smerriman

Nice defense by East to bare the king of hearts, but I'll drop it anyway.

Quite the opposite - a new suit response to opener's 1♥ bid is unlimited and forcing. Over 2♣, you can start with 2♦ (fourth suit forcing). South has nothing further to say, and will rebid 2♥, after which you can show your heart support with 3♥. After that, it depends on your methods. For me South will bid a non-serious 3NT, denying any extras, and North will sign off in 4♥.

You might like to watch , which was posted within the last couple of days. AK were split between dummy + declarer, and it wasn't AKx vs xxx, but it was a good example of the thought process of why you had to duck.

Two points for the club shortness (minus one globally). Good luck getting club ruffs in no trumps though..

GIB is well known to be awful when it comes to doubles. Nothing you can do about it.

I think it's pretty clearcut that if you knew in advance the choice was between playing 1NT and 2M, you'd always rather play 2M. But that seems to have no relation to the reasons people decide to open 1NT with a 5cM, which is to help with all of the other cases (including competition).

Driving to at least 6 opposite a balanced minimum?! That doesn't make any sense. A splinter has to be very limited, so if you're not bidding J2NT with slightly stronger unbalanced hands, what exactly are you bidding? Always a new suit then delayed support? That's taking far too much out of the J2NT bid.

The weekly free you're always compared against the same players.. so that shouldn't be possible.

I can't imagine anyone being *taught* a different definition, so there is only really one possible explanation for what it means. Whether they know that definition is a separate issue.

Ah yes, that is definitely true in best-hand format.

Perhaps Wikipedia will help. The purpose of NMF is to specifically ask your partner about their major suit holding in order to find out whether they have 3 card support (or, in other situations, 4 card support for the other major). It's not a case of whether your partner would want to "support" spades or not; they're forced to bid it if they have 3 as it's simply answering your question. This is a super easy convention for a robot - they'll never get it wrong. (Note as mentioned earlier, the version described there uses both minors as NMF, rather than just 2♣).

Interesting results so far - of the 35 votes, 23 are raising to game, and 12 are passing. All but 2 either agree with the 1NT opener, or didn't read the fine print, always hard to tell which :) Not many comments but a couple were interesting; in particular one which said they understand partner is specifically not inviting, yet will raise anyway; and another who argued that partner can't have a real invite, probably doesn't have 6 hearts, and still voted for a raise. As usual, pays to check out the names of the voters to see who voted for which option (if you're familiar with the names).

The NMF part was referring to a 2♣ bid, not a 3♣ bid. The key is that 2♦ is a non-forcing bid that could be passed - in fact, swap its third spade for a diamond and it will - so you're never going to be able to force after that. Rebidding diamonds shows extra length, but not extra strength that you've already denied. Descriptions below: [hv=https://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?lin=st||pn|~~M5057ac0,,~~M2001vz1,|md|3SAJT73HKDAJ864C98,S962HQ95DKQ5CJT62,SQ85HAJT83DT9CKQ5,SK4H7642D732CA743|sv|e|rh||ah|Board%209|mb|1H|an|Major%20suit%20opening%20--%205+%20!H;%2011-21%20HCP;%2012-22%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|1S|an|One%20over%20one%20--%204+%20!S;%206+%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|1N|an|2-3%20!C;%202-3%20!D;%205%20!H;%202-3%20!S;%2012-14%20HCP%20|mb|P|mb|2C!|an|New%20minor%20forcing%20--%204+%20!S;%2011+%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|2S|an|Secondary%20support%20--%202-3%20!C;%202-3%20!D;%205%20!H;%203%20!S;%2012-13%20HCP%20|mb|P|mb|4S|an|5+%20!S;%2012+%20HCP;%2013-17%20total%20points%20|mb|P|mb|P|mb|P|]400|300[/hv]

OP has stated in an earlier post they are playing with a different robot, not GIB.

If by 'system' you mean the NMF convention, almost every pickup partner you'll find online will also play it. Those that don't will likely play some form of xyNT where both 2♣ and 2♦ are *both* completely artificial bids, unrelated to clubs and diamonds. I would agree that's an improvement, though given you were wanting to bid diamonds naturally, probably not what you were looking for.

