[MrAce]

Qx xx Axxxx Kxxx

Here is a cherry pick hand, filling three holes of opener and we are not still cold in 4♠. We probably need ♥ A to be onside most of the time.

Qx JTx xxxx Kxxx and we are probably cold for 4♠ but ironically pd will (probably) pass our invitation. Some may argue that pd should accept the invitation with those major holdings, which is not true imo, because then pd should also accept it with Qx Ax Qxxxx xxxx which has probably very little play on trump lead. As Phil said it really needs very specific holdings to make 4♠ look good.

Pass seems about right to me overall.

[Thiros]

mikeh, on 2012-November-02, 20:31, said:

This is silly because it assumes that game fails only by one trick.

if game goes down, it could very well fail by 2 or even 3 tricks and, if so, there is a very high likelihood that good opps will double. opps who listen to you havea 2-3-4 sequence are far better positioned to apply the axe, when right, than in most game sequences.

How often is partner accepting our invite when game is going two or three down?

[Fluffy]

If cherry picking I rather cherry pick ♠Axxx ♥xx ♦xxx ♣xxxx

[MrAce]

Fluffy, on 2012-November-03, 04:46, said:

If cherry picking I rather cherry pick ♠Axxx ♥xx ♦xxx ♣xxxx

LOL

I seriously LOL at people who bids 1NT and then gives simple preference to spades with this hand.

This type of players deserve opener to hold Kxxxxx AKxx x xx Kxxxxx Axxx xx A etc etc. Or even Kxxxxx AQxx Q xx " Lucky hand, ♥ finesse worked and we have a game, who would think ? "

I know there are jokers out there who bids this hand just like this, just because they play 1M-2M cons. and they don't have a way to show 4 card support and weak hand. But even if i played such poor methods, i would rather show this as a 2♠ raise rather than xx spade and some sort of wide range hand where opener has no idea whether you hold xx or 3 card support or 4 card support at the time when he is about to decide whether he should make a game try or not. Brutal imo.

Cherry picking and no sense are not same thing Gonzalo.

[FrancesHinden]

I voted first (for pass in both cases) before reading the thread, and then was astonished when I saw the voting.
To me this is a clear pass of 2S at all forms of scoring.

I might miss game, but I expect to go off in 2 (never mind 3) more often than game is making.
Maybe if I live in a world where partner needs a sound 6+ HCP to respond, and passes on less, then moving makes more sense, but that world has long gone.

[Phil]

Fluffy, on 2012-November-03, 04:46, said:

If cherry picking I rather cherry pick ♠Axxx ♥xx ♦xxx ♣xxxx

Are you cherry picking your silent opponents too with their nine diamonds and 23 highs?

[PhilKing]

In the 2000 USBC, Steve Garner passed after 1♠-1NT-2♦-2♠ with:

♠Q87632 ♥5 ♦AKQT8 ♣9

Incredibly, game was on ...

Even I would have managed a raise on that (although sticking could clearly be right), but the hand in this thread looks like a clear pass.

[mike777]

emailing this problem around and so far everyone is bidding 3s at imps or mp...

I only surmise many forum posters are bidding something else than 2s with 9-11 hands and 2 spades, and something other than 2nt with 12-13 and 2s. I dont want to force to game if opener can often be 10-11 with this shape.

Perhaps no one opens with less than 12 and this shape.

If 1s then 2h can be a wide range and 2s rebid by responder a wide range you get this as a good problem hand.

If 2s by responder is only 5-7/8 I can see pass as more of an option.

[daveharty]

Full hand:

---

I was West, I thought it was a clear pass at MP, not sure about IMPs. I made +170 despite the trump break, but I think the defense can do better. It sounds like some posters might have bid more aggressively with the East hand but I agreed with my partner's choice.

[mikeh]

daveharty, on 2012-November-05, 09:32, said:

Full hand:

---

I was West, I thought it was a clear pass at MP, not sure about IMPs. I made +170 despite the trump break, but I think the defense can do better. It sounds like some posters might have bid more aggressively with the East hand but I agreed with my partner's choice.

As you know. the result on a given hand is almost meaningless. This problem is best addressed by a simulation, with properly disclosed constraints...I'd suggest partner 5-9 hcp, with doubleton spade and no more than 3 hearts. This ignores the very weak hands with 3 spades, for those who would go through 1N, but I doubt that including those hands would make bidding on more attractive. There are probably some bad 10 counts that might bid this way as well, but many 10 counts wouldn't, so it would be difficult to build constraints that filtered these accurately.

[daveharty]

mikeh, on 2012-November-05, 10:13, said:

As you know. the result on a given hand is almost meaningless.

Yep--I didn't mean to suggest that the result indicated we should be in game. I just found it interesting that you would certainly want to be there looking at just the EW hands here, and even if you give East a weaker hand game might be pretty good. Even if you swap East's heart ace for the jack, it's not the worst game ever. Just made me think that maybe I should at least consider inviting with this kind of hand.

[mike777]

Doing a simulation would be very difficult

You need to agree on a range for opener and for responder....difficult... which makes this a good problem to post..

my emails on this hand basically ran 10-1 to bid....but some thought mp was close..

My guess is no one played responder for 5-7/8. and opener for 12+

[ggwhiz]

daveharty, on 2012-November-05, 21:01, said:

Just made me think that maybe I should at least consider inviting with this kind of hand.

