[pilowsky]

This hand comes from an IMP's casual table.
NS are experts playing an unfamiliar system, and after BBO drops me into the West seat, East arrives and agrees to play 2/1 1430 and that's about it.
After holding our own for a few hands, South with the hand below opens 2♣. The alerts were made during the game by South.
After the auction I lead the ♦K - how do you make 6S?

---

[DavidKok]

I'll bite with the boring line:

Spoiler

Win the lead in the hand, play a heart to the king. I plan to play for hearts being 4-2 or 3-3 by ruffing two hearts high in dummy, conceding only the ♥A. I can get back to the hand by ruffing a diamond and a club (ruffing one high, even). With two heart ruffs we can even pitch the fifth one on the ♣A but it doesn't help - if hearts split 5-1 my line fails to a heart ruff, and I'm not giving up on 3-3 and 4-2 splits by drawing trumps first.

As an aside, opening the South hand with 2♣ is not something I would expect from an expert.

[Cyberyeti]

Heart to the K intending to ruff 2 hearts high, requires only hearts 4-2. Do not draw trumps or you require hearts 3-3. I reconsider if the A♥ flies in in front of the K, now I only need one ruff so am cold if trumps are 2-1 so can afford to draw one trump to have a look.

This is NOT a 2♣ opener

[mw64ahw]

It is a 2♣ opener according to the description and qualifies with 9+ playing tricks and a self-sustaining suit

[Cyberyeti]

mw64ahw, on 2023-April-10, 05:13, said:

It is a 2♣ opener according to the description and qualifies with 9+ playing tricks and a self-sustaining suit

Would be illegal here unless they changed that again

[mikeh]

I have a semi-serious rule for low hcp, high trick taking 2C opening bids….I should have enough defence that I’m sure that they can’t make a slam (ignoring complete freaks)

With this hand, I have one fairly sure defensive trick,,,.that means I can’t feel good about defending 6C or 6D.

I usually utter it in jest, but to me anyone who thinks this is a 2C opening qualifies as an expert only because BBO let’s any incompetent claim expert status.

[pilowsky]

mikeh, on 2023-April-10, 15:36, said:

I have a semi-serious rule for low hcp, high trick taking 2C opening bids….I should have enough defence that I'm sure that they can't make a slam (ignoring complete freaks)

With this hand, I have one fairly sure defensive trick,,,.that means I can't feel good about defending 6C or 6D.

I usually utter it in jest, but to me anyone who thinks this is a 2C opening qualifies as an expert only because BBO let's any incompetent claim expert status.

No expert so strong on BBO but shows some sense of skill. I'm no expert so can only guess.


North was Sillafu, South also seemed pretty skilful.
Here's the link to the full hand.


Some mild amount of expertise was needed since they took 11.2 IMP's

[mikeh]

pilowsky, on 2023-April-10, 15:54, said:

No expert so strong on BBO but shows some sense of skill. I'm no expert so can only guess.


North was Sillafu, South also seemed pretty skilful.
Here's the link to the full hand.


Some mild amount of expertise was needed since they took 11.2 IMP's

The devil is in the details. Doing the best I can to understand their stated methods, 2C was NOT strong! In fact, I think it showed an unbalanced hand of some type, with the only known length being in hearts

Sillafu is not a young man, so it’s interesting seeing him play very strange methods. Edit: I was looking at the south profile. I see that 2C was alerted as strong in tricks or points, so I obviously misunderstood the cryptic profile. Anyway, they don’t claim to be playing anything like standard, so I don’t think this suggests that, absent specific agreement that ‘tricks’ are sufficient, this is a 2C opening