[Hanoi5]

Both Vulnerable, partner's dealer, you hold:

♠T8xxx
♥KJxx
♦void
♣T8xx

It goes:

1♥ X ???

You play Bergen over the double (inb4LOL). What do you bid?

[hrothgar]

3♥ looks about right

Don't think that the opponents will have fun in 3♠ or higher

[OleBerg]

Would bid 3♥.

Have no problem with 4♥.

[655321]

4♥.

Would bid 3♥ if two of the black cards were diamonds.

[mike777]

Hanoi5, on May 17 2009, 07:53 AM, said:

Both Vulnerable, partner's dealer, you hold:

♠T8xxx
♥KJxx
♦void
♣T8xx

It goes:

1♥ X ???

You play Bergen over the double (inb4LOL). What do you bid?

3h

let opp guess

give up on fancy higher bids

[fred]

mike777, on May 17 2009, 02:14 PM, said:

let opp guess

Agree with the sentiment that you want to let the opponents guess, but I feel strongly that you should make it more expensive for them to guess wrong and make it harder for them to guess right by bidding 4H.

Bids like 4H on hands like this have been big winners for me in practice.

Also, if you bid 3H your partner will not play you for a hand like this (at least my partners wouldn't and I tend to be fairly conservative when it comes to making preemptive raises). You will miss some good 4H contracts as a result.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Phil]

It's close between 3♥ and 4♥ for me.

The best reason IMO, as Fred mentions, is that you might miss a good game. However, whenever my partner and I make a PJR, we aren't busted and have some 'surprise'. We have 'two' big surprises.

With 5 spades, they aren't apt to guess to bid 4♠ over 4♥. If they bid 5♦, it might well make.

What happens (to me anyway) is that my LHO has a smattering of points when I bid 4♥ with hands like this. One of two bad things usually happens: my LHO has a smattering - 10-12 points, but no good suit to bid, so makes a responsive double. My RHO usually leaves it in. Or, partner expecting a slightly different hand takes the push to 5♥.

Still, bidding our games has to take priority, so I will bid it at r/r.

At r/w I would pull back with 3.

[MFA]

4♥, because of the void.

[jdonn]

4♥ a million percent. I can't even pretend it's close, I think 3♥ is just horrible. You can't evaluate hands with voids in a situation like this and you might make game so bid game. And why not make things harder for the opponents in the process?

Phil, on May 17 2009, 10:22 AM, said:

my LHO has a smattering - 10-12 points, but no good suit to bid, so makes a responsive double. My RHO usually leaves it in.

I hope so! If I bid 4♥ on this hand a million times and found the most common score achieved, I bet it would be 790 (more than 620 even).

[whereagles]

4♥ is prefect here, since they don't have spades. It will be very hard to get to the right suit, diamonds, after this preempt.

3♥ is way too tame

[benlessard]

I think its clear to bid 3H vul with 4 trumps and a void or with KJxx and a stiff. So this hand is a trick stronger than a regular 3H bid, so the risk of missing game by bidding just 3H is too big for me.

[hanp]

Richard, what happened to you, 3H? Did you recently become a father?

[mtvesuvius]

4♥ easy... The opponents can feel free to start guessing on the 4 and 5 level.

[skjaeran]

4♥ for me too.

[JLOL]

4 fo sho

[hrothgar]

hanp, on May 18 2009, 09:26 PM, said:

Richard, what happened to you, 3H? Did you recently become a father?

I'm spending most of my free cycles trying to close on a house...

Apparantly, my hand evaluation is

1. Suffering
2. Skewing towards the conservative

On the bright side, I might actually be closing tonight / tomorrow

[jonottawa]

2♦

[mtvesuvius]

jonottawa, on May 18 2009, 02:39 PM, said:

2♦

LOL