Siegmund

I am experimenting with just such a system right now. I am using a mix of 1-under and 2-under transfers in response to both 2C and 2D: 2D over 2C= hearts (6+ if weak, 5+ if strong; completing transfer shows a misfitting minimum) 2H=spades (6+ if weak, 5+ if strong; completing transfer shows a misfitting minimum) 2S=asks opener if min/max, invites him to show a feature. Usually aiming for 3NT from the right side. 2N over 2C= diamonds (opener rebids 3C to refuse diamonds, 3D+ to accept them) 2N over 2D= clubs (completing transfer shows misfitting minimum) 3C over 2D= hearts (opener rebids 3D to refuse hearts, 3H+ to accept them) I am confident that 2D/2H as transfers is ideal over 2C; I am less confident that it is ideal over 2D since hearts don't get introduced until so high.

This same auction has happened to me twice this week: 1H (2H) pass (2NT) pass (3C) pass (3S) all pass. 2H = michaels, 2NT=asking for the minor. Among humans, this is an uncommon sequence, and carries a rather specific implication: "I wanted to play 4S if you had diamonds, but I am giving up on game since you have clubs." The first time GIB did it, he had Kxx xx QJ9x QJ9x, and can't possibly have planned to do anything different opposite one minor than opposite the other. Opting for 3m I could understand if it were imps; not asking and then bidding 3S. I horrendously misdefended this one, expecting bad clubs and good diamonds from advancer. Linky The second time GIB did it, he had QTx Qxx KTxx Q9x and no excuse to do anything other than sign off in 2S. Linky

Tonight the gf and I watched/listened to Rossini's La Cenerentola.

While it is a common meaning, I would question the value of double to ask partner to lead his worse major: when partner is broke, that's what he is going to do anyway on his opening lead. I don't know if that means there is a better lead-directing meaning for the bid. At favorable, I can see a case for Xing to show an extreme two-suiter, if all the 4-bids are natural and ostensibly single-suited. But I don't currently have an agreement (any agreement) about this double with any of my partners.

Occasionally with 1354. Rarely with 3361/1363. Very rarely with 2353. Never (so far, yet) with 4 spades or 5-5 or with a strong enough hand to wish I could jump. I spent most my bridge-playing life absolutely positively NEVER raising with 4; its a relatively new thing for me, and I try to limit it to a few situations where it's clearly right. I wouldn't be surprised if I do it more often as time goes by. Edited to add: after 1D-1H, opener always has an alternative rebid; after the other 1m-1M sequences, it's much easier for opener to be in a bind. The one time I almost routinely raise on 3 is with one of the 5-4-3-1 patterns that would require a reverse to show the 4-card suit (e.g. 3451 after 1D-1S).

(After 1M-2D drury): One of those simple elegant solutions that goes in my "why didn't I think of that 5 years ago?" file.

With minisplinters and/or fit-jumps available, declining to play Drury at all is not such a crazy decision. With less shapely hands, my regular partner and I had a very simple agreement about Drury: "if you are going to have a 3-card limit raise if I open in third seat, you must open it yourself in first." This led to a few interesting inferences -- in an FSF auction like 1D-1H-1S-2C, our 2H bid was NF and catered to the possibility of opener having 11 points and 3 hearts; but he wouldn't have a balanced 11 without 3 hearts, so 2NT didn't include any subminimum hands. Opening all of those semibalanced 11s in 1st isn't to everyone's taste, admittedly. I too will be interested to hear more about the 2D-one-way-Drury approach. It does make a lot more sense than giving up 2C does.

I am surprised s-a-y-c is leading the poll, honestly. Perhaps it's a regional thing... I have almost universally heard "sake", and recall blinking in surprise when I heard someone says "say-cee" for the first time. Yellow Card is a good option and one well worth including in the poll.

I found it more useful to use the double to promise Hx in partner's suit and a desire to compete, information he might need on defense as well as to decide what to rebid. Most of the time that meant I had a modest holding in the fourth suit too - and partner was free to bid that suit or find a temporizing call enabling me to bid it, if he didn't fancy rebidding his own suit. Essentially snapdragon but with the uncertainty shifted from the quality of my support to the quality of my holding in the 4th suit. About negative double strength sounds about right to me. If you don't have a firm notion of what to expect, then it'd be quite dangerous - especially if you are considering trying to collect a penalty.

