Discipline vs. guessing

One thing I've noticed about experts is that they try not to guess. That doesn't mean they never guess. But they do try never to take the last guess. Is this the same thing as "discipline?"

One type of undisciplined bid is when you deliberately fudge your hand to fit a bid that you'd like to make. For example, you pick up a balanced 14 count with no special features and, just because you feel like it, or want to be declarer, you decided to open 1NT showing 15-17. Sometimes, this will work well when partner has 9 hcp and a long minor and 3NT is cold on 23 hcp. But other times, partner will invite game and the limit of the hand will be 1NT. This kind of thing is a partnership issue, and your partner will eventually become unhappy, unless your declarer play is first rate.

But there's a different kind of discipline where you are likely making the last bid for your side. Partner is probably not going to bid again, so can't really be deceived. A lot will depend on the form of scoring and the state of play, so to speak. Matchpoints vs. IMPs? Competitive situation vs. non-competitive? High-level or low-level decision? High entropy or low entropy (entropy is complementary to information)?

Here's a high-level, IMP pairs, competitive, high-entropy situation, i.e. a lot is resting on this decision:

AKJ3 KJT983 T8 9. All vulnerable.

Partner opens 1S in second seat and RHO bids 5C. That's annoying! We have no idea whether partner has a minimum or maybe is just below a 2C opener.  Well, we do have a pretty good idea that RHO has most of the high cards in clubs and we have 12 high card points. Partner can't have much more than 18 then.

Let's do some arithmetic.  What might happen if we pass? Partner will probably be passing too and we might go anywhere from +200 to +400. What about double? Assuming that partner doesn't take it out then we could score 500 to 1100. If he takes it out to 5D, we can always go back to 5S.

Can we make 5S? Assuming that we have no trump losers, we've got three losers. Surely, with his opening bid, partner can cover one of those. So, it looks like 650 is likely available to us. There might be a few pairs defending 5C, possibly doubled. Bidding 5S is probably worth about 4 to 6 IMPs over defending.

What about slam? This is where, the lack of information is really troubling. We can no longer ask for keycards so it's going to be decision time immediately.

If partner has two aces (particularly if one of them is the diamond ace--not an unreasonable expectation), we can very likely make 1430 for 13 IMPs over and above the 650 and about 14 IMPs over and above defending. In other words, just by bidding 5S we are almost locking in 5 (approx) IMPs. Bidding 6S will gain an additional 9 IMPs if it makes.

But, what if it doesn't make? We will be -100. We lose not only the 5 for grabbing the declaration but an additional 7 or 8 for going down.

To put it mathematically, we risk 13 to gain 13. An even money bet. We'd take the same bet at matchpoints.

This is how many bridge players would evaluate this choice: mentally flip a coin, likely favoring the slam decision simply because it's just more fun that way.

But the true expert will say this: "I can't find out if 6S is on, so I'll assume that it isn't and just bid 5S." A popular expression that covers this situation is "when you're fixed, stay fixed."