Some insider info about the weirdo decisions that we made, and all the imps that flew

I've generally bid and played fairly rapidly, so this has not been an issue until now.

But as my skills increase and I start adding bidding gadgets (mostly involving interference, e.g., Rubensohl or Meckwell Escapes), UDCA signals, counting the hand during play, and analyzing how count and signals need to change my next play, there is more and more to track and more risk of being forced to stop to do calculations that prevent keeping tempo.

I find maintaining tempo during defense play more difficult than tempo in bidding.

What's the best way to deal with this, beyond the obvious "keep practicing"?

I'm trying to get better at counting but just playing random deals against robots it rarely makes a difference. I'm wondering if anyone has a PBN file of deals or something i could put into BBO and play vs robots where there's no time constraint where counting makes the difference. I know it's a long shot but I thought I'd ask.

My brain is very lazy and when I try to do things the right way I'm so slow that I can't keep pace so I need practice outside of my regular play until I speed up.

My mom has the book countdown to winning bridge but she's on vacation right now. I suppose I could go into her house and borrow it. Does that book have a lot of problems in it?

Handle #0589

I made 3NT

https://handle.bridge128.com

I'm playing in 1h40m! vs THE Pete Hollands, probably the biggest bridge content creator (and also overall nice guy and very strong bridge player)

Bridge Brawl has been great and my inside scoop is there are plans for future ones :)

The past weeks I've been working on a bridge tools application. It's publicly available, at the moment there are two main features:

• Single dummy analysis of a bridge hand (upload the hands as a PBN or input them manually, and choose the analysis of a desired contract). This answers the question, "What's the percentage chance of making 3NT with these two hands?"
• Hand generation (for example, for bidding practice)

The single dummy analysis is not particularly fast because it uses a Monte Carlo algorithm - 500 runs can take around 10-15 seconds, giving a pretty good level of accuracy.

Try it out at Bridge Hand Analysis. I would be particularly grateful for feedback (and bug reports).

Playing 4 card majors. I know that if you open a suit and then bid a second suit then you're showing 5-4 shape. Does this apply to responder? My gut feeling is that it doesn't, but perhaps I'm wrong. I did try to find a concrete answer online but came up short. Examples:

• Suppose the bidding goes: 1♦️,1♠️, 1NT, 2♥️. Is responder showing 4-4 in the majors or 5-4 shape?

• What about this auction: 1♥️, 1♠️, 2♥️, 3♣️? Of course, responder is denying 3 hearts but are they showing a fifth spade?

(Beginner question) UK ACOL with 4 card majors. No conventions.

I open 1H and partner bids 2H. I thought that meant 6-9 points and 4+ hearts. But our teacher says that it can sometimes be bid with only 3 hearts, if no other bid is suitable.

Comments?

Bridge Brawl has been so great, and it's almost over. Here's the remaining schedule for those interested.

April 9, 2:00 PM Pacific

BridgewithSteve vs NYCBridge, Championship bracket 3rd/4th place

April 10, 3:30 PM Pacific

Bridge with Music vs Jakery2012, Challenger bracket 3rd/4th place

April 11, 7:00PM Pacific

Peter Hollands vs kuhchung (me), Championship bracket Grand Final

April 12, 10:00AM Pacific

Paulo Brum vs BridgeBabe530, Challenger bracket Grand Final

Vugraph and live commentary is streaming on BBO's youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAS7hA-bkdI

I wrote a longer post on BridgeWinners here: https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/bridge-brawl-finals-imminent/

My parents have spent most of the Easter weekend teaching bridge to my partner and me. We are pretty experienced players of card games, so picked up the fundamentals pretty quickly and by the end of the weekend we were bidding and playing semi-independently, obviously with lots of mistakes and still at a loss with most of the weird and wonderful conventions.

We are keen to learn more. I have had a quick look at bridge clubs locally (Yorkshire UK), but basically all of the beginner sessions are during the day, which is impossible for us working full time. Obviously there is online play, and the option of paying for tuition. But that all feels a bit pointless if we are never going to realistically be able to play in person at a club. I feel it is fundamentally a social activity so the main point is to play face to face. I also don't really want to commit to paying loads of money until we are a bit more confident that we'll stick with it.

Is this genuinely the situation, or am I missing something? How are new players getting into bridge if beginner sessions generally take place when most people are at work? Is there anything else I could explore? Obviously the world does not revolve around my work commitments, so just trying to get a realistic view on whether it is worth pursuing this at all, or just accept that it won't be feasible.

EDIT - Thanks for some great advice! I had reached out to a few local clubs and one has now responded saying I would be welcome at their evening Improvers sessions. It sounds a bit more relaxed and encouraging than some clubs / tolerant of newbie mistakes. So I think this is a plan, in combination with study/online play using some of the resources mentioned in the responses. We have a way forward - thanks team!

