Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Some curiosities

I went through about 100 deals where the auction started P-P-P, checking to see if there were any strange anomalies that popped up.  A few perhaps interesting observations are listed here.  Some might not be shocking, and a lot intuitive.

1. Second hand has exactly 9 HCP a ton.
2. Fourth seat is balanced a ton.
3. When fourth seat is unbalanced, he seems to be in the 16-19 HCP range a lot.
4. Strangely, a partscore in diamonds as the best end contract seems to recur quite remarkably often.
5. You need about 16 HCP if balanced to have a fair shot at the auction being a game auction.
6. Second hand has a lot of Queens and Jacks as a general rule.
7. Stiff honors are frequent.
8. Spade-club two-suiters are fairly frequent (and often in that 16-19 range).
9. Partner often has a difficult hand to respond with because of his HCP strength and a major opening.
10. Hands with both red suits are especially difficult for Opener.
11.  5-5 majors never came up.  For that matter, no 5-5's came up except spades+clubs.
12.  Hands with 6-card suits rarely had a second suit of 4+.
13. Balanced 21-23 hands were fairly common, but partner seemed to have 0-3 a lot.
14. Slams were very rare.
15. 4-4-4-1 hands were more common than I would expect, and often in the 16-19 range.
16. Interference is rare in real life.