I had a chance to look at the hand record today. Claimer started the hand with 3-6-2-2; I don't know how the play went but she had almost certainly failed to follow in clubs, and North started the hand with 5 diamonds and likely knows there are none left for South to hold. I get the strong suspicion that a good North would have known the spade was the clearly correct card to keep. (The actual decent-C-player North probably was not certain of the position, but I hate having to guess about how good someone is to make a ruling.)

Once the question has been asked, you answer the question. Had I been the director it is you, not your LHO, who would have gotten the first lecture from me. If you feel the need to give advice too, well, so be it - but your immediate obligation is to answer the legally asked question. Yes, there may be an ethical issue, but if there is, the act of asking the question has already caused it and it can't be undone, and withholding the answer doesn't make things any better. As for LHO's lecture, I would prefer to see it saved until after the hand/round, rather than given in the middle of the auction. It too is better given by the director than by you.

This is the type of situation I was afraid of getting into. Since North is discarding after West, it seemed possible that a sufficiently expert North who had a correct count on the hand could argue he would pitch the diamond first and thereafter pitch whatever was indicated by West's plays to trick 11 and 12. As it happened, both the other director and I ruled the SK might be discarded and awarded EW the last trick. Neither defender was anything close to the level of expert and neither protested overly. But I was disturbed that I really couldn't point to a clear basis for forcing the SK discard had I been challenged, and could imagine an argument from some Norths that would talk me out of my ruling. After reading the replies in this thread, I remain equally disturbed. :)

Something I had never seen before happened at the club yesterday. (I was not the table director, but got summoned by the table director for a second opinion because it was a sufficiently odd situation.) West is declaring a notrump contract. South wins trick 10, then claims all the rest in a position like this (sorry, I don't remember the spots in declarer's hand, and I don't know the previous play): .....♠K .....♥--- .....♦T .....♣A ♠x(x?)..........♠J ♥---..........♥--- ♦---..........♦--- ♣x(x?)..........♣xx .....♠--- .....♥72 .....♦--- .....♣--- "Hey, wait a minute, you have only 2 cards and the rest of us have three!" "There is a five of spades under your chair." "Hmmm... director!" First things first: the ♠5 is deemed to have been continuously present in South's hand. She has not revoked; but she has made a bad claim. So, "obviously," she wins her two hearts and then leads her losing spade. But North has the highest spade left (and the highest club left and the highest diamond left.) Do we automatically rule that the ♠K must be discarded on one of the hearts so trick 13 must be awarded to the declaring side? Do we provisionally rule that the spade is discarded and wait to see if North tries to argue with us? Do we try to reconstruct the hand to find out which discards on the hearts are normal-but-not-irrational plays for North? (More generally, do we take into account North's level as a player?) Do we pretend South made a normal claim of 2 tricks and a concession of 1 trick and allow North to object to the concession?

GCC legality: Transfer responses are allowed if, and only if, they fall under "6. Defense to conventional calls." Takeout doubles are conventions, so transfers ARE legal after 1suit-X. Also after Michaels/Unus2NT/Roman Jumps/etc. They are NOT legal if your opponent passes or makes a natural overcall. (Which is really too bad, because they are an excellent option for responder after an overcall.)

One thing that surprises me about these Gerber threads... A sentiment most recently expressed by mikeh: A lot? Really? I have met about two pairs in the last 20 years who use Gerber over suit bids. (Both of them were "life novices" who had never had a cuebidding auction in their lives.) On the other hand, I have met a lot of pairs who agree that 1NT-Pass-4NT is Blackwood, and had a lot of pickup partners unexpectedly yank my quantitative raises to 5 of a suit. (The more enlightened of these use 1NT-5NT as a quantitative notrump raise, "since 4NT is already taken;" the less enlightened just think having an ace-asking bid is a top priority in every auction.) If we compare the two crimes -- " thinking that they can use 4♣ in virtually any auction as Ace asking" and "thinking that they can use 4NT in virtually any auction as Ace asking" -- the latter error is the more common, by about two orders of magnitude, in my experience. Except on this forum, when I hear someone say "I don't play Gerber," I assume he is a B/I who has not yet grasped 1NT-4NT quantitative, and expect a competent unknown to play Gerber over NT for sure, and probably also after Stayman.