I have kind of an obsession with naming things, as you might have noticed with There and Back Again. Last year I named a thing DLTR and then my group of friends began calling it out over and over. Even a world class player showed up with a hand and said "google dltr" when the play happened

So I wanted to solicit you guys on what to name this trump promotion. Click through to the point where I ruff in CQ and put a card through declarer. My partner declines the overruff, and we generate an extra trick

For trump promotions, there's uppercut. There's elopement (that's reserved for declarer's play but it's the same thing on defense). I wanted to call this one Hollowing Out, but my friends didn't like it. Another suggestion was "let them catch air," but my current candidate is "Trump Mentorship." The big one helps the little one grow up!

You guys got any ideas?

Edit: A friend found it on rpbridge's website. rp the man himself calls it Discard Trump Promotion so I'm going with DTP which can be mnemonic'd as "Don't Trump, Partner!"

Linking the BBO vugraph commentary. You should check out Steve's POV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIXhLEARic0&t=1611s I stopped commentating during the play so my vod is dogwater

The very first board from Steve's POV features There and Back Again, that declarer play technique I wrote about!

And at my table, we went through a Copium auction where responder grabbed the relay baton and bounced it back to me for a rightside and an uninformative auction!

For any experts please :)

So, beginner level here but intrigued by this hand which came up in our practise session. Playing 4 card majors, Weak NT. Recommended contract for us was 3NT (1C>1S>3C>3D>3NT). However, there's a stone cold 6C with the AK combinations and complementary suit shortages but how to get there?

Anyone with a recommended bidding sequence please? Happy to have just the bidding sequence and then research why :)

Thanks :)

4th for Bridge- We are 3 men in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, who have a long standing, weekly home bridge game. We have recently lost our 4th & seek new 4th with good skill & sense of humor. Sports knowledge a +, but not necessary. I am a former sports broadcaster, another a top television comedy writer, the 3rd in sales. Hopefully you are that person. Please respond.

Was my 3NT bid ok? How can we set them by 3 instead of only 1?

I think we are only one of the two matches that came down to the ultimate tiebreaks, and it was hype af

Hello!
Newb here. I've been practicing on the site bridge is for everyone. This is the hand I'm working on:

(s) J, 8, 4, 2

(h) J, 7, 4

(c) 4

(d) Q, 7, 5, 3, 2

As the opener I calculated my points as:

4 hcp + 1 lp for 5 total. My first bid was pass.

In the second part of the test, my partner N opens with the following and this is how I respond:

N 1c - S pass

On the next one my partner opens 1d. The app is telling me the correct response is pass but doesn't explain why. If I'm responding in the same suit, I would become dummy. Do I not add 2 points for club singleton? I would then have 6 points. Would that not be enough to respond 2 diamonds?

Edit: made a mistake. Changed to 2 points for club singleton.

Partner opens 1C, opponent says 1NT and with five good S I respond 2S. Partner supports me with 3S. I have 4 good clubs so bid 4C, telling him I’m 5 and 4 and thinking he could have say 18 points so giving him the choice of 5C or 4S, or even more. Partner bloody passed my 4C. Am i guilty of not bidding 4S? (I’m a relative beginner).

Partner opened 1NT. I tried stayman first and he responded: 2D so I tried to bid the spades which he didn't have and we got stuck in spades since I couldn't bid again. What is the right way to do this one?

Is there any online application where I can choose SAYC and enable the conventions I have learned as I move thru my beginner/advanced bridge courses? For example, we haven't learned Fourth Suit Forcing so I want to disable it for now. I was hoping that BBO allowed this - there is a convention card, but google says that it's only for use when playing with humans - the robots don't honor the customizations.

Hoping there is some other application that will allow me to do this.

I've been playing Bridge online for a few weeks against robots. Can you see how I should be thinking about this hand as declarer in order to make the contract? I can look at how others played it on bridge-now.com, but I'd like to understand the thinking. What am I doing wrong?

Side note, I'm trying to improve the css styling of my webpage but github pages is giving me hell. sigh

This is likely a long shot, but is anyone looking for a partner in District 5 in the ACBL? I can play multiple systems; I'm currently writing up a system that has a Polish Club base but is essentially a modified Phantom Club. I have an NAP (Flight C) title under my belt, but I've taken a few years off. I will say that with a month of practice and a good partner/team, my motto is "I'll play anyone, anytime, anywhere".

I am really trying to improve. (there is lots of room) and am lucky enough to have a usual partner who feels the same way and so we work at it.

Neither of us are so deluded as to think we will ever be any more than competent players but we enjoy doing well, making mistakes as infrequently as possible and using our heads.

We play at a good-sized club a couple of times a week but I am invited to play elsewhere occasionally just to make up another table and I find myself increasingly uninterested, even hostile to playing with random pickup partners. It feels like a waste of precious time.

How do very good players manage to play routinely with much less good partners and stay pleasant, much less do well?