Flame

What i ment as not a good idea is to show shape but not give your suits, for example 1♠ show any 9+ hcp with 5any4any. I think this kind of bidding although would probebly give the same result on uncontested auction would be bad in contested one.

One thing for sure, it shows the J since partner wouldnt just throw a Q giving up a likely trick, the second sure thing is partner doesnt like the obvious shift. The thing in question is does he like the other suit (spade), You will normaly know if you need to switch base on the bidding so its not crutial. With QJ2 and nothing in diamonds he will play the Q wather he like spades or not.

Opening 1♣ is already problematic since you didnt show your suits, responding without giving your suit is big mistake imo and will put you in bad position when it come (and it will come) to competitive bidding.

Suppose the bidding goes 1♠ - (2♦) - 3♦ (P) 4♠ - (P) - 5♣ 5♦ 3♦ showed support for ♠. 4♠ showed some extra. 5♣ is a cue bid showing a club control and slam interest Is partner obligate to cue bid 5♦ with a ♦ control or is he showing atleast some slam interest ? This is just one example i am looking for general rules not one solution. There could be a case for saying 4♠ bid is very narow in strengh since opener could have cue bid with real extra, so when your strengh is know you must cue bid. On the other hand i am not a big believer of the cue bidding in order to find a non controled suit, my expirence showed that you better not look for 2 losers suits, because its rare enough and even if it exist its many times better to just bid the slam and hope for "good" lead. I usually prefer my cue biddding to be a conversation of slam interest, so with a minimum hand i prefer bidding 5♠ and not cue bidding. What do you think of this ?

How will you continue over this 2♣ ??? This seems very strange and unplayable atleast when vul. You employ the Multi principle. That is, you make a preference as high as you can in the alternative that's worst for you. That is, if the red suit's are "bad" from your perspective and the blacks are better or even great, you give preference to your best (longest) red suit. Partner will pass or bid ♠'s at the same level, unless he's got extra strenght and/or shape. If you make a 2♠ reply, partner will know that you can play at the 3-level (or higher) if he's got the red suits. If your hand is great, you bid 2NT, to ask partner which suits he's got. This shows game interest, so partner will bid cheaply with a minimum and make a stronger move if he's got a good hand. Thanks, i was just confused because after the double you can play in 2!C and 2!D while after the 2!C you cant play in 2!C.

Some of my student would consider many things a pysch, some think opening with 11 hcp and 6-5 hand a psych, this is against the rules, unallowed they will say. Those guys are really novice offcourse, and those guys you talk about are better players but they still have things they dont know and they consider them psyches, hopefully in time they will learn. If i play such a field i might alert abid i know they might not understand but in good field this is standard and you should not alert it.

How will you continue over this 2♣ ??? This seems very strange and unplayable atleast when vul.

You need to be flexiable there and allow both looking for club game and looking for slam, if partner is intrested in slam he can bid something new like 3D or 3S, if he have no support he will bid 3NT. i think you can bid somehting like 4C with hands that is both max and looks like good for play in 5C rather then 3NT.

The different between your suggestion and standard are the non jumps overcalls only, the width range jumps are normal and everyone play them. I am not convince that opposite a passed hand we would be better placed with a 11+ 1♠ then with 7+ 1♠. I think the 7+ does more damage to the opponenets, and you will be doing ok as long as you follow the law of total tricks guidlines and not push partner with no resson. On the side you gain the ODR different between jump and no jump bids which is much more important then hcp, and you dont have to pass balance 5 spades.

It seems normal to bid to the 3 level with 4 card support but is it wise ? We normally have 8-9 card fit, most of the time the opponenets will have thier 8-9 fit, according to the law they should let us play in 3S, so as i see it we help them when we bring ourself to 3S voluntarly, we dont let them mistake. If we only bid to the 2 level they might mistake bidding 3 when they dont have enough or not bidding 3 when they do have enough. And even if they choose right we still have the last chance to bid 3S if we wish. I think this is a mistake after a 1S opening, i think you should try to be in the 2 level and get to the 3 level only when ur stronge enough or shapey enough. All this ofcourse reveresed over 1H opening when pushing to 3H make them choose to bidv 3S or pass and might get them to mistake there.