Flip the North and South hands and I'll invite you out the door. As mikeh suggested, any simulation with reasonable constraints will show the answer which I believe will clearly show a long term loss.

[Codo]

You sound as if the trumps are 5-0 and behind my own length, I will go down one or two in game is a proofe that you should not invite with this hand.

I would like to see a simulation too, but it looks quite tricky to make it work. Which are the criteria for 1 NT? How strong is 2 ♠? When will partner accept the invitation?

[lalldonn]

daveharty, on 2012-November-05, 21:01, said:

I just found it interesting that you would certainly want to be there looking at just the EW hands here, and even if you give East a weaker hand game might be pretty good. Even if you swap East's heart ace for the jack, it's not the worst game ever.

If you take away the ten of spades and swap east's minors, making it xx ATx KQxxx xxx, then you would go down even in 3♠ a significant amount of the time, with partner still holding a nice looking maximum for his preference. That partially highlights a problem with stretching to invite here. Partner won't know when his hand is or isn't useful.

[Codo]

lalldonn, on 2012-November-06, 03:02, said:

If you take away the ten of spades and swap east's minors, making it xx ATx KQxxx xxx, then you would go down even in 3♠ a significant amount of the time, with partner still holding a nice looking maximum for his preference. That partially highlights a problem with stretching to invite here. Partner won't know when his hand is or isn't useful.

Yes the ten of spades is a real big card. Tx ATx KQxxx xxx is not bad in 4 Spades, xx ATx KQxxx xx x is.
But these single hand discussions are fruitless- for each maximum hand which fails to make even 3 ♠ you can find a minimum where 4 ♠ is safe and vice versa. I guess that game will make opposite all possible partner hands 30 % of all times, so the descission is closer then most think.

But I am bad in forecasts.

[Fluffy]

MrAce, on 2012-November-03, 05:11, said:

Cherry picking and no sense are not same thing Gonzalo.

Cherry picking is nonsense to me, but I can understand that it has a sense for you

Anyway Phil is right, I should had given partner more diamonds and less clubs to make it plausible.

[mikeh]

mike777, on 2012-November-05, 21:03, said:

Doing a simulation would be very difficult

You need to agree on a range for opener and for responder....difficult... which makes this a good problem to post..

my emails on this hand basically ran 10-1 to bid....but some thought mp was close..

My guess is no one played responder for 5-7/8. and opener for 12+

This makes no sense and suggests you don't understand how a simulation works.

We programme the actual declarer hand, which we know with precision. We then use a hand generator to construct, say, 1000 responding hands based on specified constraints, which are not difficult to determine, altho individual judgement would mean that some players would reject a small percentage of hands that others would find acceptable. However, I'd guess that at least 90% of the hands would be found acceptable by 95% of the readers.

We'd then analyze how many tricks each dummy would allow declarer to make. Unfortunately, to do this on a large scale virtually dictates use of a double dummy analyzer, which will distort the results.

More problematic would be separating out those hands on which responder would/should accept. Here, especially given that we all 'know' declarer's hand, I would expect far more disagreement amongst the readers, if only because I don't think many of us have the ability to ignore what we know, even when we are conscious of the potential for bias.

[mikeh]

I did a simulation of 500 hands, with the constraints I suggested earlier...dummy with 5-9 hcp, 2 spades and no more than 3 hearts. I then did a double dummy analysis.

The process was flawed by several factors. There would in real life be some hands, for many players, where dummy was say 5-7 with 3 spades, and I didn't have those in the mix. There would be a few hands on which responder might choose to bid 3m over 2♥ rather than 2♠. There are going to be other hands on which the opps would bid in real life. Finally, in terms of constraints, I can see making the preference with a bad 10 count, rather than stretching to bid 2N, at least on some hands and I haven't included these.

And I don't particularly like dd analysis as a guide to real life expectations, tho the flaws tend to balance....for every unlikely killing lead that dd suggests, declarer can counter with an impossible real life play, such as dropping Qx offside missing 5 cards and zero clue from the bidding.

Having said all that, I think the conclusions strongly suggest that bidding on is terrible at mps and poor but not outrageous at imps.

14% of the hands fail at the 2 level. 44% fail at the 3 level and 82% fail in game.

I think it fair to assume that some of the 18% of the hands that make 10 tricks would reject the invitation, tho logic suggests that most of the 10 trick hands are maximum and would thus bid game.

Assuming that ALL of the successful hands would accept the invite, and assuming that responder will accept half the time, we find that over 500 hands, we'll be in game 250 times and make only 90 times, failing 160 times. If you think that responder shoould reject a quantitative invite more than half the time, let me remind you that I have already tilted the scales in favour of bidding on by the assumption that we never miss a making game by having responder reject on a bad hand that lies luckily.

This breakdown is clearly horrible at mps and not very good at imps. However, it gets worse at imps because on some of the hands, we lose multiple undertricks and I'd suspect that in a strong game we'd be doubled enough times to make the odds appreciably worse.

While this simulation is far from perfect, I do think it is a useful exercise. Of course, I'm inclined to think that because it confirms my bias.

[ggwhiz]

Fluffy, on 2012-November-06, 09:00, said:

Cherry picking is nonsense to me, but I can understand that it has a sense for you

I actually find cherry picking to be a useful excercise, especially in a speedball.

If I can place pard with a useful MINIMUM that makes whatever within 5 seconds, I bid it. I can't do that here so I don't, especially (as been pointed out) when pard will accept an invite with good reason and get us too high and ask us what we were smoking.