[NickRW]

gnasher, on Jun 2 2008, 08:07 AM, said:

Why don't you show us some of the hands where you think the bidding will go like this and slam makes?

OK. Actually I've just done another run with GIB - this one with north bidding on hcp + controls outside spades + dsitrib as before = 19. One point less. This shows a 61% make for 6H. Here are the first 5, straight as they come out of the dealer:

This one is a make

---

This one is a make

---

This one is a make

---

This one is a make

---

This one is a make

---

That is 3 out 5 of these - same % as for 100 hands. And these are what I think of as really scraping the barrel for North's bid.

[NickRW]

Jlall, on Jun 2 2008, 08:46 AM, said:

NickRW, on Jun 2 2008, 03:00 AM, said:

Thank you Ken.  At the risk of upsetting Justin, you're someone with a bit of imagination.

Lol. Why do you not take into account partner, who should expect the auction to always end when he bids 5H since he knows much about our hand and we know little about his, having imagination? You are not playing alone.

Well, because I would expect partner to double with anything much more in spades and to pass with anything much less in total. Indeed, partner can't get much less than the examples I've given. Also partner can't necessarily infer a void unless he has 3.

[NickRW]

Jlall, on Jun 2 2008, 09:08 AM, said:

1) None of your hands are relevant. Many of them are not 5H bids for north, some not consistent with the opponents bidding.

2) lol double dummy analysis.

Seems you don't like to be wrong.

[rogerclee]

NickRW, on Jun 2 2008, 02:09 AM, said:

Jlall, on Jun 2 2008, 09:08 AM, said:

1) None of your hands are relevant. Many of them are not 5H bids for north, some not consistent with the opponents bidding.

2) lol double dummy analysis.

Seems you don't like to be wrong.

You are being ridiculous. I think it is interesting that you can operate complicated bridge software but cannot see how silly your conclusions from it are.

[cherdano]

NickRW, on Jun 2 2008, 02:57 AM, said:

gnasher, on Jun 2 2008, 08:07 AM, said:

Why don't you show us some of the hands where you think the bidding will go like this and slam makes?

OK. Actually I've just done another run with GIB - this one with north bidding on hcp + controls outside spades + dsitrib as before = 19. One point less. This shows a 61% make for 6H. Here are the first 5, straight as they come out of the dealer:

This one is a make

---

Not when I am declaring, I would play preempter for a singleton hear.

Quote

Dealer: ????? Vul: ???? Scoring: Unknown

♠ J7 ♥ AQ652 ♦ J975 ♣ AJ ♠ AK982 ♥ JT4 ♦ 43 ♣ Q94 ♠ QT6543 ♥ K ♦ KT8 ♣ 862 ♠   ♥ 9873 ♦ AQ62 ♣ KT753

This one is

Ok, I might make this one, but probably I would not. It seems wrong to make a safety play in trumps.

So on 2 out of 5 hands, the double dummy analysis gives the wrong result. Add to that the fact that most of your hands are not 5♥ bids (or not 1♥ opening bids), and I think we have established that your simulation is pretty much useless. (Sorry if this sounds like an insult, but I don't know how to put it in different terms...)

I understand arguing for 6♥, but please leave GIB out of it...

[NickRW]

Jlall, on Jun 2 2008, 09:15 AM, said:

Well that was convincing!

Yeah, well, in retrospect my comment was uncalled for.

However, between the lot of you, you're not making any sense at all. One person says, effectively, "nah, east doesn't have a hand like that", so I change the east hand to satisfy that person and then another says, "nah, north doesn't have a hand like such and such". None of you are putting up examples of what you think is realistic for critique.

Nick

[FrancesHinden]

NickRW, on Jun 2 2008, 10:09 AM, said:

Jlall, on Jun 2 2008, 09:08 AM, said:

1) None of your hands are relevant. Many of them are not 5H bids for north, some not consistent with the opponents bidding.

2) lol double dummy analysis.

Seems you don't like to be wrong.

Oh come on Nick, of the first five hands you published

1. None of them is anything resembling a 5H bid
2. Of the three where you say 6H is a make, I would expect to go off on two of them

It's pretty obvious from our hand that this is a case where DD simulation will overestimate the number of tricks we can make single dummy, as we are likely to have guesses in at least one suit.

Anyway, trying to get something positive out of this discussion...

The argument about the parameters for the simulation should help us decide what the right action is as responder. In fact that's just another way of saying "what does partner need for a 5H bid"

Once we bid 3S, we set up a forcing pass over 4S.
Partner's 5H bid means
- I am not interested in defending 4S
- I do not have any extra values
- I do not want to bid 5m

What would a 5m bid mean? That depends on what a 4NT bid would mean... personally I play
- 5m as a natural slam try
- 4N as an ongoing move inviting a minor suit cue bid

but I bet very few other people posting here do, I imagine the popular vote is
- 4NT RKCB
- 5m cue bid

What hands bid 5H?
Clearly they either have extra heart length or nothing wasted in spades (quite possibly both). I don't believe we have absolutely promised 4-card heart support (unless we have some other systemic agreements we haven't been made party to) so I wouldn't expect a 5H bid without six of them.

