[blackshoe]

My partner, who has been around bridge at least as long as I have, put me in a 4-3 fit yesterday. When I mentioned Al Moyse and "Moysian fit", she had no idea what or who I was talking about.

[mikl_plkcc]

In 4-3 vs 4-2 trumps, there will be one of the following happens:
1. I draw trump and lose control of everything because the last outstanding trump is smaller than theirs, and afterwards they run their suits.
2. I don't draw trump and attempt to play all the side suits. They ruff away our slow winners with small trumps.

I'm talking about situations where we don't have most of the trump honours, for example, we are missing both K and Q in our trump suit.

[blackshoe]

In that situation your best option is probably to try to set up a cross-ruff. I did that on one hand yesterday, and actually made the contract. Barely.

[mikl_plkcc]

 blackshoe, on 2025-April-09, 13:02, said:

In that situation your best option is probably to try to set up a cross-ruff. I did that on one hand yesterday, and actually made the contract. Barely.

That will require a short suit in one hand and another short suit in the other hand, and I don't always have the luxury of this.

More commonly I am forced to play 4-3 fit because an attempt to identify possible NT has failed, and it is because two hands have the same sort suit without stopper, and our only 8-card (or even 9-card) fit is in a minor which has never been bid.

[hrothgar]

 mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-09, 12:58, said:

In 4-3 vs 4-2 trumps, there will be one of the following happens:
1. I draw trump and lose control of everything because the last outstanding trump is smaller than theirs, and afterwards they run their suits.
2. I don't draw trump and attempt to play all the side suits. They ruff away our slow winners with small trumps.

I'm talking about situations where we don't have most of the trump honours, for example, we are missing both K and Q in our trump suit.

Our experiences differ

[blackshoe]

 mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-09, 13:29, said:

That will require a short suit in one hand and another short suit in the other hand, and I don't always have the luxury of this.

More commonly I am forced to play 4-3 fit because an attempt to identify possible NT has failed, and it is because two hands have the same sort suit without stopper, and our only 8-card (or even 9-card) fit is in a minor which has never been bid.

No system is perfect.

[jillybean]

 blackshoe, on 2025-April-09, 12:57, said:

My partner, who has been around bridge at least as long as I have, put me in a 4-3 fit yesterday. When I mentioned Al Moyse and "Moysian fit", she had no idea what or who I was talking about.

I get the impression that all of your "hopeless" bridge partners are female, but I guess you've got find a partner somewhere

I haven't heard of Al but I do enjoy playing in moysian fits, or in bad trump breaks. It gives you an opportunity to completely rethink and replan your declarer play. I love that cross ruffing with my little trump.

[blackshoe]

It's funny. At this point I can't remember how I got started playing with either of my current partners. Or any of my former partners either. I've had male partners. Gender doesn't really seem to make any difference. And I don't think anybody is "hopeless".

[AL78]

blackshoe, on 2025-April-10, 13:40, said:

And I don't think anybody is "hopeless".

A few games with me would change your opinion.

[mikl_plkcc]

I have finally got a good result in club bridge, 64.38% in a full 5 1/2-table Howell, with a first time partner.

There were no highly competitive auctions and no slams in the whole evening, and mostly we just stayed out of the auction once a misfit was shown, watching their misfits going down.

[jillybean]

Very nice result! Hang onto that partner.

[DavidKok]

Congratulations! Well done.

[mikl_plkcc]

However we still made two huge mistakes at the evening. One was when I declared, I miscounted a certain suit and discarded a wrong card at trick 12, turning a plus into a minus and obtained a 0. Another was that my partner did not lead the only unbid suit, which both of us were strong in, against a 3NT contract which resulted in 3 additional overtricks.

[jillybean]

Yep. That's what keeps everyone coming back, you can always do better.

[akwoo]

mikl_plkcc, on 2025-April-16, 02:18, said:

However we still made two huge mistakes at the evening. One was when I declared, I miscounted a certain suit and discarded a wrong card at trick 12, turning a plus into a minus and obtained a 0. Another was that my partner did not lead the only unbid suit, which both of us were strong in, against a 3NT contract which resulted in 3 additional overtricks.

1) Most beginners (or even intermediates) think it's a matter of luck whether they keep the right card at trick 12, considering it impossible for mere mortals to actually count this out. (It used to be that when I partnered a random player (or a regular partner) and made this mistake, I would apologize for it. Then I learned that expecting myself to get this right just makes my random partner nervous about how good a player they're playing with.)

2) There have been plenty of times I've gotten a top for not leading from KJxx(x) in the unbid suit. Also plenty of times I've gotten a bottom for that. I lead something else more often than most players, and I think I'm getting more tops than bottoms, but I haven't kept track.

[Huibertus]

There are two different things you need to do to improve.

The partnership needs to document their agreements on bidding and carding and keep the document up to date when you decide to change things.
- BOTH need put in the work to remember the agreements.
- Both need to agree that when there is a risk either or both forget agreements it is better NOT to play conventions. i.e. it seems you both at times forget about checkback stayman, so don't play it. If 2♣ is natural and both know this, you may miss out sometimes on the optimal contract, but that will occur far less then disasters that happen due to forgetting what 2♣ means, so on average it scores better.
- Include style in your agreements. IE Non-Vul against VUL 3rd against a passed hand a weak jump overcall/preempt can be done on just QJTXX, XX, XXX, XXX so partner will almost never support even with fit or it needs to be sound?

On an individual level both partners need to study play from good books, that is WAY better to improve than practice. It allows you to develop pattern recognition in a relative short time that might take years to develop by playing a lot instead. Simply because these patterns may not occur that often and might also not get recognized.