[eagles123]

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Imps I put this on bridgewinners before but I'm in interested in BBF opinion as I think it's a really interesting hand

Cheers

Eagles

[mike777]

4h here

I guess our options are pass, 3nt and 4h

at this vul I will try 4h and takeout pards takeout x

[SteveMoe]

Tempting to bid 4!h here especially at IMPs. However, all those small minor cards suggest we will not have finesses working. Pass seems unilateral, settling for less than our game bonus (we might take only 1 trump trick if partner is void) and opponents might make, as RHO's minor suit honors are working for declarer.

I like 3NT here as it should land our vulnerable game bonus. This also tells partner that much of my hand is in their suit in front of opening bidder. That might be useful if partner has slam aspirations.

[mgoetze]

I feel like anything other than 4♥ is overthinking it.

[nullve]

Pass. Easy LoTT decision.

[nige1]

eagles123, on 2016-January-09, 15:03, said:

Imps I put this on bridgewinners before but I'm in interested in BBF opinion as I think it's a really interesting hand.

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I rank

• Pass = We might make a thin 3N or 4♥ but have no space to explore.
• 3N = 2/3 of our strength is in LHO's suit.
• 4♥ = Well if it makes it's a vul game

[gszes]

3n

hard to picture 4h scoring many more tricks than 3n and 3n at least lets p know we have stuff whereas a 4h bid can be done with zero. See little sense in putting all my eggs in the heart basket when there is no guarantee of a 44 heart fit and 3n would seem to be just as viable as 4h.

pass is hugely unilateral at these colors and an action I would much more consider at MP where a series of small sets might yield tons of MP when games fail. IMPS just too much reward vs risk to go for the throat.

[zillahandp]

3nt cos hts may break badly and I will lose minor suit finesses/ducks to rho who will not have many spades to lead thru me. Also if p happens to have more of a two suiter than a three suiter, esp if p has only three hts it will play more easily and p does have another bid if very distributional.

[Jinksy]

I will try passing in the knowledge that I always get these decisions wrong. At this vul I'm not happy about it - at any other I would think it obvious.

[Giangibar]

I bid 3NT: pass is too risky, they might even make it and even if they go down we won't become rich at these colors. 4♥ on the other hand doesn't convince me: most of my points are in Spades, where partner rates to be very short; my distribution is quite flat; it's unlikely that playing in Hearts I will make more tricks than in NT; if partner has 4♥, then the remaining 5 are likely to break badly and, even worse, partner could even have only 3♥! In this last scenario, 4♥ is carnage.

[eagles123]

my own thoughts, I don't even remember the outcome, is that it's a real toss up of X and 3N but 4H is terrible - partner can quite easily have only 3 hearts

[akwoo]

I bid 4H, on the theory that this is more likely to attract a spade lead or a bid of 4♠ than 3N. Unless LHO looks like the kind of player who is going to lead a spade at 3N anyways.

I might think about pass if my spades were AQT8 rather than AQ53.

Hearts might break badly, but we might very well survive opposite AQx, since we have high cards in dummy to ruff spades and good intermediates to overruff RHO in the minors.

[mgoetze]

eagles123, on 2016-January-10, 17:47, said:

partner can quite easily have only 3 hearts

Perhaps a matter of style but I don't feel that should be "easy" at all, doubling with less than 4 hearts should be quite rare.

[Phil]

mgoetze, on 2016-January-10, 18:55, said:

Perhaps a matter of style but I don't feel that should be "easy" at all, doubling with less than 4 hearts should be quite rare.

2344, 23(53), 13(54), 0355, 13(63), 03(64) don't seem like rare patterns to me.

[wank]

i agree that the choice is between pass and 3nt. pass is the pessimstic choice - correct when we can't make anything - but i see no reason to be pessimistic. we have a maxish pass. if we don't have play for game with our hand partner probably shouldn't have doubled.

[mgoetze]

Phil, on 2016-January-11, 00:21, said:

2344, 23(53), 13(54), 0355, 13(63), 03(64) don't seem like rare patterns to me.

And it doesn't seem to me like you should be stretching to double on 2344 the same way you should with 14xx.

[Phil]

mgoetze, on 2016-January-11, 07:23, said:

And it doesn't seem to me like you should be stretching to double on 2344 the same way you should with 14xx.

Of course not but "quite rare" is a big overbid.

[Caitlynne]

I think it is unequivocally the percentage action to Pass at IMPs. A Law of Total Tricks analysis makes this clear.

You have 4 defensive trumps. Partner USUALLY has 1, so USUALLY they have 8 trump. It is fairly rare that partner will have 5 hearts and partner will occasionally have 3. Most of the time, partner has 4 hearts.

So there appears to be 16 total trumps (8 spades and 8 hearts) on this deal and therefore, most of the time, there will be 16 total tricks. So,

If we can make 4H (10 tricks) for +620, we can beat 3Sx three tricks for +500 and potentially lose 3 IMPs (if they bid and make 4H at the other table).

If we cannot make 4H, then we will presumably go -100 or -200 at 4H (or perhaps 4Hx - yikes!) when we could have gone +300 or +100 at 3Sx. In other words, we gain 7 or 9 IMPs by Passing when we can't make game (if they bid 4H at the other table).

This analysis shows that you have to be strong favorite to make 4H to bid 4H - it has to be about a 75% game just to break even.

The analysis for 3NT is similar. You need to be about a 70% favorite to make it. But you don't seem to have much of a source of tricks, so I can't see that you are a favorite to make 3NT.

[kenberg]

I definitely would not bid 4H. I am a long time skeptic of LOTT, but I get to the same conclusion differently. With four spades in my hand and the 3S bid on my left, I cannot expect to be ruffing many spades in dummy unless I first draw East's trump. Even if pard has four trumps, which he usually but not always will have, mine are such that ruffing high in dummy is apt to weaken my holding too much. No one promises hearts are 3-2. If the spade length were on my right, and my own spades were Axxx, I would fell much better about 4H.

Also, my spade Q is of much more use in either 3NT (helping guard against an opening spade lead) or on defense (where it is presumably scoring a trick).

So 3NT or pass? How will the defense go? I suppose pard has the (unsupported) Ace of hearts. I would hope he has some reasonably safe lead in one of the minors. Dummy will not have many trump, and if dummy has three hearts I don't see any ruffs for declarer in the dummy. Even if dummy has two hearts we can probably prevent a ruff. So declarer gets five of his seven (if he has seven) spades and whatever he can get in the side suits. Down 2 seems likely, it could easily be down 3 (eg AK and a third diamond, declarer having three. AK of hearts. Club to the ace on the board. We have taken five of the first six tricks, declarer has a handfull of spades, I wait for my AQ. ) But I need a lot for it to be down 4.

So it comes to how confident am I of 3NT. Not confident enough. I pass.

[billw55]

3NT for me. Besides that partner occasionally does not have four hearts, the missing ones also break badly more often after the preempt, which is a big nuisance in a 4-4 fit. Meanwhile the vulnerability seems wrong for a pass.