[VM1973]

 gordontd, on 2011-August-05, 02:33, said:

No-one seems to have mentioned the old story of a (supposedly strong) player passing a hand like this and, as all four of them were putting their hands back in the board, asking his partner what he had held. "Oh, just three bare aces". I guess they deserved each other.

btw What is the Ogust response that shows a solid seven-card suit?

To answer your question, 3NT.

Additionally, I should like to point out that your partner will have 3+ card support for you 65.63 percent of the time. Accordingly opening 2♠ in no way rules out reaching 4♠ but also preserves the possibility of reaching 3NT.

[mikeh]

 VM1973, on 2011-August-05, 14:30, said:

To answer your question, 3NT.

Additionally, I should like to point out that your partner will have 3+ card support for you 65.63 percent of the time. Accordingly opening 2♠ in no way rules out reaching 4♠ but also preserves the possibility of reaching 3NT.

65.63%

Either you are funnier than I think you are capable of being, or you are nuts.

[billw55]

 VM1973, on 2011-August-05, 14:30, said:

Additionally, I should like to point out that your partner will have 3+ card support for you 65.63 percent of the time. Accordingly opening 2♠ in no way rules out reaching 4♠ but also preserves the possibility of reaching 3NT.

You lost me there. Are you saying that when you hold a 7 card suit, partner will also hold 3 or more 65% of the time? That obviously cannot be right. In fact it feels suspicious even for a 6 card suit.

edit: yeah I guess mikeh is right, is has the sound of a joke. Good one

[daveharty]

 Scoti, on 2011-August-05, 05:04, said:

Bidding 4 later "showing a better hand" makes no difference here since opener captains this hand, not P.

Disagree with this. The one with more complete information about the partnership assets captains the hand, not necessarily the opener. Since 1S-1NT-4S (for example) generally shows a certain type of hand, and one that's better than this, it's easy to imagine a scenario where your passed hand partner would make a slam move after that start to the auction.

[ggwhiz]

 gordontd, on 2011-August-05, 02:33, said:

No-one seems to have mentioned the old story of a (supposedly strong) player passing a hand like this and, as all four of them were putting their hands back in the board, asking his partner what he had held. "Oh, just three bare aces".

The player had 10 running spades and I believe it was Al Roth?

At a Regional, Doug Fraser once overcalled 1 diamond with 1 heart on 9 solid, AQJx, void, A intending to bid a graded grand slam force next and convert to spades.

He played it there opposite the stiff K of hearts and went down.

[sfi]

 ggwhiz, on 2011-August-05, 15:12, said:

The player had 10 running spades and I believe it was Al Roth?

I was told it was Bobby Nail.

Bridge urban legend?

[mikeh]

 ggwhiz, on 2011-August-05, 15:12, said:

The player had 10 running spades and I believe it was Al Roth?

At a Regional, Doug Fraser once overcalled 1 diamond with 1 heart on 9 solid, AQJx, void, A intending to bid a graded grand slam force next and convert to spades.

He played it there opposite the stiff K of hearts and went down.

Doug's one of my regular partners, and is known for telling stories on himself...always an endearing trait. My favourite, which he told me within minutes of the end of the match in which it arose, came some ten years or so ago and from the round-robin at the CNTC (the canadian team trials). RHO had in essence driven to 7♥ opposite an opening hand that had described short hearts. Doug made the standard expert lead of a small trump from his two small, eschewing the alternative lead of a diamond away from his Queen.

Thus he was surprised when the dummy hit with a heart void and the diamond Queen.


I gather declarer was very surprised to make the contract when his hearts were AKJxxxx opposite void

[the hog]

 VM1973, on 2011-August-05, 14:30, said:

To answer your question, 3NT.

Additionally, I should like to point out that your partner will have 3+ card support for you 65.63 percent of the time. Accordingly opening 2♠ in no way rules out reaching 4♠ but also preserves the possibility of reaching 3NT.

You are incorrect. 3NT shows AKQ to 6, not 7

[the hog]

 daveharty, on 2011-August-05, 15:07, said:

Disagree with this. The one with more complete information about the partnership assets captains the hand, not necessarily the opener. Since 1S-1NT-4S (for example) generally shows a certain type of hand, and one that's better than this, it's easy to imagine a scenario where your passed hand partner would make a slam move after that start to the auction.

3 points
1) Who says responder won't have more complete information and "captains the hand?" You sound like Gee
2) The comment was in context of partner not making much noise, if any, and opener then bidding 4 by himself.
3) In answer to 1S-1NT-4S 1NT bidder making a slam try - hardly! Opener has denied holding a stiff and probably holds a 7222. (No auto splinter).

[nige1]

John Collings was one of Britain's finest players. AFAIR, in the European Teams Championships, at favourable vulnerability, under the old scoring, John held solid ♣, John's LHO opened 2♣ and his RHO gave a positive response, so he tried a psychic 4♠ jump overcall with doubleton ♠ Tx. Unfortunately his partner, Jonathan Cansino (another superb player) took him seriously and, holding ♠ Qxx, raised to 7♠ as an advance sacrifice. Opponents doubled and John had to play well to salvage a couple of tricks. LHO switched to a cunning small ♠ from ♠AKxx but John rose with dummy's ♠Q

[daveharty]

 the hog, on 2011-August-05, 18:43, said:

3 points
1) Who says responder won't have more complete information and "captains the hand?" You sound like Gee
2) The comment was in context of partner not making much noise, if any, and opener then bidding 4 by himself.
3) In answer to 1S-1NT-4S 1NT bidder making a slam try - hardly! Opener has denied holding a stiff and probably holds a 7222. (No auto splinter).

