[jillybean]

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Standard, 15-17nt
Your opps may not have their bids.
How would your auction go?

[mike777]

Support double rather than 1NT, helps set hearts as trump.

[jillybean]

mike777, on 2025-November-14, 22:45, said:

Support double rather than 1NT, helps set hearts as trump.

Are you seeing both hands? 1nt could be the last make able contract and it looks good from Norths perspective
Of course I’d like to open this 1nt so that probably influenced my bid

[mike777]

jillybean, on 2025-November-14, 23:16, said:

Are you seeing both hands? 1nt could be the last make able contract and it looks good from Norths perspective
Of course I’d like to open this 1nt so that probably influenced my bid

It may help to think of support doubles as mandatory or priority one. I suppose there may be some exception

[Huibertus]

jillybean, on 2025-November-14, 23:16, said:

Are you seeing both hands? 1nt could be the last make able contract and it looks good from Norths perspective
Of course I’d like to open this 1nt so that probably influenced my bid

Support doubles are supposed to be mandatory when you have a 3 card support. You are pointing out one of the disadvantages, yes. But you simply can't ignore a 3 card support. If you choose to do so on occasion it is better NOT to play support doubles so partner won't draw inferences that aren't real.

[jillybean]

Ok, guilty again of masterminding
Without support X , the auction is fine

[DavidKok]

Do you have an agreement about the difference between 1NT and pass as opener's second call?

[jillybean]

This is a casual partnership and I don't have that detail of agreement in my more regular partnerships.
My Bridge logic would say
Pass , weak NT, no 3 card hearts
Weak NT, 3cards, no shortage

1nt , weak NT suitable to play NT, no 3H or no support X

[pescetom]

I don't understand the opponents' bidding: why is East rebidding diamonds to the Q rather than the spades fit, and do they doubt we have game for some reason?

[jillybean]

pescetom, on 2025-November-15, 10:06, said:

I don't understand the opponents' bidding: why is East rebidding diamonds to the Q rather than the spades fit, and do they doubt we have game for some reason?

You should ignore the opponents bidding here

[mikeh]

jillybean, on 2025-November-14, 23:16, said:

Are you seeing both hands? 1nt could be the last make able contract and it looks good from Norths perspective
Of course I’d like to open this 1nt so that probably influenced my bid

You are making a common mistake. Assuming you play support doubles, bidding 1N denies 3 card heart support. If you belong in a notrump game it should be possible to reach notrump later. If you belong in 1N, the opps probably belong in and can bid 2D.

As your use of a saying of mine in your signature block suggests, bid your shape. Here, your shape includes 3 card heart support and a ruffing value in diamonds. Sure, once in a while your 1N bid might steal the board, but you are misleading partner about your shape. How on earth can you know enough about the hand to mislead partner?

The auction timed out such that you were saved by the opponents’ bidding….you were given another chance. But at the time you lied to partner you had little reason to expect that to happen. Partner shouldn’t look for a heart contract if he has 5 hearts.

You’ve acknowledged a tendency to mastermind in the past. Most of us are guilty of that on occasion. It’s always tempting to persuade oneself that we can control the auction rather than allowing partner to play an intelligent, informed role…but experience has shown me that such is usually….i wish it were always (because then the temptation is easier to resist) a poor decision. Btw, I freely admit that I usually play with an expert partner and masterminding is increasingly attractive in inverse proportion to partner’s skill level. That doesn’t make it right…indeed it actively harms any chance of partner improving, but it is more tempting.

[jillybean]

Absolutely & now in hindsight, support doubles weren’t discussed so I would have bid this way but for a different reason.
Do you have any interesting hands to share from your win in PV?

[mikeh]

jillybean, on 2025-November-15, 11:26, said:

Absolutely & now in hindsight, support doubles weren’t discussed so I would have bid this way but for a different reason.
Do you have any interesting hands to share from your win in PV?

The win was’t much to celebrate. We were in bracket two of a Soloway swiss. The field was small, with only 6 teams in bracket 1. Gord and I were playing with friends on a 6-bagger and the team had only about 37,000 masterpoints. I say ‘’only’ because bracket one contained teams where some indidvual players had more than our team total. The drop off between us, 7th ranked, and the 8th place was large and then to the 9th place huge.

We won the RR by a convincing margin, the semis by over 100 imps and comfortably won the final. The next event saw us walk away with the top bracket RR in the event that began at 9:30 because the pro teams played in the 1:30 starting event…there were two mini-solways running on one day…one starting 9:30 and the other 1:30. We crushed the RR, finishing 30 VPs ahead of Itabashi’s team (he has almost twice our teams total mps and was the only strong player in the field other than Gord and I)

We lost by 10 imps to his team in the final. Three boards lost us about 40 imps. Two losses were errors by teammates (who, I stress, played wonderfully throughout…two mistakes in 24 boards was both unusual the way they’d played until then and hardly ‘bad bridge’…it was unfortunate that they happened on ‘big’ boards. The other, a 24 imp swing, happened at our table. We bid to a 6S contract that was virtually cold on 3-2 trump and had play on almost half the possible 4-1 trump breaks, but trump were 5-0 so we failed by one trick.

Opener A9xx void AQ10x AKQxx. Responder K876 AKxxx xx xx

1C 1D (hearts) 2S 3S (forward going, 4S would be weaker) 5S (how good are your spades?) 6S

As responder I knew he was void in hearts..no keycard, but hoped my hearts would take care of diamond losers…picture Axxx void Axx AKQJxx. I commented as I laid down dummy: I’m not sure my spades are good enough. Turns out I was correct, lol.

[jillybean]

Damn those 5-0 breaks, what did the OT play in?

[mikeh]

jillybean, on 2025-November-15, 12:27, said:

Damn those 5-0 breaks, what did the OT play in?

4S. Making 4.