[jillybean]

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[mikeh]

5♣ in tempo

The truth is that you can't ever know what to do here with certainty. You may be beating 4♥ and failing in 5♣. You may be making 5♣ and not beating 4♥.

Once you learn to recognize that these situations arise...and can start to anticipate them....when RHO reached into the bidding box, you should already be thinking about this situation......you can develop the useful habit of making your decision in tempo. It is often better to make the second best decision in competition, smoothly, than the best decision, slowly.

That isn't so if your decision will be the last decision.

So if you are thinking about doubling, by all means take your time....with an ethical partner, your decision, whether you end up doubling or passing, will be the last decision.

But when you are thinking about bidding, RHO will be making the 'last decision'. You don't want him knowing that you are uncertain.

This is NOT advice to vary your tempo. In a perfect world, every call and every play is uniform in tempo. Few can play that perfectly. It behooves the rest of us to try to maximize the times when we do....and this sort of situation is quite common.

In my opinion, an in tempo 5♣, if 'wrong', will fare far better than a slow, agonized 5♣.

And I think that edge...that is that RHO will make a mistake, is enough to offset the fractional gain in accuracy that most of us get from the agonizing before the slow decision.

I can only speak for myself and those players with whom I have discussed this, but in cases like this, most agonizing is spent thinking and rethinking the same few thoughts...it is often repetitive. Since we will often not improve our thinking during this process, why not just learn to make our call in tempo, and accept the resulting minor increase in our error rate.....which will hopefully be less than the resulting increase in the error rate of the opps.

[jillybean]

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Thanks Mike. Here's the full hand, making 6.

[pooltuna]

♦ opening lead unlead ♣s

[phil_20686]

mikeh, on 2012-February-10, 18:57, said:

5♣ in tempo

I basically agree with everything you said, except that I think there are a class of hands where partner will bid 3C when he has also 4S, and that you might want to bid 4S over 4H.

Obviously this is hugely dependent on 1C opening style, and the level of values you expect for the 3C bid. For me (and doubtless some others), 2N = constructive, clubs 3C=less than 2N, so there are hands too weak for a neg X that can take the weak option in clubs. This type of agreement/thinking maybe not for the BIL forum though.

[Charlie Yu]

I think the real problem of 5♣ is that you don't know what to do after 5♥?

Can I bid 4♠ as "I don't know what to do" slam try?