[Mbodell]

You play a style of preempts where 4♥ is very wide ranging. Could be 8 hearts to the KJ and out. Could be an 11-15 hand with 7 hearts (although if a max there generally flattish outside needing more than the right 2 cover cards for slam). There is no namyats.

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[the hog]

I am not bidding now. If I were going to bid, I would have bid before, but I am not taking the last guess.
By the way, my vote is wrong. I would have bid 5H, not xx.

[whereagles]

I don't find it a guess at all. Opps rate to make 4♠ easily and the vulnerability is right. So 5♥ for me.

@Ron: agree that dog-walking is in general not recommended. But hey, we cannot take a good idea too far... who knows, maybe opps mess up and leave us to play in 4

Final note: if preempts are wide-ranging, a useful gadget is double to show a max (i.e. it's not lightner or whatnot). In this case absence of dbl encourages taking the push to 5♥.

[Phil]

At MPs 5♥ is pretty clear. At IMPs playing this style 5♥ could be silly but playing more normal Preempts it's still reasonable because we rate to go for 300 often enough to offset the occasional phantom. Furthermore in any form of scoring you'll also get some 5♠ calls often enough and this is where it shows a huge profit.

In the GNTs last year in the first qualifying match Clee and I had a similar hand on the same auction and same colors. I passed and he bid 5♥ which was about to go for 300 except my teammate bid on to 5♠ with a 6124 shape. He could have made by finding the ♣Q offside in the short hand but didn't so we lost 13.

I get the wide ranging 4 bids but 11-15 is too much.

[wank]

bidding 5h the first time is silly. this is not like at the 1 or 2 level where you should pre-empt first time, because here lho will pass pretty often when he would be better bidding.

[P_Marlowe]

5H the first time, but we play a style, that says we sac in adv.,
so I know, they are making.

I would also bid 5H the 2nd time, but agree, that if I passed for
whatever reason the 1st time, bidding now is inconsequent.
We did know, that 4S would come around, as they doubled 4H, so
continuing the preempt is ok, I am not bidding 5H without the double
of 4H.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[mycroft]

Zia transfer applies, as always. If we're not prepared to defend 4♠, why give them the chance to bid it?

If partner has the true garbage hand, they're making 6 (no heart losers, for one thing). If partner has the 11-15 2722, maybe they have a heart loser and a diamond loser and a club loser and something that doesn't work well.

The power of wide-ranging preempts is that the last guess is hard. So I'm not taking it. At these colours, at IMPs at least, I'm bidding 5 the first time (if I'm feeling cheeky, I bid 4♠ or 4NT, whichever one is KCB). At MPs, I have the problem that the field could be opening 3♥ - or even 1♥ - and we may have bid them into not only a making game, but also -50 or -100 more (if undoubled, say after 1♥-p-2♥-2♠; some number of hearts) than the field if they defend; so since I'm losing to all the 3♠+1s and the 3♥-1, 4♥-1 or 2s already, why not play for 4♠ to not work?

Having chosen to defend the last round, I'm backing my judgement, poor though it may be.

[Mbodell]

This was from the USBF Hung-Diamond match. 1♥ was opened at the table (see http://bridgewinners...m-hung-diamond/). On this particular hand N ends up passing about 25% of the time (see http://bridgewinners...g-problem-4691/), not that this means passing the X the first time is right across the set of all hands (although I think it is). On this hand bidding 5♥ after the 4♠ is the winning action, although again that doesn't mean it is considering the expectation across the set of hands consistent with the action.