1. I didn't say responder won't have more information. In fact, he frequently will. I said the one with more complete information "captains the hand", and the only reason I used that terminology was because I was quoting Scoti.
2. I realized what the context of the comment was. I was stating my belief that Scoti's assertion that "bidding 4 later 'showing a better hand' makes no difference here since opener captains the hand, not P" wasn't necessarily accurate, especially for those who use the jump to 4M (after opening 1M) to show a specific type of hand.
3. I wasn't aware that 1M-1NT-4M guaranteed, or even suggested, a 7-2-2-2 hand. Even if that were the case, however, I can imagine hands where I would want to make a slam try as responder; specifically a hand that had a 3 card limit raise or something similar. Not everyone plays Drury. I'm sure you are correct that the frequency would be pretty low, but again, this specific example was just contrived on the spur of the moment to illustrate my point about responder not necessarily being a non-party in the auction after opener jumps to 4M. I'm sure there are better examples.

[the hog]

"3. I wasn't aware that 1M-1NT-4M guaranteed, or even suggested, a 7-2-2-2 hand" It doesn't necessarily. I said this is the most likely holding. Opener won't have a singleton as most, strong partnerships play autosplinters on this auction.

[chasetb]

 ggwhiz, on 2011-August-05, 15:12, said:

At a Regional, Doug Fraser once overcalled 1 diamond with 1 heart on 9 solid, AQJx, void, A intending to bid a graded grand slam force next and convert to spades.

He played it there opposite the stiff K of hearts and went down.

That's crazy. First, someone should have called the director, because that hand has 14 cards. Second, that's crazy even by my standards. Just bid the AQJx suit naturally and then Exclusion KC if I could (if not, blast 6 or 7 depending on your luck. If it were today, I would bid 6 and probably go down).

On this hand, I feel that you have 7 sure winners and can maybe develop an 8th trick in Clubs. This screams opening 4♠ whether or not you play namyatS

[bill1157]

 the hog, on 2011-August-05, 18:33, said:

You are incorrect. 3NT shows AKQ to 6, not 7

I know this is probably true, but it sure seems too restrictive. Why couldn't it also show a weak 2 with most of the strength outside the suit?

[gwnn]

Because you can say it's a good hand with a weak suit

[JLOGIC]

 gwnn, on 2011-August-06, 05:02, said:

Because you can show your feature

FYP

[gwnn]

 VM1973, on 2011-August-05, 14:30, said:

 gordontd, on 2011-August-05, 02:33, said:

No-one seems to have mentioned the old story of a (supposedly strong) player passing a hand like this and, as all four of them were putting their hands back in the board, asking his partner what he had held. "Oh, just three bare aces". I guess they deserved each other.

btw What is the Ogust response that shows a solid seven-card suit?

To answer your question, 3NT.

Additionally, I should like to point out that your partner will have 3+ card support for you 65.63 percent of the time. Accordingly opening 2♠ in no way rules out reaching 4♠ but also preserves the possibility of reaching 3NT.

The question was about Ogust, so maybe this is the first time in history that gwnn wins an argument against JLOGIC?

[VM1973]

 mikeh, on 2011-August-05, 15:00, said:

65.63%

Either you are funnier than I think you are capable of being, or you are nuts.

It's simple math.

There are 39 unknown cards, 13 of which are in partner's hand.
The number of hands possible with the following number of spades in partner's hand are:

0) 8122425444
1) 48734552664
2) 1.21836E+11
3) 1.62449E+11
4) 1.21836E+11
5) 48734552664
6) 8122425444

As you can see, the probability of partner having 0 is the same as the probability of partner having all 6 remaining cards. Same with 1 or 5 as well as 2 or 4. Three is the most likely holding.

There are 5.19835E+11 possible hands your partner might have. Accordingly the chance of your partner having each holding is:

0 1.56%
1 9.38%
2 23.44%
3 31.25%
4 23.44%
5 9.38%
6 1.56%

Now anyone with a calculator can add up 31.25+23.44+9.38+1.56 and reach 65.63%

Would it also interest you to know that given this holding the chances of your partner having 5+ hearts is 80.62 percent? In fact your partner's most likely holding given this hand is 6 hearts some 22.56% of the time. So for those of you who looked at that hand and thought "the opponents almost certainly have a heart fit" ... think again.

[gwnn]

39 outstanding cards, 6 of which are spades.

if n is the number of spades partner has, then the probability of that is

p(n)= C(33,13-n) * C (6,n)/ C(39,13).

C(33,13-n) means that we need 13-n cards out of the 33 non-spades.
C(6,n) means that we need n cards out of the 6 spades.
The product of the two above number is what we are looking for.

C(39,13) means that we need 13 cards out of the 39 outstanding cards, i.e. all possible hands.

enter wolfram alpha:
http://www.wolframal...C{n%2C0%2C6}%5D

n | p(n), %
0 | {7.05659}
1 | {26.2102}
2 | {35.7412}
3 | {22.7915}
4 | {7.12234}
5 | {1.02562}
6 | {0.0525957}

p(3)+p(4)+p(5)+p(6)~31%.

I am not sure what you missed but my maths looks correct to me and your result is clearly wrong. There are 6 outstanding spades and 3 opponents, so the expected value of their spade holdings is 2. My values conform to that (you can check it yourself by summing up n*p(n), it will give you 2).

[gwnn]

I am puzzled by your calculations, I see you are calling the number of hands with 6 spades and 0 spades each as 8122425444, but that is exactly C(39,13), i.e. the total number of hands partner might have. That is wrong.

Your number for the total number of hands seems to be just a sum of the above numbers you have, i.e. 64*C[39,13]