Please, Todd or Jim report in with the usual wonderful postmortem! I am going to try one
in sad brevity, as i cannot copy/paste the good stuff on the Bridge World's PDF:( Also the spreadsheet for Jan has been put in mothballs, so we have only a partial reference for our club's complete vote list:( [WHY must the spreadsheets from the RECENT past be hidden, O, masters??...]
OK here we go: On problem A, bidding SOMETHING outnumbered passing 4NT in the panel by 19 to 8 [!] so we practical folks were lucky to get the 100 for dropping pard's UNT. Granted, 7 of the BIDDERS made a bid that drives to slam just to improve their chances at locating the insanely unlikely 10-11 card heart fit--that still leaves 12 panelists + a similar fraction of the IAC that commented "I am following orders" with 5C or 5D--which mercifully scored 80 or90. one quote from the panel will nail the dillemmas we faced here perhaps: L
arry Cohen: PASS...guessing to bid 5 of a minor is only 50/50 to find hearts anyway (I would need to guess his non-suit).....PLEASE TELL ME NOBODY CONSIDERED SLAM!-- THE ULTIMATE HANG JOB. <my capps>
PROBLEM B:>> Once again bidding SOMETHING outnumberd PASSING , this time by 17 to 10, so we few IAC passers again are lucky to get the 100. That can only mean the host looked at things this way: "This is NOT A ONE-BID" scored 16 times, while "This IS a one-bid" scored 4+7 = 11 times only. There were lots of one-bidders among the solvers as well as our club (66%). The panel comments for one or two spades or hearts all touch the expected bases similar to the [rare] comments from IAC voters ,
but there are these 1 1/2 votes for the FOUR level : Steve Garner actually opens 4 Hearts, and (my MAN Ron Gerard bids a spade but gives us this: "When I was younger, we had a convention for exactly this hand, but I had my jump-shot 40 years ago, too." This can ONLY be BLU's 4 Club "Instant-Michaels" opener -- true?
PROBLEM C:>> Flipping the pattern of #A and #B, the 12 panel votes --and HUGE favorite of solvers [78%] --the simple 2 Heart rebid got pipped for the 100%. Fair enough since the remaining 15 votes all moved toward game, or even WENT to game.
Every single one of US rebid the "WTP??" 2 Hearts--for the 90%, but let's but give DickHY a 95% for stating clearly that if off his meds, bombing away to the notrump game looked good to him! For the panel, Bruce Rogoff hit the short-and-sweet button with : "Were we missing the heart ten, we would NOT BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION." Most of the game-tryers and the seven game BIDDERS clearly felt the same about the likelihood of running those hearts, or that pard would provide 3 more tricks in time should the HQ score against us..
PROBLEM D:>> Three fouths of our club got butchered here
with 60% for their 3 spade choice, so we need some advice about how pard's double is NOT STAYMAN--ie he can bid his own spades on the rebid. If we prefer to carry on to our supposed vulnerable game -- in hearts, notrump or CLUBS?! 3 spades is not helping this --3 hearts is better and 3NT now, ourselves is likely as good as it gets. But let the panel teach:....Rodwell the lone quoted 3S bidder [HALF the solvers joined our thundering herd with this?!] spoke of club slams and cold nt games --as well as offering THIS quote: "It seems partner may have AQJx, xx, xxx, KQJx". Does anybody buy this? Not me
. Mainly, the passers did not expect to make up for the vulnerable game bonus but were willing to 'gamble' that 3NT would come up short, and not willing to punt with "3 hearts" hoping to reach making heart or club bids. ...Danny Kleinman types: "Pass. Partner forced to game, and without interference we would be bidding game. But that doesn't mean the game we bid would be a lock....i will settle for the likely 300 in imps." Woolsey on the other hand expects pard to provide a massacre seeing the vulnerability.