Fluffy, on 2012-March-04, 17:17, said:
I also think this is closer than the poll suggest, bidding on has 3 ways to win (make, sacrifice and push them)
This is always true when the choice is whether to bid something or pass. I guess it's a good argument for bidding in close situations in general. However you lost me here:
Quote
and pass, when wins, will win very little. As oposed to biddign with works very seldom but wins much more.
If this was true I guess I would always bid. However going down even 300 when you could have gone +100 is a 10 imp loss. Obviously the reason to pass on hands that have a lot of defense and not that much offense is because you risk a phantom sacrifice which is very costly. If we thought 4H would always be cold then bidding would be good whenever we had good offense, but that is also obvious.
The reason to pass is even when you make something you might well get to the wrong spot, when you bid 5D you risk going for a large number even when they are cold, and most importantly when you are beating them and not making it will be costly, it won't be "winning very little"
Imagine if partner just has a stiff diamond and a bad hand, obviously that would be a worst case scenario but we will go for a really large number instead of going plus.
In general when you have good chances to beat them and not that great of a chance to make, bidding is a bad idea since phantoming is very very bad (even -100 into +100 is a medium sized loss). I am not trying to say that bidding does not have good upside, if they are cold and we hit a big fit we might find a good save, we might make, etc.
However, it's just about figuring out how likely these scenarios are, which is obviously hard to quanitfy, but imo passing is pretty clear. Maybe I am too optimistic bout our D and too pessimistic about our O. That almost everyone in the thread advocates passing is not too surprising to me.