Seriously? Partnership trust means that if your partner 'breaks the rules', then you trust that they had a good reason to do. (And I'd argue this isn't breaking the rules; lebensohl as Karen Walker described it above specifically allows raising in this situation). If your partner believes that you'd walk away from your partnership if they didn't throw away their judgement and make the book call - even if it turns out to be a long term loser - that's going to be far worse for your partnership than the bid itself. Have created a poll on BW; I would be highly surprised if there were many votes for pass.

From Karen Walker: The last sentence applies. Incidentally, I would not open 1NT with that hand. K&R values it as a 19 count, and I don't open 19 counts 1NT. But NT valuation is tricky as you say, so I wouldn't call it a huge error, and a completely normal bid in the N&B forum.

Of course, but that's not the auction we're talking about, which is 1H - 1S - 1N - 2D - 2S - 4D. I think you misread something :)

I agree - that's why I said 4♦ probably shouldn't exist. The definition will most likely just be an automatically generated combination of the level and rebid showing a minimum number of points and length. Given 2♦ is NF, what do you think 4♦ should mean in a sensibly designed system?

That may well be true; after all, by bidding 2♦ you are asking it to give a preference between diamonds and spades, and a 5-2 fit is usually preferable to a 4-3 one. Thus the reason for the artificial 2♣ bid; then you find out definitively whether they have 3 spades or not. The club bid is 100% artificial and the description doesn't say anything about clubs, so the other occasions must have been unrelated bidding sequences. There are certainly plenty of sequences that GIB can't handle properly. But I wouldn't say this is anywhere near half - if you keep posting hands where you're stuck, you may find it was just a case of missing what the correct sequence was (like the artificial 2♣ above).

Which robot are you playing with, out of interest? Doesn't sound like a very good one. Even GIB, the robot everyone loves to hate, bids 3♣, 4sf. You did nothing wrong.

Unfortunately this in some sense demonstrates my point - that you haven't understood the system. Your correct bid over 1NT is 2♣ (GIB plays new minor forcing; in this sequence some play both minors as NMF, but you can confirm from the definitions that it just uses 2♣ here). You got a second chance when it showed you three spades and could have raised them - but didn't. So in both cases, it's going to take inferences from the fact you haven't done so. In particular, 2♦ then 3♦ is described as an invitational hand with 6♦, so it will always pass with a minimum. 2♦ then 4♦ probably shouldn't exist, but it's described as game forcing with 6 diamonds; since you chose not to show a 5th spade, it's always going to raise diamonds. You have most certainly not agreed spades at any time in this sequence, since you may simply have 4; you know you have an 8 card fit, but GIB only knows you have 7. It's similar to a sequence like 1♠ - 1nt - 2♦ - 2♠ - this doesn't agree spades, since it may be a preference bid with 2 spades. If opener continues with diamonds, responder is under no obligation to correct back to spades. In both cases, the person who knows about the fit must insist upon it before it's too late - so the error here was on your side.

TylerE - while that's true, what on earth does that have to do with this thread? :) Definitely interesting if it's true; I haven't dared double 3NT enough times to find out. Though I do recall once or twice doubling when I had a real double and they ran, so I could believe it.

What seat you're in is totally irrelevant here. GIB will pass flat 8 counts in any seat, but analysis tends to suggest passing is the percentage option, even if you miss a game here or there. I'm not sure why you'd jump to game, but of course you'd force to game; who wouldn't? This is just nonsense and has been disproven numerous times.

If you have bid in a way that 100% definitively set a suit as trumps, and the human then continually bids a new suit despite being warned that it is a cuebid, that is most certainly the player's fault. It is simply a waste of time trying to program a robot to handle cases which can never exist, especially given the complexity of the bidding database. Not saying that's what happened here - I suspect it, but would need to see the hand to know for sure - but while GIB has many faults, there's no way that I'd accept that particular scenario was not the fault of the player. In fact, one of the biggest complaints about GIB is that if you make a bid which it doesn't understand, it often passes, and that this should be fixed by defaulting to bidding on. Based on your logic, you seem to want the opposite.