Siegmund

Pass not close. I don't need to tell my partner what to lead against spades, and against notrump with a weak hand, he will look to the unbid major anyway. I would rate X as a misdescription at any form of scoring, and 2H as exceedingly aggressive at MPs, suicidal at IMP.

Splinter. There are other exotic conventional meanings possible, sure. But I find the suggestion of natural more than a little bizarre.

The weaker your hand is, the more inclined you should be to use Stayman here. If your agreement is that 1NT-2C-2D-2H is non-invitational with both majors, I think that's acceptable on these cards. You are basically gambling on opener having a 4-card major or having 3-2 in the majors (so that the 4-3 fit gains a trick via a ruff in the hand with only 3 trumps). As already mentioned in the thread, that is a nonstandard agreement though it has a substantial following. Edited to add: This is backwards. Opening fewer offshape notrumps makes using Stayman quite a lot less attractive -- 2254/2245 hands are bad for this responder, but the 4252 hands and all the hands with a 5-card major are major gains for using Stayman.

Matter for partnership agreement. Almost all 2/1 pairs agree that jumps in a previously bid suit are invitational, not forcing. Among SA pairs, both agreements exist, and it's something one needs to always ask a new partner. (As you've seen, there are a lot of people who either haven't asked, or whose answer has been "I don't know.") I personally think the forcing agreement is the significantly superior one, but I understand I am in a minority for feeling so. In a new partnership, I play it whichever way my partner says he is used to playing it. Out of the 11-point hand and the 14-point hand, one jumps to 3D after 1D-1H-1S, and one bids the fourth suit.

We took our beating, with all 3 hosts and a few kibitzers watching. Heh. We needed a few practice hands to warm up, apparently. Between that and some software trouble this cost me more than one torn out hair. (Hoping to juuust barely make it into the top half, but not sure I will.)

MSchmahl and I are here now, but can amuse ourselves until 8 if we need to.

I voted 4C but wouldn't fault a partner who chose to bid it the other way.

Especially at this vulnerability I am surprised to see anyone passing as opener. (In light of the agreement that responder can penalize only one minor.) 3H is the knee-jerk-reaction rebid, but I think a natural 3S or an I-have-a-big-hand-for-the-majors 4C might be better.

I thought there was a notion that at low levels, a responsive X implied a 3-card major holdings while if you had 4 you bid them. On this hand I am bidding 2S, then 3H if 3C comes back around to me. I can see where you can agree that X shows 4-4 majors, but I didn't expect that to be the majority interpretation.

On the posted cards, I don't happen to think much of at least two bids in 1D-1S-3D-4D-4H-5NT either. That said... the gist of what I had to say about GSF is... OP had an auction that began 1D-1S-3D (yes, we know that may not be the best choice) and continued with cuebids (yes, we know not everyone plays the same cuebidding style.) In that context -- it's possible to have an auction where cuebidding convinces you that the side suits are well under control, but you don't know what the trumps look like. (On the actual cards, we might discover that SK is missing and not be so keen about looking for 7.) There can be value in cuebids (at the 4 and 5 levels) and GSF, rather than RKC. One of the possible advantages is helping prevent a bad notrump conversion if that allows you to distinguish between shortness and high-card controls. I happen to have a toy (adapted from Ted Brashler) that helps me with the "6NT or 7m?" question, and I was briefly sharing it.

An adjunct to GSF which I find very useful, incidentally, is this... all bid past six of the trump suit show the missing top trumps; but the jump to 7D specifically says "...and at least one of my previous cuebids was shortness not strength, DO NOT CONVERT ME." With top trumps and all honest cuebids, bid 6NT.

Yes, that feels like almost a full trick's worth of an overbid to me. Funny you mention 2H vs 1NT -- I think I mentioned during one of our previous exchanges about regional differences that when I first heard of Single Raise Constructive (96ish), I heard it described as a silly experiment that had a stake driven through its heart in the early 80s, and was quite shocked to find a couple of online players (both from New England, as it turned out) who believed it was standard practice in 2005. Returning to the other auctions, 1H-2H-2S is reasonable, and yes, I can see responder taking an aggressive view and getting to game.

It is true that I've run across many more mediocre players who think switching to Precision is the key to improving their game than I have good players who actually believe in it (and it was a few of the good players who were using the control bids.) It's quite interesting how precision has made a comeback, after the era of "everybody except Hamman-Wolff plays 2/1". I wonder what has changed to make people embrace it again.

I think it's very close to the border. I have been known to go either way on this type of hand. Bidding 3C misses a lot of making 3NTs when opener has a little extra but also misses a lot of failing 2NT when he doesn't. How much change to make 3C 100% clear... removing the heart stopper?

