Siegmund

Suppose, for the moment, that all of the following are true: 1) NS's real agreement is diamonds and a major, so there really was misinformation; 2) Had EW stopped in 3C, they would have gotten 130 or thereabouts; 3) Had there been no misinformation, NS would might have played in 2S and given up only 100, or even made 2S (they will be doubled, but they arent vulnerable, and if North has six spades or otherwise-exciting distribuiton, he could easily lose just two spades and the cashable heart and club tops.) Is that a basis for ruling "no damage," period? Is that ONLY a basis for ruling "no damage" if you believe the 3NT bid was SEWOG? (My first take is that 3NT was pretty darn woggy, and that there are a lot of layouts where NS have 7+ tricks available in spades and/or 8+ tricks available in diamonds, but I have no idea how persuasive East's argument was, or how shapely the actual NS hands were.)

It's not an uncommon approach in quite a few parts of the world. Far as I am concerned it makes essentially no difference whether you open 1C or 1D on your 4-4-3-2s. Lots of prominent people have advocated 1D=4+, but usually for another reason, intending to add a bunch of additional hands to 1C. For instance, all of the old Precisionists, for whom 1D was 4+, the 13-15 balanced hands opened 1NT, the 11-12 balanced hands passed, and the 4414 hands opened 2D; and most of the modern Polish methods, where 1D is variously 5+, 5+ or 4441, 5+ or 4441 or 4D5C, or just 4+ (and 1C includes a pile of weak balanced hands with only 2 clubs even when it contains 4 diamonds). On the 1D=5+ and 1C=1+ front, the classic was Kennedy who had his own prominent teaching schoool, book series, etc etc, in competition with the Goren machine 50 years ago. (He was teaching 5-card majors quite a while before Goren was!)

It may have some recognizable merit if it actually achieves something for the rest of your system -- for instance, it could be modified to include some other kinds of hard-to-bid strong hands, or use it to free up your 2NT opening to do something else. I have had several players from BC and Alberta approach me with it under the name "Karosel 2D" - and if they propose it under that name they seem to invariably propose it with terrible responses, like those on your first post. I believe it's not so much a variation on Mexican 2D, as someone local to your area's pet convention, that happens to bear a resemblence to Mexican.

A super-tip-top-maximum weak two and the slam is still only (just shy of) 50%. There is never any shame in missing a 50% slam at matchpoints.

An interesting difference of opinion about 3H (the one I was least sure about.) At the table partner had void Axxxx Ax AKJxxx, and for whatever reason made the serious underbid of 3C and got left there for 170. Over 3H we may well have gotten our 400 or 420 but it wouldn't have been because we knew what we were doing. 170 was still worth an average: one pair in 6C, two in 4H, two in 5C, a few partscores in hearts scoring 200 on a lucky break, lots of 170s and 150s in clubs, and 3NT ran on the rocks.

I like 2♣ to still be inverted after they overcall 1 of a suit, in which case 3♣ is still minimum-without-major-stoppers... but I realize that's going to be a minority viewpoint.

Your partner deals you a fine hand, as usual: ♠QTxxxx ♥QT ♦Tx ♣Q9x Assuming for the moment that weak jump shifts either aren't on your card, or this hand doesn't meet your partnership's standards for them, the auction starts, with silent opponents: 1♣ - 1 ♠ 2♥ - 2♠ Which of your partner's 3rd bids can you drop him in? Which of your partner's 3rd bids will you drop him in? If not, what is your own 3rd bid going to be?

I came up with close to 57%, opening all balanced and semibalanced hands 1NT, when I did a sim of it a year or so ago. The case for Staymaning is even stronger at IMPs than at MP, too - getting to even a shaky 4-3 diamond fit may cost you 10 or 30 points, but save you from some big sets. At any rate, not a remotely close decision with any of 4441, 3451, 4351, or 3361 shape. When you have a doubleton club, its only clear with a weak hand; with 7 or 8 points you gain some by Staymaning but do better by retreating to 2NT if you get stuck in a 7-card fit than playing the 4-3.

Shame that "get a new partnership style" wasn't one of the poll choices.... I feel much safer coming in at the 1-level than the 4-level on hands like this.

There's no real downside to going slow (giving LHO an easy 3M bid isnt doing much damage since LHO was going to get to lead his better major against my 3NT anyway.) Long as you think you can convince your partner later that you seriously liked the idea of 3NT, and not some oddball hand that only had 3NT as a fallback position if it didn't like opener's rebid. I'm just not seeing the big upside to going slow either. Partner is allowed to bid over 3NT if he thinks slam is a possibility opposite a 4333 13-15 pointer, too. Put another way, what had DOES bid an immediate 3NT if 4333 13-15 pointers don't? OK, my 15 points could have all been in kings and queens rather than having, especially, the HA. I have no big complaint with 2S. I just am happy to get my whole hand off my chest in one bid. (And one time I WILL be better placed is if LHO chooses 4M next - p knows I have a trump trick to aid him in the 5m/6m vs X decision, and will have a forcing pass available that he might not if it goes 2S(limit+)-4M. )

I'd like to get 3NT played from partner's side, but have a hard time believing I am ever going to get him to bid it.

