[rhm]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-August-27, 14:57, said:

On top of that, as has been said we then have to hammer 4S which may work great or may work horribly. Just seems like an awful style of bridge to me.

In my mind there is no "awful" style, only styles which may or may not suit your temperament and which may be more or less successful in the long term.
I would not open 4♥, but mainly because a 4♥ bid contradicts standard wisdom and I have no strong feelings here.
However, many actions taken today routinely would have contradicted standard wisdom 30 years ago.
For example just look into old books like "profits from preempts". It is laughable by today standards.

With the actual hand the only question is will a 4♥ preempt loose more often than it will gain.
Franky I am not sure, I simply do not know.
But none of the harsh critics brought forward has convincingly shown that to be the case.
The problem of any first seat preempt is that it may backfire if you preempt your partner.

What I am convinced of is that many experienced players put far too much emphasis on constructive aspects of bidding and neglect tactical aspects.

Take a recent example from Bridge winner (IMPS Knockout):

What to bid with

---

For me it is glaringly obvious to bid 4♠ and I have little doubt that the big winners in this game would favor this bid.
It is unlikely that you belong in any other strain nor that you will be able to stop below 4♠ by any other route and with any degree of confidence.
And yes, you may miss slam on a very sunny day or (worse) you may get forced in 4♠ on a rainy day, but the tactical advantages of an immediate 4♠ bid far outweigh the risks of a slower approach.
What surprised me was that only 29% voted for an immediate 4♠ bid. The popular action was a simple 1♠ overcall.

Rainer Herrmann

[Lurpoa]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-August-27, 10:50, said:

This is awful

YES,

THIS is awful

♥ ♥ ♥

[dake50]

Mirrors my thinking. With Hearts there is some value
to putting their likely Spades to a guess.
In contrast, Spades can just keep overbidding at
the same level as opponents fit.
Much more tactical chance to score well - thus to
deviate when opponents may have Spades.
How high into slam-maybe hands SHOULD you go?
If partner could have the perfect two cards? 3 cards?
Perfect 2 of 3? Perfect fitting short?
Pay your entry fee. Take your chance.
If this is allowed 4H, doesn't partner have to move
with AK+A? Any 2 aces?

[Lurpoa]

 Phil, on 2012-August-27, 11:35, said:

Could you be a little more trollish?

INDEED,

COULD YOU ?

[han]

 rhm, on 2012-August-28, 02:31, said:

In my mind there is no "awful" style, only styles which may or may not suit your temperament and which may be more or less successful in the long term.

What kind of empty talk is this?! Surely opening 6H on the given hand will be extremely unsuccesful in the long term, even if it suits your temperament. And that's exactly what we all mean by calling a call awful: that it will be a big loser in the long run. It is the only thing that we care about, whether you can expect to win or lose with some call in the long run. Justin thinks opening 4H will be a big loser in the long run, even though of course it may do well at any given time. While it will be hard to prove such claims, his post should certainly be of interest to mediocre bridge players like you and me.

[JLOGIC]

Rainer, overcalling 4M or opening 4M in third seat with a goodish hand is not some weird thing (as evidenced by your poll that 29 % of people would overcall 4S with that hand, fwiw I would also). You are far less likely to have a slam when partner is a passed hand or when RHO has opened. Those things are not exactly comparable on the weirdness scale, I mean do we have any evidence of any top player ever opening a hand like this 4H in first seat?

Looking at the pavlicek link where 1 hand opened 4H and one hand opened 1H we have:

--- AKJT9xx Txxx QJ. That is an 11 count that includes QJ doubleton, hardly comparable to this hand.
x KQJTxx x AT9xx. A 10 count with 6 hearts.
--- AJ98xxx Jx A9xx, a 10 count including Jx.
x AKQJTxxx x Jxxx, an 11 count with no defense red against white
Kx KQJxxxx x K98, a 12 count with some defense, certainly the weirdest hand so far but it had no aces and it is still like an ace worse than the hand in the OP
JT AKTxxx J98xx --- a 9 count
x KQJ9xxx QTx Qx, a soft 11 count
xx AKQJxxxx xx x, a 10 count with no defense
x KT8xxxx --- AQxxx a 9 count
QT AJ98xxxx Axx --- an 11 count red/white
xx AQJTxxxx xx K a 10 count red/white

Have to board my flight, you can keep going but filtering for first seat preempts nothing is even remotely close to this hand. I am pretty confident that it would be a fringe view to open 4H with this, and IMO it is awful. Some styles are in fact awful. I cannot prove that it is awful to do so with this hand but that is just my opinion, and even in this pavlicek thing we see nothing close to someone opening 4H in first seat with this hand, and that probably includes all states of the matches etc.

