[humilities]

Matchpoints

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None vul at matchpoints .. any 3♠ bidders?

[mtvesuvius]

Not I

[jillybean]

Nej

[pooltuna]

LOTT is wrong and more importantly I don't hold a constructive raise or better. So this is an easy pass

[awm]

Pass here.

There are a number of interesting points that can be made about this auction.

In general a 3♠ bid in competition should show a little more than a 2♠ bid with opponents passing. There are several reasons for this. First, you are a level higher so you will need to make another trick. Second, partner does not have space to make any sort of game tries below 4♠; partner will guess to bid game on "game try" hands here and you'd like that to be right more often than not. Third, partner is guaranteed of another chance to bid in the auction, and many of the hands where you could make 3♠ when you hold a trashy hand like this one, he will find a balancing double or 3♠ bid.

When we are unsure whether to raise to 3♠ or not in this sort of auction (I think this hand is a clear pass though) there are a few factors to consider. A fourth trump is very big -- usually it is right to raise when we have a known nine card fit if it's at all close. Diamond shortness can be important -- if we have a bunch of diamonds partner will almost always be able to balance when he has extras (because he is likely short in diamonds)... whereas if we are short in diamonds then partner might have too many diamonds to balance even if he has extras. A related issue is that opponents often have diamond values (people often don't bid 3♦ on a bad suit) so holding either short diamonds or a lot of little diamonds (implying partner is usually short) can be a positive feature, whereas three diamonds to the queen or king is usually a bad holding (since either partner or LHO normally has stiff).

[humilities]

Thanks .. I held the South hand and felt it was a clear pass. However north held:

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and also felt it was a pass. That seemed reasonable too.

4♠ makes due to a fortunate blackage in the D suit, but even +140 or -50 would have been better than the big fat 0 we got for -110.

[ahydra]

humilities, on 2011-January-21, 14:09, said:

Thanks .. I held the South hand and felt it was a clear pass. However north held:

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and also felt it was a pass. That seemed reasonable too.

4♠ makes due to a fortunate blackage in the D suit, but even +140 or -50 would have been better than the big fat 0 we got for -110.

Sometimes pre-empts work That's bridge I'm afraid.

But I think there is a case for North to try 3S holding little defence to 3D and having heard only a weak bid from LHO and nothing from RHO. Particularly NV at matchpoints you should be battling for partscores quite aggressively.

ahydra

[mikestar13]

pooltuna, on 2011-January-21, 09:52, said:

LOTT is wrong and more importantly I don't hold a constructive raise or better. So this is an easy pass

Interesting that you say that LOTT is wrong but reach the same conclusions. The law indicates that it is wrong to bid 3 over 3 with less than 17 total trumps--so far as this hand knows there are only eight spades and no reason to think they have nine diamonds; additionally, ♦Q suggests defending--the trick total is likely to be low.

[kriegel]

mikestar13, on 2011-January-22, 22:40, said:

Interesting that you say that LOTT is wrong but reach the same conclusions. The law indicates that it is wrong to bid 3 over 3 with less than 17 total trumps--so far as this hand knows there are only eight spades and no reason to think they have nine diamonds; additionally, ♦Q suggests defending--the trick total is likely to be low.

I believe what he meant was that the LOTT says to pass in this situation as opposed to commenting on its fallibility.

Paraphrasing: "The LOTT says this is the wrong situation for bidding."

Maybe I'm wrong.