If I were to do a simulation I would give partner
- 6 or more hearts
- no more than 4 controls
- no minor suit void

We also need to exclude hands that would have made a 4th seat pre-empt

I can't do a simulation at the moment, but typical hands that will come out of that will have good trumps and not that many high cards, which interestingly are also the hands that partner might have pre-empted on

xxx
AKQxxx
Kxx
x

6H is playable but not cold. Although actually I think this is a forcing pass.

Jx
AKJxxx
x
Qxxx

6H is playable but not cold (and quite likely to concede a club ruff if they find it)

I think this is quite tough. It's a long way from being the 'wtp' that some people seem to think, because many of the more normal 5H bids would have opened at the 3 or 4 level.

[FrancesHinden]

Jlall, on Jun 2 2008, 11:20 AM, said:

FrancesHinden, on Jun 2 2008, 05:03 AM, said:

[reasonable stuff]

I think leaving out 5-5 hands for a 5H bid is wrong. I also think you are overrating the whole "partner didn't preempt in 4th seat" thing, although maybe you play that as stronger than me, but your one example of a 2H opener in third seat looked like an absolute max to me.

Also I think having 4 hearts is very very likely given that you are a passed hand who not only forced to game but chose the stronger option (3S rather than 4H) to do so.

Maybe I wasn't clear, my examples were all supposed to be 1H opening bids not pre-empts (although the AKQxxx Kxx hand is arguably a super-maximum 2H opener, I can't remember the vulnerability).

I agree partner can have a minimum 5-5
xx
KQJxx
x
AJxxx

is possible... and that'ss a hand where slam is very poor.
Much more than that and it's a 5m bid.

Maybe it's these 5-5 hands that are the danger for bidding on as partner is more likely to be light in HCP.

I've been accumulating a set of hands over the past year where it's been unclear whether to bid slam or not, or to bid grand slam or not, in competitive auctions... and every time it's been right to bid. (There was another one in the USBF yesterday, both sides defended 6Sx-3 instead of 7Sx-4)

It seems automatic to pass 5H on the basis that we have no business raising, but we should at least acknowledge we will miss a large number of good slams by doing so.

[gnasher]

NickRW, on Jun 2 2008, 10:27 AM, said:

However, between the lot of you, you're not making any sense at all.  One person says, effectively, "nah, east doesn't have a hand like that", so I change the east hand to satisfy that person and then another says, "nah, north doesn't have a hand like such and such".

I can't speak for anyone else, but neither my comments nor my sentiments involved the word "nah". You told us your criteria, I thought them defective in some respects, and I said so, explaining what I thought was wrong with them.

Producing a good simulation can be difficult. Even for apparently trivial things like a one-level opening, a reasonable simulation requires both thought and a fair amount of time spent looking at the results and tweaking the criteria.

For this auction, where two passed hands have bid to the four-level and partner had a range of ill-defined actions available to him, making a good simulation will not be at all easy. It's not surprising that your early attempts produced unsatisfactory results. I am, however, surprised that examination of the hands produced by your simulation didn't cause you to revise the criteria.

Quote

None of you are putting up examples of what you think is realistic for critique.

That would be a reasonable criticism, except that until I suggested it this morning you hadn't posted any example hands either.

Anyway, you now have some examples provided by Frances and Justin (jlall). They look quite different from the examples you provided. If you think that your examples are more realistic than theirs, why not explain your reasoning?

[pclayton]

Sorry Nick, your examples of hands that bid 5♥ and the hands that are 'making 6' are a joke.

[FrancesHinden]

Make our hand

-
98xx
AQxx
A10xxx

and I think we have to bid 6H. Partner cannot realistically expect 3 first round controls from a passed hand.

So there are definitely hands on which it's right to bid.

[NickRW]

FrancesHinden, on Jun 2 2008, 10:03 AM, said:

Oh come on Nick, of the first five hands you published

1. None of them is anything resembling a 5H bid

Most of the posters here, you included it seems, seem to be taking it for granted that the 3♠ bid sets up a forcing pass situation. I didn't, indeed don't, take it that way. To me a 4♥ call is merely competitive - this will make if we're lucky or push them on or 4♥-1 is better than 3♠ making by them. Whereas 3♠ says I have a hand worth 4♥ - bid more if you have more in the tank. It seems that much of the disagreement here is over that point, rather than anything else.

If you're playing forcing pass in this situation then I agree with other posters that this is probably a pass.

Quote

2. Of the three where you say 6H is a make, I would expect to go off on two of them

I didn't say I liked them. I was invited by another poster to post some hands. I picked the first five hands from a set where I didn't like the 5♥ call either even on my terms, but where 6H still seems to be better than a 50/50 bet. On individual hands DD analysis is often, "lol" as Justin put it. The value of DD analysis as a general tool to finding out the sorts of things that are possible or otherwise is not diminished by that. This has been copiously covered elsewhere to my satisfaction anyway.

Given that 12-15 6 heart hands are not in the set of hands that North can hold as, per the OP these would have been opened 2♥, I agree with you that it is genuinely quite hard finding hands that are plausible for all three other seats in this auction.

Nick

[NickRW]

gnasher, on Jun 2 2008, 11:07 AM, said:

Anyway, you now have some examples provided by Frances and Justin (jlall). They look quite different from the examples you provided. If you think that your examples are more realistic than theirs, why not explain your reasoning?

I think my reasoning is adequately covered in the answer to Frances.