[Zelandakh]

I went to the local club for the first time in a few months lately. Sadly, my (personal) performance review was "could do better". Here are some of the interesting decisions. If I had gotten them all right we would probably have won.

As it is club bridge, the standard ranges from perpetual novice up to good intermediate. About 3 of the opposition pairs are fairly good and you choose to sit down opposite one of them for the first round. This pair are good bidders are solid (but not great) card players. Just to put your task in perspective, you and your partner are not the best card players in the room so you cannot expect to win by simply taking more tricks than the rest. Instead, you have adopted an aggressive bidding style to accentuate the importance of this part of the game at your table. Very few of the opponents are good at handling this style.

That said, you start off first hand with a picture of perfection:

---

Any takers for stepping into this auction? It is favourable. Or perhaps this is just my first attempt at creating a unanimous poll...

[Hanoi5]

They have a powerhouse or partner's got diamonds. I'd rather let them get to whatever contract they can reach and see if partner can defeat them. I really don't see an alternative to Pass.

[straube]

I want my bids to mean something to partner. I pass, too.

[billw55]

If I was going to psyche, I would have done it in first seat. And no, I wouldn't do that either.

I can't think what the point of this question is. Did someone in the field do something here?

[JLOGIC]

Come on man!

[nige1]

Zelandakh, on 2013-May-14, 09:06, said:

I went to the local club for the first time in a few months lately. Sadly, my (personal) performance review was "could do better". Here are some of the interesting decisions. If I had gotten them all right we would probably have won.
As it is club bridge, the standard ranges from perpetual novice up to good intermediate. About 3 of the opposition pairs are fairly good and you choose to sit down opposite one of them for the first round. This pair are good bidders are solid (but not great) card players. Just to put your task in perspective, you and your partner are not the best card players in the room so you cannot expect to win by simply taking more tricks than the rest. Instead, you have adopted an aggressive bidding style to accentuate the importance of this part of the game at your table. Very few of the opponents are good at handling this style.
That said, you start off first hand with a picture of perfection:
Any takers for stepping into this auction? It is favourable. Or perhaps this is just my first attempt at creating a unanimous poll...

---

IMO, Zelandakh has succeeded in his latter aim.
Pass = 10, 2♠/3♣/3♠/4♣/etc = 2, Double/2♥/2N = 1.

[PhilKing]

Four Hearts!

Or maybe Pass. Close.

[Lord Molyb]

7nt

[kuhchung]

wat

is this really Zelandakh

[Lord Molyb]

inb4 partner actually had 6 diamonds to the AKQJ10 and 4 hearts to the AJ and made a trap pass over 1♦

[TheoKole]

2 ♠. At least there will be some truth in your bid.

Theo

[Fluffy]

I hate zel for being able to put suit symbols on polls, I want to know how!

[gwnn]

Suit symbols are ASCII characters. Don't hate.

edit: oops, no they're not.

[Zelandakh]

As has been guessed, there is something of a story behind this one. Someone did poke their nose in here; not just anyone though, it was me. I bid a "somewhat offshape" 3♥ and after LHO doubled, RHO bid a heavy 4♠. Easy +2 for these guys, although 2 tables found some way of only making 11. Only one table bid the slam so that was 6/14. There is a decent chance that this pair would bid slam undisturbed which would have been 1/14. I included this hand not to show how great this action was (it is obviously not the percentage move) but rather to show the attitude taken into these tournaments that was described in the OP. The DD analysis says there are a mere 5 tricks available in hearts, so getting doubled would have been no fun. As an aside, despite this hand my partner complained afterwards that I was not as aggressive as usual.

Edit: I simply copied suit symbols from other posts and pasted them into the poll options. It would be nice if the [] tags worked.

[ahydra]

Quote

...despite this hand my partner complained afterwards that I was not as aggressive as usual.

!!

Why, do you usually pre-empt in this position on a 3-card suit?

ahydra

[Zelandakh]

ahydra, on 2013-May-15, 08:20, said:

Why, do you usually pre-empt in this position on a 3-card suit?

Not yet, but I could try it at the next club tournament perhaps...

No, the thing is that I only ended up declaring 2 out of 20 hands and as a pair we declared less than 50% and both of these things are incredibly unusual. I had a lot of balanced hands and partner constantly had the opps' suits(s). Plus, the LOLs at the club seem to be fed up with us stealing from them on tram tickets and just seem to bid on regardless now. That gives plenty of opportunities for good scores on defence but fewer hands with the dummy.

Overall I thought I bid the hands that I had ultra-aggressively, in some cases (like this one to be honest) recklessly. But my partner like it this way and for the most part it has been good for us.

[mike777]

Zelandakh, on 2013-May-16, 01:31, said:

Not yet, but I could try it at the next club tournament perhaps...

No, the thing is that I only ended up declaring 2 out of 20 hands and as a pair we declared less than 50% and both of these things are incredibly unusual. I had a lot of balanced hands and partner constantly had the opps' suits(s). Plus, the LOLs at the club seem to be fed up with us stealing from them on tram tickets and just seem to bid on regardless now. That gives plenty of opportunities for good scores on defence but fewer hands with the dummy.

Overall I thought I bid the hands that I had ultra-aggressively, in some cases (like this one to be honest) recklessly. But my partner like it this way and for the most part it has been good for us.

Zel you are far ...far away a too good player for this in so many ways.


As you state you went to the local club and had an incredibly unusual night.