Talk about Bridge

[Zag]

We started talking a bit about Bridge in an unrelated thread, so I thought I would start a new thread actually devoted to it.

[Antrax]

I'm still a beginner so I'll mostly do reading, but where do you play? BBO? If you can bear playing with someone who always signs off in game (we haven't learned how to bid slams yet) I'd love being one of your random partners.
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[Pablo]

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[Zag]

LOL, Pablo. Not that kind either.

I'm sorry to say that I play on Yahoo!. But I'll give BBO a look. I'll be Zag if it's available, or Zag24, or Zag1024. On Yahoo! I am zag.steve.

[Antrax]

It's okay, I had to resort to Antraxxx
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[Poisonium]

[Zag]

Ok. Now that we've got that out of our systems.

I was trying out BBO today, and I picked up an 18-point hand, 4-2-3-4 distribution (Ax in hearts) so I opened 1NT. My partner bid 2C and declared Stayman. I responded 2S, he said 2NT, and I went to 3NT. He put down this hand:

S: K
H: KQJxxxxx
D: Axx
C: x

Since I had the other three aces, I took 13 tricks easily, on any lead. My question: Was he a complete moron, or only a little bit of a moron? My opinion was that I described my hand pretty precisely, so I have to trust him at that point. What should he have bid? With 13 points and 8 good hearts opposite a 1NT opener, would you use Stayman, or just head right to 3, 4, or even 6 hearts? Or what? How should this auction have gone?

(I'm trying to imagine a 1NT opening hand opposite this one that won't have a decent chance for 6H. It's possible to construct one and still be missing two aces, but it's a challenge.)

[wordcross]

I'd love to take up bridge one of these days. I play enough Spades that I can pretty much play on autopilot. And I get annoyed by enough of the "experts" who can't play worth shit. It's about time I graduate.
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[tally*]

For Zag, from my mother

[Antrax]

I don't think he was that big of an idiot. Singleton K in spade isn't that hot, and 1NT is most often 15-17 so with his 13 points you're short of a slam.
What I was taught to do in this situation is bid 4h, showing six hearts and 10+ points (though I imagine it would be wiser to transfer to hearts instead of bidding directly, so the weaker hand will end up as dummy. We just haven't learned transfers yet)

Oh, and Zag, didn't you prefer the BBO interface? I really like it (the flash-based, not the older Win application, though the application seems to disconnect a lot less)
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[Trojan Horse]

This is what I get for not regularly checking the SAC forum. I missed the start of an interesting new thread.

Zag, that guy was an idiot, but not because he didn't push for slam. He knows you have at least 10 hearts between the two of you. A heart contract is obviously the way to go. I don't see any point in bidding Stayman here; he should be thinking heart contract, regardless of your distribution.

But the biggest mistake was his bid of 2NT. Hello... even if you have an absolute minimum, game is certain. If you had a minimum 1NT bid, you would've passed his 2NT, and would've missed a cinchy game. Dumb dumb dumb.

Personally, I would've chickened out on pushing for slam, and I would've bid 4H over your 1NT.

[Dragon Phoenix]

Opposite a 16-18 1NT,chances of a slam are pretty high, even when the opener has 16 points. The only worry is missing 2 aces, so depending on what convention you agreed upon, asking for aces, followed by 6 hearts would be the way to go. Stayman (unless obligatory preoaration for asking aces*) is ridiculous, the 2NT bid even worse.

*) even if you play blackwood for aces, some pairs play a 1NT-4NT as a limit raise, asking to bid 6 with 18 points. If that is the case, Stayman followed by Blackwood would be OK to get the aces info.
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[MNOWAX]

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[Quailman]

[Zag]

Thanks for the response.

I'd like to re-ask my first question: What do people like for opening 2 bids -- strong or weak? For either one, how do you define it?

I've seen Yahoo! players open with a "strong 2" with as little as 16 points and a 5-card suit. I had always thought it was 20 points counting distribution.