I am trying to come up with the best support structure to my 1♠ opening which show 4+♠ which could be balance, 6 card suit or 2 suiter normal or canape, 9-15 hcp. I have been trying some structures trying to be both contructive and destructive for my oponents. i would especially like to distiguege between 4 card support and 3 card support. some componenets i tried are using 2H to show support GI, 2S for weaker support. using 2H to show 4 card support, 2S for 3 card support. using 2C as a realy which include 3 card support GI. using 2S as premptive could be 0 hcp, partner move only with super hand. using 3 level bids to show kinds of 4 card support. unfortunently i cant fit those componenets into one structure that i feel great about. The best i feel about is 1NT - nf could have 3 cards balance support. (we dont want to use forcing 1nt since we open 1S with some 4 spade blance hands) 2S - premptive either 3 card not so bal or 4 card balance. 2H- 4 cards GI 2C - relay could be GI support. 3 level bids to show 4 cards premprtive or mix raizes. using this structure, there is a dilemawhat to bid with 3 card balance support either 1NT or 2S (or pass) i think i tend to bid 2S with weaker hands and 1NT with stronger hands, the resson is 2S say we dont have game on value only continue with max and shape we cant play 3NT, while over 1NT we might still reach 3NT since partner will always continue having 14-15 hcp. So say i have a 10 hcp 3442 i think 1NT will be better, at worse will play 1NT with 8 card fit both balanced. Will be happy to hear your thoughts on this cause i really not sure.

The process that good players use for getting into playing table is to look at thier friend list and then right click and join, i think good players rarly scroll the tables finding a free spot, therefore making a master room wouldnt work so well.

If you're intrested, i decided to call myself Flame (many years ago in an age of empries clan) after a small baby who got killed by a palastinian sniper her name was "shalhevet" which i translated to Flame. Im not sure my translation was best maybe ember is closer but that name goes with me for many years. I felt the name will be the Flame of her momry. As i tried to tell you in private i really dont want to fight with you, but for some resson you feel you must, this is my last post here, so feel free to say the last word.

I think if anyone then you were the one to put words in my mouth. I think you just got too defensive and instead of listening and trying to learn something you desided to fight which is sad cause i always thought seeing how many books you read that you are a learner.

Thanks Richard you say in 4/5 step ask for stoppers which make sense with a bal hand. but assume we find the right stopers how will we know if we have the strengh for slam or should stop at 3NT ? And David this is exactly as i see it, a natural relay system you might call it. Now you dont have to answer im strong, you just zoom with strong so u actually lose only 1 step. I dont think im going to try to implement it into my currect system since it will go over 3NT too many times, but i do believe this is the way a system should be designed in the first place. initial shape then strengh then complete shape.

sorry to bather you again with this but now with more expirence i want to ask again about relay rather then breaking it with some examples. partner open 1C showing 16+ respoder (GF unlimited) showed: 1. 6!H 0-2!S ending with 2!S. 2. 5!H4!D 0-2!S ending with 2NT. 3. 5-5 !H!C ending with 2!S 4. 4-4-(32) ending with 2NT. 5. 5-(332) ending in 2NT The question is, should a well design relay system use the next relay to ask for strengh rather then continue shape ? In all these examples there is still a chance of fit in one of respoder short suit which can be up to 3 cards, yet this chance isnt so big and knowing strengh is important at this point.