I think you've slightly overloaded it -- in particular having two kinds of 11-point hand, balanced, and clubs, isn't a popular choice. Not saying it's impossible to make it work; just that I haven't seen it work. To be GCC-legal, all non-game-forcing responses except 1D must be natural. Transfers and immediate control- or HCP-showing are off the table. (1C has to be 15+ to allow any conventional response. If you really want to play transfer responses, you can consider a weak notrump and putting the 15-17 balanced hands into 1C instead - but that's hardly a 3-way club, that's just a strong club.) Again GCC-legal severely limits your options. None of the really useful weak artificial 2-bids are allowed. Most pairs do use 2C as natural and moderate-strength. Weak twos in all four suits are, in principle, playable, if you can cope with opening all the club hands 1C. I personally have played semi-weak twos, where 2C/2D were 7-13 with 6-card suit and 2H/2S were 4-10, but not gone any lower than that on 2C. A 2NT opening to show both minors and opening strength can take some pressure off of the 1m openings. (That, combined with rebidding 1M on the 4M5C hands, allows 1C-1banana-2C to promise a 6-card suit, for instance.)

You did well to show a mixed raise (and have a system and an auction where you could show same.) I'm not surprised that got you ahead of the field. Yes, the 4th heart is still worth something; and a 4th trump + a doubleton somewhere is usually worth counting as a cover card; but xx in diamonds felt a lot less likely to be a useful ruff than in another suit, after there has been a diamond preempt. In an uncontested auction, I would be in significant danger of missing this game if North didn't have a way to show a singleton diamond. (And in a lot of situations, we avoid showing singleton aces.)

Its not the first time I've been in a minority with my evaluation of a hand. Will be interesting the read 'the rest of the story' when it comes out. My thoughts on hearing partner has values in clubs was more along the lines of "that makes it easy, I don't have to worry about how to explore for a slam, and if they bid 5C and partner doubles again, I will be happy to sit for it since I've shown my hand." If partner hadn't doubled 4C there might be a tough 5-over-5 decision on the next round. I would feel the same way as the other respondents so far if my hand were about a trick worse than it is. If I didn't have the HQ,say, I would bid 4H at MP out of fear of 300 being a zero but take my plus at IMPs.

I'm sure you'll get several opinions from the Precisionists on the board. I never played a straight strong club (either standard or Polish-family systems for me, thank you)... but I can tell you that when my opponents opened a strong club, I could and did get away with murder when they used the "pass 0-4, double 5-8, bid 9+" approach that's in the old Precision books. The opening-side system I had the most respect for were the pairs that showed controls at responder's first bid (1D 0-1, 1H 2, 1S 3 when we didn't overcall, pass 0-1, X 2, cheapest bid 3 when we did)... because often the 1C opener was able to judge immediately that his side had no game, in which case they went all-out to nail me for 200 or 300. I pulled in my horns about half a trick against those pairs. That's really just a condemnation of playing HCP-steps in any system. Those methods and variations on them (reversing the meanings of pass and double, or using double for 9+ and the immediate bids for semipositives) are all I've played against much. I can't speak to how effective transfers or high-powered gadgetry are for the opening side.

You can put me down for pulling. My plan was to go to 4H if partner didn't show me 4-card spades, and even if partner DOES have 4C beat one or two in his own hand, I am not contributing much to the defense. If I had only 5 hearts I would, reluctantly, leave it even if I were 4540. If I were 4621 I would be looking to see if I felt I had any defensive tricks but there are many hands I'd be willing to leave it. Incidentally... smolen? do people use Smolen on 6-4s? (I don't -- I play 1NT-2C-2D-4D/H is Texas with a 6-4.)

Funny. It must be a style thing what exactly 3S shows for different partnerships. I would bid 2S with this, myself, to show a good positive hand; and my second choice would be to jump to 4S (maybe even my first choice, with a few rather stodgy partners.) I'd never bid 3S with it, because I'd expect that to show a hand more like Q-7 xx xxx x -- warning partner not to carry on to game with just a good 16, but only with a rockcrusher. This is a hand that WANTS to get to game if partner has a good fit for spades. Over 5D, I have to pass. I'd have taken the push to 4 obviously.

27's kind of a fun number of teams to enter into a contest... 3-ways to trim it to 18->12->8 and then KO's, like it was an ACBL bracket? Or shall we all try and twist some friends' arms and fill it out to an even 32?

♠A for me. I am sorely tempted to try a small spade, hoping to reach partner and get a heart back toward my AQ... if overcaller were not a passed hand I might very well do that, but as it is there is no guarantee the king is on my right at all. Not eager to lead a club and help declarer finesse my partner out of his trumps, despite the 20-and-20 argument. I would rate a small diamond as also reasonable, more or less tied with the small spade.

There's an awful lot of blame being given out in this thread for quite a normal auction. Not getting to game after a preempt with 22 points is not quite the end of the world. Seriously, supposing the opps are silent do you think you're always getting to 4H here? You want North to force to game with 6 losers, or South to raise with 2 covers? I would be quite unhappy with a North who leapt to 4H over 3D, and quite unhappy with a South who raised 3H to 4, though that's semi-understandable if he is confident both his kings are well placed. No reason for him to think his 4th trump is worth much since he won't be doing any ruffing.

5S now for me. Doesnt feel close. If partner can't X this I'm not going to. Not a forcing pass situation, for me anyway, since 4S wasn't necessarily a game bid on strength.

My partner and I ARE in: Siegmund-MSchmahl (I think... that's the username he uses everywhere else but I haven't seen him here yet)