[babalu1997]

Yesterday, I had this hand

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I open 3 spades.

my partner had a fairly good hand and passed, i feel he could have been a little daring. The rest of the world played in 4 spades.

In the postmortem he goes on to say that i did not have a prempt hand because prempt hands have no void and no side aces.
Well I explained that my prempts show less than 1.5 quick tricks and are not subject to this void restriction, and that, just in case he was sitting on a monster with diamonds i could show the diamonds.

While I cannot exactly fault him for not bidding 4 spades, I think my prempt is just fine, and i will take my lumps if this sort of prempt is a losing one.

This was his hand, ATB:

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thanks

[jillybean]

1st seat I assume?
I don't like 3♠ at all, your partner gets 0% of the blame for missing game.

[nigel_k]

I can't say that your style is a definite loser but you are rolling the dice and so have to accept the bad results as well as the good ones. Obviously if partner has a spade honour and a couple of other cards but nothing in clubs you will miss a good game on some hands where he would never dream of moving. Here he has a marginal invite and you probably make 11 tricks. I would probably have bid game on your partner's hand but with no great confidence it would make.

[wank]

of course there's no prohibition on opening a pre-empt with a void or an outside ace. however there should be a prohibition on opening a pre-empt on a crappy suit when you're extremely playable in 2 other suits including a major. your hand is fantastic in support of hearts for example.

whether partner should bid 4 spades or not depends on the vulnerability and your style. opposite one of my vulnerable pre-empts it would be an easy 4 spade bid, but many people on this forum would expect their partner to be going off in 3 spades if it was non-vul.

[Bbradley62]

I think partner has an automatic raise. 4♠ is likely to make, and on the vast majority of hands where 4♠ goes down, opponents can make 4♥. I agree with Nigel that opening 3♠ on hands like this (which I like to do) is accepting that your results will be a little more random than more disciplined pairs' results.

[mike777]

100% north.

why open random preempts at the three level and never tell partner ahead of time or play some style that your partner dislikes so much.

[hotShot]

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Would you still preempt 3♠ and do you still want partner to bid 4♠?

I don't think that preempt is a sin, but once you decide to preempt, you give up close games.

[nigel_k]

hotShot, on 2011-January-09, 15:57, said:

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Would you still preempt 3♠ and do you still want partner to bid 4♠?

I don't think that preempt is a sin, but once you decide to preempt, you give up close games.

4♠ is still ok on this layout. You can ruff a heart so need trumps to play for one loser, i.e. 2-2 or stiff honour so that's half the 3-1 breaks. It's about 65%.

[Fluffy]

Both players made reasonable decisions here, both could have done otherwise but didn't. My advice is to find boards were real mistakes happened and worry about them.

IMO south is closer to take the other action (hence more to blame) than north.

[vuroth]

I wouldn't dream of moving with south, but some people I play with open 3♠ with dreck.

[ArtK78]

The 3♠ opening is fine as far as I am concerned.

The responding hand is a coin flip between pass and 4♠. I would probably pass at matchpoints (especially with some of my more "creative" partners) but bid 4♠ at IMPs.

[bftboy]

No real blame here, both decisions are close, but, FWIW, I wouldn't preempt in 1st seat with both an outside A and a void. On the given bidding I'd think game is about 50-50 as N so I'd probably bid it at imps, probably not at mp's.