[MNOWAX]

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[MNOWAX]

[Zag]

[Antrax]

We were taught to open 2c as strong, forcing to game, regardless of the quality of the club suit, and 2 everything else is weak, where weak is 6-9 HCP, at least six cards, and varying requirements on honors in the suit - either any of the top three, or two of top three, or anything else your partnership likes. There's a good article on it on the ACBL - http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/play/Commonly_Used_Conventions/weaktwobids.pdf
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[Dragon Phoenix]

Weak two pretty much as Antrax quotes. If you want to play the strong two (diamonds/hearts/spades), typically 5-6 or more of the suit bid and about 20-22 points. I have never come across a strong two based on about 15 points, but then again, I have not played bridge since 1998, and not competitive bridge since 1988.
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[Zag]

Both of those are what I thought, though I didn't know about the honors requirement. So what is the point of a weak 2 bid? Is it for its pre-emptive value? Or is it hoping that partner has a strong enough hand that his knowledge that you have a long suit headed by honors will give him what he needs to get to slam? At the high end of it (8-9 points, 7+ cards), I would probably be using a pre-emptive 3 bid.

I guess that with 20+ points, an artificial bid of 2c still leaves you plenty of bidding room to get to the right contract. Given that, it is safe to find some meaningful convention for the other 2 openers, even if it is pretty rare that the specialized information those bids carry is only infrequently useful.

So, assuming you are using weak 2's, what are the appropriate responses to 2c opener? Do you use a transfer-type bid? Since you don't really want to be putting the 20-point hand down as dummy, that makes sense. (But that would mean 2NT for clubs and 3c for diamonds. ick) What if you have a complete Yarborough?

(Ok, I could go look these things up in Antrax's link, I guess, but I'm also trying to spur some conversation. Anyone else have an interesting hand to post?)

[Quailman]

I haven't played in so long that the only bidding system I remember using with my partner was the 12-14 convention.

If I look at my hand and it sucks, I pretend to count the cards and say "I only have 12 cards." If my partner's hand is also pretty bad he says "I have 14." and we call a misdeal and throw our hands together in the middle of the table. But if my partner has a good hand he'll say "Are you sure? You'd better count them again."

[Samadhi]

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[Mackay]

As someone who loves the game 500 (which, from what I can tell, is sort of the love-child of euchre and bridge?) and has no idea about bridge itself, can I request a basic explanation of how the game actually plays, if it doesn't dumb the thread down too much?

I can comprehend the dynamic of the bidding you're talking about, but the style is pretty clearly different to anything I've played (even just being able to bid "1NT" as mentioned in this thread instead of having a minimum of 6S takes it out of the realm of what I understand), as is the scoring. It seems like the bidding strategy is far more complex, but how different is the actual gameplay?

[Zag]

You are correct that the bidding represents the number of tricks you need to take, but you always add 6 to the number bid. So, if I bid 3NT, I need to take 9 tricks to make my bid. So, as compared to those other games, the minimum bid is 7 tricks, which is a 1 bid.

It plays much like other trick-taking games, except that there is the dummy. That is one hand (the one opposite the declarer -- the person who won the bidding) which is revealed for everyone to see. The declarer actually plays both hands, and the player who originally held that hand just sits there (or shuffles and deals the other deck, so as not to waste time). This affects gameplay a lot, because it is far more possible to figure out what the opponents have, and to make strategic plays to win extra tricks.

The extra information actually makes the game harder, because the expectations of how much you can figure out has gone up even more than the obvious information you have. (Also, of course, everyone can see the dummy, so it gives about as much information to the opposing players.)

I won't bother trying to explain all the rules -- I'm sure you could google a better explanation than I'm likely to come up with. If you do, look for "Rubber Bridge Rules," because you have to understand those before duplicate bridge rules will make any sense at all.

