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nrook
Jun 25, 2009

Just let yourself become a worthless person!
I played bridge in college, though only casually. It’s an incredible game, and in my opinion the best thing someone can do sitting around with three friends. But it’s almost impossible to learn if you don’t have somebody to learn from, I think.

I miss the days when I played it regularly dearly.

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nrook
Jun 25, 2009

Just let yourself become a worthless person!
I played bridge with my old club online yesterday for the first time in six months. I had a ton of fun. Every hand was a huge disaster, because we all forgot about both how to bid and how to play.

There was one hand that stuck with me, where my partner opened 1D. I had this hand, so I bid 2NT:

Kxx
Qxx
Qxxx
Axx

My partner thought this was 16-18 points and slam invitational… you can’t jump shift into no trumps! But looking this up afterwards, I couldn’t see any real consensus on what this bid should mean. At the table, it felt obvious that 1NT would be 8-10 and thus 2NT should be an invitational balanced hand like this. But it was obvious only to me!

nrook
Jun 25, 2009

Just let yourself become a worthless person!
I don't know, game seems pretty likely here. I have 11 HCP, and my partner has an opening hand. They only need a bit better than a minimum for us to be in game, and if we're in game here it's almost certainly in 3NT unless my partner has ridiculous shape.

I figured if 2NT really did mean my hand, it'd be the best bid because it's pretty descriptive.

nrook
Jun 25, 2009

Just let yourself become a worthless person!
Funny hand recently. I've been continuing to play bridge once a month with my old friends, and we've forgotten everything we ever knew, not that we knew much to begin with. As such, we certainly get into some awkward spots.

I recently was reading a bridge book that talked about balancing bids. Balancing is the idea that if your opponents are about to declare a partscore, and you're in the seat where if you pass they get the contract, it makes sense to bid light more often than if you were in the "direct" seat (right after their bid). The reason for this is that it is usually easy to make contracts at the 1- and 2-level, so you'd rather either you get the contract or at least you force your opponents to go higher than they otherwise would.

However, for me, there were two problems. The first was that all I knew about this idea was in the vague terms I just described, and I didn't know much in more explicit terms--- what sort of hands should balance, what should partner do, and so on. As such, I was likely to screw it up if I tried to apply the idea. And the other, even bigger problem, was that I didn't discuss this with partner before the hand! This led us to this hilarious contract:


pre:
nrook in West:

AQTx
xxxx
Kxx
T4

Bidding:

W    N    E    S
Pass Pass Pass 1D
Pass 1S   Pass Pass
Dbl  Pass 2C   2S
Pass Pass 3C   Pass
Pass Dbl  Pass Pass
Pass
Partner showed up with 6 clubs to the ace and 9 HCP, and we went down three doubled for -500, confidently securing bottom board.

As it turns out: Even if you're in the balancing seat, you probably shouldn't double for takeout when all your points are in the bad guys' suits. And discuss these sorts of things with your partner before you play!

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