“Bidding Melee” refers to sets of deals I generate using the “Bidding Scenarios” options of the website. Specifically, this group of options:
Using those options will not necessarily result in deals that will let you practice what the option describes. To get the desired deals, you have to carefully choose other settings, such as who the dealer is and the point ranges for each player. The same is true of every custom deal option, not just those in this section; however, these are among the more complex options because they involve not just dealer and responder as many of the other options do, but may also involve configuration of overcaller and advancer (in fact, interfering and reacting to interference are the purposes of this section of options).
What I am calling “Bidding Melee Version 001” is a set of 24 deals that I generate from a script containing a particular set of custom deal configurations. Long did I labor over that script. I will generate and make blogs posts of sets of deals from that script and each set will be unique (similar configuration but different cards), but since they come from that one configuration I will always describe them as “ Bidding Melee Version 001”. As I generate other sets of complex deals from other configurations, I will give each of those a version number too, so you can always check the related descriptive blog post (like this one for Version 001) and know what scenarios you are studying.
The following is a list of all 24 custom deal configurations in this set, with a brief statement of the purpose of each deal followed by the configuration options that I used to generate the deals. I will of course post new sets of deals regularly, but if you want to generate more of a particular deal on your own, just use the settings I show here as a starting point. Be careful if you decide to change any of the settings—as of this writing the deal-generating website does not guard against going into a loop if you submit impossible configurations (though it does halt if it hits the shuffle limit that you have selected on the first page of the site).
I include the number of shuffles it took to generate each deal as a point of interest. That number will be different each time I (or anyone else) generates a deal, but it is a good measure of the complexity and thus the expected frequency of each configuration in real life. That is, it would be a good measure given a large enough sample size. It is entirely possible that the program could stumble into the rarest, most complex deal after just a few random shuffles on any single pass, so a true measure of frequency would require collecting data from many runs of a script and then applying statistical measure to the results. That’s not the point of this post so I won’t go into it, but I thought I would mention it because this is, after all, Computation Corner.
And now, the deal descriptions:
Deal 1 goal: Let North practice overcalling as LHO (relative to dealer) with a long suit.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has overcall length in a suit.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 40 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 2 goal: Let South practice overcalling as LHO with a long suit.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has overcall length in a suit.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 28 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 3 goal: Let North practice overcalling as RHO with a long suit.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; RHO has overcall length in a suit.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 7
User-selected point range for RHO is 12 to 13
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 1535 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 4 goal: Let South practice overcalling as RHO with a long suit.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; RHO has overcall length in a suit.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 7
User-selected point range for RHO is 12 to 13
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 4439 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 5 goal: Let North practice takeout double as LHO.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has TOX shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 1098 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 6 goal: Let South practice takeout double as LHO.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has TOX shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 413 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 7 goal: Let North practice takeout double as RHO.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; RHO has TOX shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for RHO is 12 to 13
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 13135 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 8 goal: Let South practice takeout double as RHO.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; RHO has TOX shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for RHO is 12 to 13
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 7117 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 9 goal: Let North practice 1NT overcall as LHO.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has 1NT overcall shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 15 to 17
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 1516 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 10 goal: Let South practice 1NT overcall as LHO.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has 1NT overcall shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 15 to 17
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 36 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 11 goal: Let North practice 1NT overcall as RHO.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; RHO has 1NT overcall shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for RHO is 15 to 17
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 1951 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 12 goal: Let South practice 1NT overcall as RHO.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; RHO has 1NT overcall shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for RHO is 15 to 17
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 369 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 13 goal: Let North practice LHO overcall of a preemptive opening bid.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open preempt; LHO has overcall length.
User-selected point range for partner is 0+
User-selected point range for LHO is 16+
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 442 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 14 goal: Let South practice LHO overcall of a preemptive opening bid.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open preempt; LHO has overcall length.
User-selected point range for partner is 0+
User-selected point range for LHO is 16+
User-selected point range for RHO is 0+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 223 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 15 goal: Let North practice RHO overcall of a preemptive opening bid.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open preempt; RHO has overcall length.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 7
User-selected point range for RHO is 16+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 356988 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 16 goal: Let South practice RHO overcall of a preemptive opening bid.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open preempt; RHO has overcall length.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 0 to 7
User-selected point range for RHO is 16+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 425839 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 17 goal: Let North practice negative double as responder. Opener is 1 of a major.
Dealer: South
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M; LHO has overcall length; Dealer's partner has negative double shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 10+
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0 to 5
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 7712 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 18 goal: Let South practice negative double as responder. Opener is 1 of a major.
Dealer: North
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M; LHO has overcall length; Dealer's partner has negative double shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 10+
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0 to 5
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 1849 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 19 goal: Let North practice negative double as responder. Opener is 1 of a minor.
Dealer: South
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1m; LHO has overcall length; Dealer's partner has negative double shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 10+
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0 to 5
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 30 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 20 goal: Let South practice negative double as responder. Opener is 1 of a minor.
Dealer: North
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1m; LHO has overcall length; Dealer's partner has negative double shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 10+
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0 to 5
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 1495 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 21 goal: Let North practice cuebid (in lieu of limit raise) as responder.
Dealer: South
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has overcall length; Dealer's partner has cuebid shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 10+
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0 to 5
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 411 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 22 goal: Let South practice cuebid (in lieu of limit raise) as responder.
Dealer: North
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has overcall length; Dealer's partner has cuebid shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 10+
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 0 to 5
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 222 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 23 goal: Let North practice cuebid (in lieu of limit raise) as advancer.
Dealer: East
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has overcall length; Advancer (RHO) has cuebid shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 10+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 1217 shuffles to find this deal.
Deal 24 goal: Let South practice cuebid (in lieu of limit raise) as advancer.
Dealer: West
Vulnerability: None.
User-selected Custom Deal Type: Dealer can open 1M or 1m; LHO has overcall length; Advancer (RHO) has cuebid shape.
User-selected point range for partner is 0 to 5
User-selected point range for LHO is 12 to 13
User-selected point range for RHO is 10+
Use length points: No.
Use dummy points: No.
It took 308 shuffles to find this deal.