yawn. I suspect people committed to make me more happy. Haha. Keep goin on to hear self voices guys. No need to care th others. Wow.

[mikeh]

H_KARLUK, on Feb 8 2009, 05:32 PM, said:

Mikeh, I thank you for 2 reasons:
1) Spared your time to analyse  2) Enlightened me abt an auction that we (local club members here) 100 pct have no idea.

Some details abt behavioral disorders :
Th difference between a right&wrong spirit in giving criticism is like th difference between manliness&childishness.
LOL might be some kind of culture difference of unusual lifestyles for me.

I have no time for debate stuff. Instead I've an offer. Why don't you follow such simple steps ?

1)Click search, type "arrogance" into top Search by Keywords box
2) Search where : all forums
3) in 90 days show results as posts.

There you'll see threads. It's madness. Even such people shows me zillions gold medals i never pay a dime to hire. I prefer to hire matured & polite professionals.

What i saw on threads abt arrogance : intolerance of competing ideas.

No worries. I am firm vs indifference & gloating & sarcasm. I know they are not wise and only trying to cover weakness with false dilemmas. Demagogy is still trend amongst puppies.

I understand from whence you come

But, if you read closely, you will see that posts in the B/I forum are met (almost universally) with polite and usually helpful advice.. and even if not helpful, the advice is well-intentioned.

When we move into other fora, tolerance for 'silly' posts decreases. And when one posts in the A/E forum, well.. those of us who read that forum do so in the hope of seeing something we can get our teeth into. It's sort of like playing on BBO. Many very weak players (I am sure they don't know how weak they are) claim to be expert. If they sit down against me and I have labelled my table as 'real expert' or 'strong expert' and show themselves to be weak.. I get pissed off. They are lying to me and wasting my time.. when I set up a table that way, I am looking for and hoping to give a strong game.. if i want a turkey shoot, I can go to my local club. Is that arrogance? Maybe, but 'if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'.

To a lesser degree, posting a B/I hand in the A/E forum is going to annoy some of the readers, and will generate an LOL or similar response.

I understand what you say about people at your club not having much idea about bidding... but maybe that should prompt you to consider the B/I forum for a while.

As for your comments about the stature of the better players here.. maybe there are none of the world's top 10 or top 50 (well, Fred would certainly be in my list of top 50), but there are some extremely strong players here. And the combined knowledge of the 'top 10' posters here, whoever you include in that group is so far above the 'average player' that there is no meaningful distinction. The top 10 may not be in the 100th percentile in the world, in terms of knowledge, but they will be in the 99th or better... so if you are in the 30-60th, do you think that you are being poorly served? I don't know where you play, but my guess would be that BBF affords you free advice from players of a skill level you'd almost never otherwise get to meet. If you want to appreciate that, and learn from it, accept that when an expert sees a post as a waste of time, he or she may let you know about it. That is a learning process too.

[H_KARLUK]

Your idea :Maybe, but 'if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen'.

My idea :Too much heat spoils th food.

Thanks