[Quartic]

Playing IMPs (Butler) you pick up a distributional hand in 3rd seat:

---

What now?

[billw55]

Egads. It feels a little like trying to play tennis at night with the lights out. I guess I'll try 5♠.

Pass is possible, but part of the benefit is allowing partner choice. Unfortunately I have already tanked so long that if partner acts we're probably headed for a ruling.

[P_Marlowe]

X, ... take your pick, I know, where the spades and the diamonds, are, hopefully partner has
some hearts.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[gszes]

odds of the opps making 5c are slim however I am anything
but certain the odds of us making 5s are slim. Our hand was
was a 4s bid with noint and the fact that the singleton is a club
makes our hand just a touch better. If p has a hand where they
are interested in slamming they will rarely be diappointed with
our 4 trumps to the K 2nd round club control and a great side
source of tricks (diamonds).

I would be happier at MP trying x since any positive is usually
worth at least 30%. At IMPS 5s is unlikely to be a huge disaster
and could be worth a ton of imps especially if p has a slammish
hand.

[wyman]

I'd bid 5S, but I'm not confident at all that it's right.

[ArtK78]

gszes, on 2012-August-24, 07:52, said:

odds of the opps making 5c are slim .....

This reminds me of a hand which was played in an important match many years ago and reported in The Bridge World. Edgar Kaplan wrote the report of the match and on a particular hand Alan Sontag doubled 5♠. Kaplan wrote something to the effect that Sontag's double was apparently based on the theory that on any given hand it was unlikely that the opponents could make 11 tricks with spades as trump. Unfortunately for Sontag, this was one of those hands.

I don't know why you think that the "odds of the opps making 5c are slim." The little information that you have about the hand is (1) that your side has at least 9 spades (2) that your side has a minimum of about half the deck in high card points and (3) RHO preempted 5♣ over 1♠, which indicates that he has extreme club length. So, while the a priori odds of either side making 11 tricks with clubs as trump on a given hand are small, this may in fact be one of those rare hands.

[kenrexford]

This is one of those funny situations where looking around the room (at Matchpoints) is more important than thinking.

I mean, before reading any responses, I made a mental guess that the majority of posts would call for a 5♠ call, because I would guess that people bid 5♠. That proved correct. This argues for bidding 5♠. For, if 5♠ is down three on normal defense and normal declaring, I expect to on average be down two with a field on average down 4. So, I expect to win even when 5♠ is an idiot contract. If I double or pass or bid something else, however, my result rests on the percentage of time that my judgment to do some other move proves correct (or all roads lead to Rome anyway). So, the equity seems to be to do that which the other idiots would do, regardless of the logic, when the judgment as to what to do is somewhat a matter of throwing a coin. Even if the "right" call is heavily favored by logic and theory, it is of dubious value if the "right" call is marginally likely to prevail over the idiot call, if the field makes the idiot call.

I am not saying that 5♠ is an idiot call. What I am saying is that my initial thought is to probably bid 5♠ because I expect that to be the field bid. I need a lot of reasoning to get off that decision in this type of WTF situation.

[lalldonn]

I don't see how someone can not bid 5♠. I couldn't live with myself if partner had A A A and just rolled 6, or if LHO had some club support and I didn't put him to a similar guess to the one I currently face.

[blackshoe]

Last night as I was going through the results of yesterday afternoon's session, and looking at the DD analysis of the par contract, I came to the conclusion that either the DD analysis is completely horked, or nobody around here knows how to play bridge. I know that there can be flaws in the former, but I'm really leaning towards the latter. One example: par is 3S N down one. Nine of twelve pairs are in 2S. Five of the nine made two. The other four made three. The other three pairs were in some EW contract at the two or three level, making.

[rmnka447]

I was bidding 4 ♠ originally anyhow because of having 10 cards in 2 suits and at least 4 trumps.

RHO can't be making a frivolous preempt red vs. red.

With shortness in ♣s and a very distributional hand, I'm bidding on to 5 ♠.