What make you think this isnt standard? what do you think here isnt standard ? LTTC ? serious NT ? AK together. Almopst every adv partnership play those. its super standard. And then he give some of his own ideas which is a big bonus. I really dont understand your problem with it, i think for some strange resson you think he made this all up and all experts never heard of it or play it. I can say i admire his bravness to write it without reading it because i had my thoughts of writing books, and i know what it mean. And yes when someone is doing a work that takes more resourses then its only make sense that you will pay more for it. but even if not paying i still have lots of respct for such writing as opposite to all those 25 conventions you must know books that are so much easier to write.

Do you really want another book on slams explaining conventions such as RCKB, deniel cue bid, asking bids, byzintine etc ? Trust me writing such a book is million times easier then writing a real full slam tool as Ken did. I dont see any better way, this is exactly what i would want, a full system which i can play rather then bunch of tools which i need to implement. I didnt read the book but i admire Ken for being so brave writing such a book. Im also sure it was very hard to do alot of work needed for such a book. I agree with you on one thing, i would like to know that this system really work and for that the only way is to know that a real world class successful partnership is using it succesfully.

Arclight, i may be wrong but i think your problem begin at the same spot as some of my student (the good ones) and many many other players i know, you think cue bids are intended to show something in a specific suit. This is wrong. Yes cue bids do show something in a suit, but this is only thier side job, their main one is to show slam interest and discuess slam with partner. You better forget what cue bid show in a suit then forget its main goal, many times it might even pay to cue bid with nothing in the suit as opponents wont lead the suit. When you fully understand this and accept this main goal of cue bidding, and i know its not easy since i see player who were tought that cue show ace and cant accept not to know what exactly in the suit, then you can get into the least important thing of what exactly the cue bid better show which as i said is far less important. As i understand from all this duscussion Ken's book give his suggestion of what the cue bid should show, he doesnt get into the main resson of cuebidding only the minor one, this book might be aiming to player of high level bridge knowlege understanding and expirence.

Since you share the result either way, what difference does it make who revoked? I cant really explain it, i guess even though we are partners we still have our individuality, when i make a nice endplay i get the complement and when i make a stupid revoke i get the blame, so i will take the blame when i made the revoke, but i will not tell that my partner revoked, if he want he can do that imself, its just feel wrong to do it for him. If ill think his moral arent good enough for me then i will not play with him again, but i wont call the director on him. I would feel more or less the same with a friend who do something questinable that i wouldnt do, i wouldnt tell anyone but if i think its bad enough i might decide not to be his friend anymore.

I dont like justin's idea of taking back penalty card. I think the law has an idea beyond it, the penalty cards options arent just a random set of rules for punishment but a set of rules to make things fair since the partner of the player who expose the card shouldnt benefit from seeing it. About revokes made by myself i will tell them, but if made by my partner i'll usually shut up.

This is the one thing that i cant get eoungh information. As i understand ppl now going from cuebidding to shape showing and not the other way around. justin once gave an example on which he would cue bid 3D bypassing clubs if he got say KX in club and AXXX in diamond, in my system this is imposible since im ubsolutly denying a club control. He said his first cue bid is always natural. I wish i knew more about this style.

We will play the way forward which has relay in parts in it, we dont use the original relay but some other. personaly i like the opening structure while my partner is in love with the relay idea. Thanks for helping.

Thanks, does it bother you to have long bidding seqences getting to normal game when others just bid it in a 2 seconds ? i dont mean information given just the waste of time/energy and maybe a little laugh by the opponents.

Hi Richard thanks for trying to help but i think its not my problem but a systematic problem with relay. I dont know the subject that well but from what i understand there are systems like ultimate club which show strengh before shape and there are most other systems who show shape as long as u have GF (after 1C) So you begin 1C-any positive (we play 1D as negative) now opener has a 17 hcp with a 3-3-4-3 shape, he start relaying, should there be some point where the system or the use stop asking for shape and check the strngh ? Example: I heard partner has 4H 5+C with a 2H response. Now i know our most likely contract is 3NT, this is almost always true when partner doesnt have much extra, but in case he got extra we could have a slam and specific shape is important to know. I think this is not only my problem is it ?