[sathyab]

 han, on 2012-August-28, 08:42, said:

What kind of empty talk is this?! Surely opening 6H on the given hand will be extremely unsuccesful in the long term, even if it suits your temperament. And that's exactly what we all mean by calling a call awful: that it will be a big loser in the long run. It is the only thing that we care about, whether you can expect to win or lose with some call in the long run. Justin thinks opening 4H will be a big loser in the long run, even though of course it may do well at any given time. While it will be hard to prove such claims, his post should certainly be of interest to mediocre bridge players like you and me.

Good point. But it's easy enough for almost anyone to see that 6♥ is likely to be a losing bid, but can't say the same of 4♥. If it's obvious to so many that 4♥ is a bad bid, why is it so hard to prove ? Or is that only simulation can prove or disprove such claims ? I am reminded of another area where proving the obvious is non-trivial. Engineers who are reasonably good at Applied Mathematics find pure Mathematics quite hard. One of the hardest parts of Pure Math is 'proving the obvious in the abstract' something you never worry about in Applied Math.

[cloa513]

 bluecalm, on 2012-August-27, 09:33, said:

I am honestly not convinced. Here is an interesting link:
http://www.rpbridge.net/9x16.htm

Small sample to be sure but something to think about.



I surely hope he did, that's the whole idea of this style imo.

None of those hands have as much defence and slam potential (ace and queen) as the OP partner's hand so the comparison isn't right.

[aguahombre]

Those who reference NAMYATS (reverse or otherwise), where the stronger of the two ways of showing a 4M preempt contains an 8-trick hand, are still incorrect to use it with the OP hand.

The toy should be used for pure 8-trick hands...8 solid, or 7 in the trump suit with only one outside trick. What takes this hand out of the NAMYATS set is the delightful potential of the Diamond QT9 combo for either offense or defense.

[rduran1216]

I think the issue here is what is the point of opening 4H. I generally am more inclined to believe you preempt on hands where you want to coax the opponents into a tough spot and make a poor decision. Otherwise, you should not preempt in a position where things will be made worse for your side by doing so. For example, on this hand, opening 4H is terrible IMO. When partner holds the right 10 count, slam is laydown, and when partner is broke and you reopen with a double, all you are doing is making things easier for the opponents to judge when partner pulls back to 5H (which is getting hit.) The range of possibilities on this hand make preempting a horrible partnership decision. Just open 1H and go from there. In 3rd chair, I think 4H would be almost unanimous.

[aguahombre]

 rduran1216, on 2012-August-28, 21:27, said:

When partner holds the right 10 count, slam is laydown....... In 3rd chair, I think 4H would be almost unanimous.

Unless there might be someone still concerned about partner holding the right 10 count.

[mike777]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-August-27, 10:50, said:

This is awful

ditto ....geeZ I thought i was going insane reading posts from otherwise really good. thoughtfull, forum players.

[cloa513]

 paulg, on 2012-August-27, 10:05, said:

There is only one four hearts opener that I would call insane in this sample (H Weinstein) and even this one looks like it is the BBO operator just putting in the final contract rather than the auction.

But I agree it is always interesting to see the different strategies of world-class players.

Weinstein's hand is so powerful that 6♦ (possible with different partner's hand or better distribution of opponent's hands) or 6♠ could easily be the contract- its not insane.

[mike777]

 cloa513, on 2012-August-29, 00:35, said:

Weinstein's hand is so powerful that 6♦ (possible with different partner's hand or better distribution of opponent's hands) or 6♠ could easily be the contract- its not insane.

please read what you said..........

1) that is not the contract
2) THAT IS NOT....

[Zelandakh]

There is an old saying that a preempt that is known to be a weak is a blunt weapon. This seems to have gone out of fashion and I only found a single refence to it in the internet to it, in a book by Daniel Roth where he gave (inter alia) the example ♠-/♥-/♦AKQJT9654/♣A864 as a 6♦ opener. That said, the OP hand looks to be taking a good idea just too far. Yes 4♥ could work out well; that does not make it the best choice.

[PhilKing]

It's not common practice in International play. Here are two examples of heavy or simply weird 4♥ openings from my pre-empt database (from USBC, World Championships and European Championship, 2000-). First the weird:

1) Angelini playing with Sementa in a European Championship opened Four Hearts first seat at game all with:

♠A5 ♥KT96532 ♦93 ♣AK.

It went 4♠ on his left passed backed to him and he passed. That was two off for win nine versus Two Spades making four on soft defence.

2) Wolff opened Four Hearts on ♠32 ♥AKQJT542 ♦Q86 ♣- first in at love all in a USBC and missed a cold slam (which should have easily been bid in the other room after a One Heart opening (Larsen).

[JLOGIC]

Well, if Angelini did it...

[MrAce]

 JLOGIC, on 2012-September-11, 08:16, said:

Well, if Angelini did it...

[PhilKing]

I like how he punished them by passing Four Spades - I am presuming Sementa would never pull his double.