[Antrax]

Mackay, the key thing about bridge is that bidding doubles, beyond a way of competing for a final contract, as a way of exchanging information between partners about their hand. Depending on the specific bidding system used, some of the bids are natural (so if I bid a suit, it means I have this suit and want it to be the trump) and some are artificial (if I bid 2 clubs immediately it says nothing about clubs, instead telling my partner I have a monster hand and trying to continue from there) - and some agreements are both (for instance, in the system I was taught you would only open 1H or 1S if you had at least five of that suit - so you sometimes find yourself opening in diamonds despite having your strength in hearts and spades).
I'm learning it now. Playing the hand at an okay level is relatively easy, and bidding without interference up to game level is also quite manageable, but beyond that it's very challenging, and I personally haven't even begun on an entire section of tournament play, where you sometimes choose to play a losing contract just to prevent your opponents from playing their winning one.
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[MNOWAX]

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[Zag]

[Antrax]

I hadn't realised anyone really played rubber bridge anymore.
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[Zag]

Are you saying that you've never had to figure out, on the fly, how to adapt your bidding to account for the fact that you have a 40 part score?

[Trojan Horse]

That's an irrelevant question. Yahoo only has rubber bridge, and my opponents there rarely adapt their bidding to the part scores. (They rarely care about the scoring at all. )

[Antrax]

More than that, I have no clue what adapting your bid to a part score means. I started a bridge course about a year ago and it's going excruciatingly slowly, as we (girlfriend and I) are the only people below 40 in the room. It provides a lot of amusement, but it also means I'm fairly clueless about many things.
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[Zag]

Well, I disagree with TH. I mostly play on Yahoo, at the Intermediate level. People mostly care about the score, and sometimes even care about part score.

The first level of adapting is to understand that there are only two reasons to bid above game -- either to choose a contract that is more makeable, given the shape of your hand, or as a slam try.

So, say we are partners. Normally, if the bidding goes

Me: 1S --- You: 2D
Me: 2S --- You: 3S

Then your last bid is saying that you have support in spades, probably only 3 cards, but only 10-12 points, since it was not enough to go all the way to game. If I have a little more than what I have promised so far, I have the option to go to game, or I can pass.

However, consider the same auction if we have a 40 part score. My 2S is already game. So the 3S must be a slam try. It is saying that you have not enough to go straight to 6S opposite a minimum opener, but if I have extra value, it is worth considering. If I have, say, 16 points and a couple of diamond honors (meaning that the secondary suit is likely runnable once trump is drawn), I might start exploring the possibility.

If you really trust your partner, you might even adapt blackwood and gerber based on a part score. If you have 40 part score, then 2NT is game, so you could say that 3NT is now blackwood, for instance. But you'd have to have solid prior agreement.

[Pablo*]

[Zag]

That's a good point. Even if you and your partner come up with a private convention that no one else knows about, you are required to disclose it to your opponents before you start play. The hope is that the information you give when you make certain bids is more helpful to your partner than to the opponent (which it usually is).

[Zag]

[Scurra]

Well that always assumes that the other pair haven't bid in the interim. The thing that always killed me was that they were allowed to bid as well...

In other words, if you've got a complete blank of a hand, then it's the other pair that are likely to be playing unless there is a really weird split. So I'm not sure that worrying about how to respond to your partner is actually a problem in this scenario, especially if they play a weak 2. Does that make sense? (I realise it's not really an answer though.)
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[Quailman]

Isn't part of the reason for a weak 2 to interfere with the opposing players' bidding? If each of them has a reasonably bidable (?) hand, it might be tough to jump in at the 2-level. So you end up with a partial in a suit that you hopefully have a few of to prevent the opponents from bidding a game.

[Zag]

Right. But in the weak-2 convention, a 2C bid is very strong: 22+ points (so there is no way to make a weak 2 bid in clubs). It doesn't say anything about suit, though, so it might include a void in clubs, for instance. This actually makes a lot of sense, because the preemptive value of 2c bid is almost completely absent.

And if your partner has 22+ points, it is very likely that the opponents won't have anything to bid, even if you have almost nothing.

I did just look this up, since I wasn't patient. I found this: http://www.bridge7.com/xbric5.aspx They say that the response of 2d is weak (8 points or less) and also artificial, purely for weakness. If you actually want to bid clubs or diamonds, you have to do it at the 3 level.

Also, even after your 2d bid, after your partner bids again, you are STILL forced to rebid. Otherwise you'll be missing a game if he has one by himself.

[Antrax]

I did 6NT! http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?myhand=M-22310882-1270099150
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