I must be getting old. Looks like an ordinary maximum 2S to me. Opening 1S will work fine as long as we wind up in a spade contract, but if it goes 1S-1N-2S-2N/3m, or we find ourselves in a misfit any of several other ways, this hand will be a high-card disappointment though it has nice playing strength in spades.

Perhaps consider adding 3NT (gambling) or 4C to the first poll? It's the wrong number of tricks for 3C at equal vul for me... my preference would be either of those > pass > 1C > 3C. On the second I am trying 3H, but it could certainly be wrong. (More likely because we are missing 300 in 2Sx than because 3H goes too far down.)

Further to the above: I always log in as "Siegmund." (The client is set to remember me, I don't type it in sometimes one way and sometimes the other.) A scan on myhands shows two occasions, one on December 4th and one yesterday, when my username morphed into "siegmund". I don't recall logging out and back in during that time period last night but there was a half hour where I didnt play any hands; I wonder if the window timed out and auto-reconnected, and changed to its idea of the default username or something. Good catch noticing that the case had changed. Not sure why or how.

No (even when playing BROMAD - though that's because I never thought of 1NT-then-3M as "a Bergen Raise". Those hands are now either bidding 2N, or XX-then-major, for me.) You won't find many folks still playing 2/1s as game forces after a double either. "All systems on" may not be an insane treatment but at the 2-level it is unusual.

And not as a sub, either. My first hand at a new table early last evening was This 3NT making 6 on misdefense. I played a couple tournaments, opened a matchpoint table again two hours later, and my first hand was The same hand making 4. It had only been played twice at that point and my two results were 100% and 0%. I took a screenshot last night in case one or the other of the results might magically disappear from the database when the names collided. But both results show up in my myhands this morning, and both results show on the finalized traveler for the board: http://www.bridgebase.com/myhands/hands.php?traveller=M-1319346108-31239715&username=Siegmund I've never had this happen before in some thousands of hands, including many matchpoint tables opened late at night when boards take hours to complete, so I assume it's a rare bug. Let me know if I can provide any further info to help track it down.

Door #2 was the choice of my regular partner in Alaska and me. We used support-ish doubles quite extensively to show Hx opposite a 5+ suit, both in auctions like this one and as advancer. That said, I have yet to run across anybody else playing it that way. I am excited to see it even mentioned here.

First one I would have considered 2H on the previous round, but think pass is obvious now and expect a good profit. Second one I don't expect to beat but have nowhere to run, so am endplayed into passing anyway. I sure don't like it.

Aces-and-spaces hands never seem to be much fun in 3NT and this one is no exception. On the actual opposing cards, nothing works; but still, not sure I took the best line on this hand to combine chances. RHO opens 2S, you bid 2NT (is there anybody who hates 2NT so much you would have bid 3C? That way partner will have to play 3NT instead of you..heh), partner puts you in 3NT. Lead is the expected ♠5. ♠KJ ♥T97 ♦J87643 ♣KQ ♠A84 ♥A53 ♦A2 ♣A8532

4S was bid for a reason. If partner could cooperate for a slam in spades he would bid 3S; if he could cooperate for a slam in diamonds he would have cuebid already. Partner has just told us that he has wasted values in the round suits and no great surplus of aces; listen to him.

A hand from BBO yesterday: IMPs, both vul. West deals and passes; over North's 1m opening, East will overcall a weak 2H... ♠J75 ♥7 ♦A543 ♣AKQ43 ♠A93 ♥A83 ♦KQJ976 ♣6 Seeing all the cards, you want to be in 7D. Only four of the sixteen tables reached six -- two without interference from East, and two with crazy leaping/gambling auctions. Our auction was a simple 1D-(2H)-3NT-swish making six, disappointing but beating the multitudes in 5D+7. Playing with myself, I think it'd go 1C-(2H)-3D-(P or 3H)-4D followed by a cuebidding frenzy, but I am still never making it past six because I won't know about the CQ saving me from a spade loser.