Wow, March already!  I had a nice couple of weeks playing and teaching, and I'm glad you all had a good time with Kathy.

Today we talked about PREEMPTING.  There are lots of factors that should come into play when you're deciding whether or not to preempt, but the big ones we talked about are:

1.  VULNERABILITY (and more specifically, risk/reward analysis):  If you're vulnerable, have a better preempt.  If you're not vulnerable, be a little more aggressive.  If you're not vulnerable and the opponents are, be even more aggressive.

2.  SUIT QUALITY:  While some people only like to preempt with two of the top three honors, it's actually more useful to have preempt suits that are full of intermediate cards (like 10s, 9s, 8s, touching sequences, etc).  A good question to ask yourself is "how well can I survive this preempt if partner has just one or none of my suit?"

3.  SHAPE:  In addition to suit quality, hands with shape will be more useful to you as a preemptor.  However, strive to NOT preempt a suit when holding a 4-card Major suit on the side.

One more very big caveat about preempting - when you preempt, you're done bidding in that auction unless partner asks you a specific question.  If the opponents come into the auction and your partner competes as well, it's not up to you to compete even more.   You've done your damage with the original preempt - now stay out of your partner's way!

It will take some trial and error to learn preempts, so start making them!

:)