[Quantumcat]

lalldonn, on 2012-August-24, 14:31, said:

or if LHO had some club support and I didn't put him to a similar guess to the one I currently face.

true! I'm sure someone said once that if you are tossing up between two calls, the one that gives the opponents more guesses is the one to go with

[Phil]

5♠. Seems you could come up with some creative ideas with a 5♦ call similar to what some play over a 4♣ overcall.

[billw55]

blackshoe, on 2012-August-24, 14:33, said:

Last night as I was going through the results of yesterday afternoon's session, and looking at the DD analysis of the par contract, I came to the conclusion that either the DD analysis is completely horked, or nobody around here knows how to play bridge. I know that there can be flaws in the former, but I'm really leaning towards the latter. One example: par is 3S N down one. Nine of twelve pairs are in 2S. Five of the nine made two. The other four made three. The other three pairs were in some EW contract at the two or three level, making.

Sounds pretty ordinary to me. You are surprised that, on a partscore deal, twelve tables failed to bid the same partscore? Or make the exact same number of tricks? When has that ever happened?

I suppose you could be right, maybe the results are nonsense, but show me the deal. No way I conclude that from the scores alone.

[blackshoe]

It was an overall impression from looking at the hand records. Actually, that was probably a bad example, because it's been my impression that frequently when my partner and I bid to the par contract and get the par result, we get a bad matchpoint score because only a couple of tables do that. On the example hand, we were actually one of the four pairs sharing the NS top.

[Fluffy]

Quartic: It was nice to see you around playing on the new site

I always take the push on hands like this, 5♣ bidder is more likelly to make than to be going wild, bad players on the site use to go low, not high from what I have managed to gather. In general raising cannot be very bad, but it can be very wrong.

[Quartic]

Fluffy, on 2012-August-29, 01:12, said:

Quartic: It was nice to see you around playing on the new site

I always take the push on hands like this, 5♣ bidder is more likelly to make than to be going wild, bad players on the site use to go low, not high from what I have managed to gather. In general raising cannot be very bad, but it can be very wrong.

Yeah, its interesting, though very high variance! On this hand I did bid 5♠ and my partner was left to play there. If I recall correctly, he lost the 3 missing aces, for a (near) top. I think the defence could have found a ruff for 2 off.

[Fluffy]

Quartic, on 2012-August-29, 01:24, said:

Yeah, its interesting, though very high variance! On this hand I did bid 5♠ and my partner was left to play there. If I recall correctly, he lost the 3 missing aces, for a (near) top. I think the defence could have found a ruff for 2 off.

its very random on the free dailys, but if you try the payigntournaments, the level is very high there.

[han]

I also consider 5S obviously right. It can be cold on a suitable minimal hand, and it can be a good save. If partner bids 6S, I'd certainly expect it to make.

[phil_20686]

blackshoe, on 2012-August-24, 14:33, said:

Last night as I was going through the results of yesterday afternoon's session, and looking at the DD analysis of the par contract, I came to the conclusion that either the DD analysis is completely horked, or nobody around here knows how to play bridge. I know that there can be flaws in the former, but I'm really leaning towards the latter. One example: par is 3S N down one. Nine of twelve pairs are in 2S. Five of the nine made two. The other four made three. The other three pairs were in some EW contract at the two or three level, making.

Lol, that seems quite ordinary, I remember a board from a university club where four tables played in 2S NS and the other three played in 2S by east. We thought it had been misboarded, but then it turned out that opener had a 4333 15-17 hand in acol land, so at some tables it went 1S p 2S AP, and at others, it went 1N 2S AP. between the 7 tables, every number of tricks between 3 and 9 was made by north south.

Or another hand, where NS are cold for grand in spades, and 3/7 tables played in partscore, and one of them had obviously bid to the level of their ability, because of their fifteen top tricks they managed to make just eight of them.

[han]

Yes Phil, I was tired and got locked out of my hand. Do you really need to bring up that hand again and again?