I expect the answer is yes, since I expect a garden variety pseudorandom number generator is being used. It's actually an interesting programming problem to achieve the opposite effect, sampling without replacement -- one way to do it is with things called quasirandom numbers rather than pseudorandom numbers -- and if the number of hands were merely billions or trillions, it would be quite useful to be able to get a 'fast' Monte Carlo estimate for how common something was, that turned into an enumeration if allowed to run for awhile.

I would assume the latter is "obviously" GSF -- or whatever your partner's normal meaning for 5NT is in auctions where a leap to 4NT would be Blackwood. OP's sequence, I can imagine as choice-of-2-slams or as choice-of-4-slams. But there are an awful lot of bids -- everything from 4S to 6H -- available for SOME kind of slam alternatives exploration, and almost all of them are DNE even my longest-time partnership.

Neither. 3NT! (Assuming 2NT is natural and invitational.) If partner puts me back in 4H, fine. If partner responded on an ugly 4-count, maybe he'll learn not to.

No-blame in my book. (Though old-fashioned up-the-line bidders might find it, since North will upgrade rather than downgrade his DK.)

3NT looks like a good practical bid at this vulnerability. The axe is at the ready if they choose not to let us play it.

There is an old nursery rhyme about making the weak hand's long suit be trump; the strong hand's aces and kings will still take tricks. Maybe AKQ-7 is enough to ignore that. But I think there are quite a few hands were e.g. 4-1 spade break might doom 4H just as surely as it does 4S, and we do have at least 8 good trumps in spades where we may have only seven in hearts, if we are worried about 4-X breaks in trump suits. Put me down for 4S with a casual partner, and something more scientific with a regular one.

For me 2NT is pick-a-minor by meta-agreement, so I have no alternative to a somewhat heavy 3C.

Put me down for 6S without asking. A classical partner is supposed to have a 7-trick preempt here. Opposite AKQ-7 and out I will have good chances to make 7 but it may well not be a laydown; opposite any lesser holding I won't. Eight cards AK? Awfully heavy for equal vulnerability if you're classical. If partner is described as "light even in second seat" I think we can discount that as an extremely remote possibility. Most likely is a 7-card suit missing one of the top three plus some other modest value, or a broken 8-card suit. I'd rather have an agreement to use 4NT as some more meaningful kind of trump-quality ask than RKC here -- perhaps 'just like GSF but one level lower' is a good simple agreement - but I've never had a partner who bothered to form such an agreement.

Takeout in (almost) all universes, but there is room to discuss what length and strength it shows. Without discussion I would assume X shows 4-4 in the two unbid suits while 2NT shows 5-5 and a weaker hand. With discussion, I like to have Sandwich show 4M5m, and have X be a 3-suited takeout of responder's suit, i.e., implying some tolerance in opener's minor and allowing 2nd hand to bid 2 of opener's minor naturally with 2 of responder's major as the strong cuebid. Lots of 2434 type hands.

It's a remarkably common affliction to misguidedly lead 5th from 6. I don't know why. It seemed perfectly clear to me to lead 3rd from the first time I heard about it.

It can be played in just about any sequence where a major is agreed at the 3-level (or lower), and at least one member of the partnership is unlimited. There are a lot of auctions where it's probably not the best use of the bid. It may not even be the best use of the bid when both hands are unlimited - my personal preference is for sweep cue-bids but that's admittedly a small-minority treatment. I am having trouble coming up with an auction where a minor suit is agreed and we have already so conclusively rejected 3NT that it isnt needed as a nonforcing bid.

Wilkosz! ~runs and hides~ [seriously, it's one of the few 2D uses out there that does something different than what standard already can do for you, which comes up frequently, and gains frequently. But most the world is scared of it for no good reason, and bans it.]

I am embarrassed to find out how old I am, sometimes: I started playing a Polish style club, specifically to be able to open all my 11s more comfortably in an 11-18 context than a 13-21 context, and was excited at the gains I got opening a lot of hands that the typical regional pairs player passed. But that wasn't the wave of the future in the US: just opening everything in sight and figuring itll all sort itself out later in the auction was :) A lot of 2/1 players open most of their 11 counts these days. And some of them like to respond on 4-counts, too. How happily they coexist depends how unhappy you are about the high frequency and low information content of 1M-1NTF. (People arriving from SA may be very unhappy indeed...people on their way toward a relayish system or happily embracing Gazzilli after 1NTF may be delighted.

At the table, I decided opener would have at least 5 tricks in spades, so we'd have only 800 defending if we had a slam, and 500 if our side didnt have an easy slam, so I was unwilling to convert for penalty. As it happened, partner was a pickup partner who had already shown himself to be a habitual overbidder so I took the seriously-chickenhearted path of 3NT. But opposite a normal partner I would have liked to have something besides 4S. (4NT sounds like minors to me too.) Re question c), I think my regular partner would have assumed our 3NT system (our 2C-p-2D-p-3NT system, that is) was on. I really don't know how that compares to 4m natural (and forcing or not?), 4H to play, 4S strong, 4NT quant.