goodwintr

I voted for Pass, but I am also not crazy about two hearts. What ever happened to the idea that length in the enemy suit is a danger signal when you are considering an overcall?

The Dallas Aces got almost immediate results, didn't they?

The arguments that South is good enough to accept even if 4D is merely invitational, not forcing (primes, maximum for previous bidding, every indication that the honors are a superfit), are the same arguments that should have persuaded South to bid 4D, not just 3D, over 2S. The proposed 3H bid (over 2S) is a lot more fashionable than jump-raising partner, but not necessarily more effective.

THREE

Doesn't anyone consider doubling 3H for penalties? Game our way is far from certain, and we have an almost purely defensive hand with four of their trumps (including a possibly useful 9-spot). Partner doesn't have to sit for the double if he is very short in hearts; maybe he will pull it to 3NT if that is the right contract. Oh wait: you aren't allowed to double for penalties in the twenty-first century. . . . TLG

Regarding the suggestion (made a couple of times above) to overcall 1S: Marshall Miles wrote about this (i.e., the 1M overcall in a four-card suit) some years ago in a Bridge World article, and again in his last book on competitive bidding. He argued that the best hands for four-card-suit overcalls had some extra values and a second longer suit. If advancer failed to raise the major, the overcaller could introduce the second suit on the next round (if appropriate, given the specific auction), and advancer wasn't supposed to take a preference back to the major. That style would have been ideal on the example hand. The point is that if you are going to overcall in a four-card suit, your partner cannot just assume you have five or more, and you should have a way (usually) to sort things out if you don't catch an immediate raise. Anyway, I have been brainwashed enough (thanks, Marshall!) to think a 1S overcall is ideal on the example hand.

"confess," not "confell" (whatever confell might mean)

I think (but confell I am not sure) the standard meaning is "forcing to 6NT, invitational to seven." That is what I would expect it to mean in a partnership that had not specifically discussed the bid. Partner reacts pretty much as he would to 4NT invitational to six, bidding a good four-card suit at the six level or a good five-card suit at the seven level, otherwise choosing between 6NT and 7NT. TLGoodwin

Two spades (over one club) on KQJx and out seems more to the point than one spade: if you are just preempting, you might as well get full value. (Who knows, you may cause penalty doubles to come back into the game!) In all seriousness, if you bid one spade on some of the hands suggested here (KJxx x xxxx xxxx, for example), how in the world can you manage a constructive auction when you really have something? Or do we assume the hand must belong to the opponents, and our bidding is obstructive/lead-directing, just because they open the bidding?

I meant "five clubs is OK"

Five is OK, but will you pass if partner next bids five diamonds? I'd give up on seven, although it might well make, and just bid six diamonds over three diamonds. Hard to imagine a hand where this won't have good play. TLG

It doesn't mean anything. Well, it means something to partner, and I am sure he will tell you what it should have meant to you, after the deal. No partnership can discuss all possible sequences, and to spring this one on an unsuspecting partner is . . . well . . . cruel and unusual.

2C wasn't nearly as bad as a couple of East's actions -- it was a little pushy, that's all, and offered to compete in the "wrong" suit. Perhaps West should have just passed and got on to the next deal. The opponents had settled in a low partscore, so there was some justification for believing that 2C would come to no harm. East's double of one heart, with only two spades, is technically wrong: it is no crime to pass, even with 15 HCP, when no positive action is suitable. And as the bidding went, there was no merit to the conversion back to spades from clubs: East should have expected West to have four spades and five clubs, not the other way around, because with five spades, West would usually balance via 2S, not 2C.

IMHO, the problem on this sort of hand is not so much the wide range for a 2D rebid, as it is the wide range for responder's 2H rebid. If the latter actually showed a terrible hand with long hearts, 1S-1NT; 2D-2H; P would be easy enough. The trouble is that responder might have that terrible hand, but he might also have something much better than that, since (in 2/1) virtually all hands with long hearts and less than a game force must respond 1NT. Weak jump-shifts help some, but not enough.

Is there any reason to suppose that this exact auction won't be occurring at the other table? Imagine that it does, and that your counterpart does choose to run via redouble. If you decide to shoot it out in two hearts doubled, do you really, honestly, think you will be in a losing position? I don't. I expect to go down a ton in two hearts, but would expect to go down more than a ton in three of whichever minor suit redoubling would land us in. Jlall is correct, people tend to be overactive in these situations. Teammates are there, too, and two hearts doubled might be an entirely "normal" contract, the "least worst" we can do if the opponents will not allow us to retract our opening bid.

That no positive bid is attractive is no excuse for passing when there might be an easy game somewhere (or even an easy slam in a minor suit). It isn't as if you would be giving up a sure-thing contract (2H) to try for game.

There are certainly different perspectives from different countries! If a bridge teacher here in the USA announced to the class that she was going to be teaching four-card majors, she would soon be looking out at empty chairs. (It would be like not teaching Blackwood.)

I agree with those who play that the double in the original question (1D-P; P-1S; 2D-Dbl.) is penalty, but I am "classically" oriented: I bet the younger you are, the more likely you play this double for takeout. With regard to the second sequence mentioned in this thread, 1X-Dbl.; 1Y-Dbl., Reese wrote that the double of 1Y shows a moderate hand with exactly four cards in Y, and 2Y directly over 1Y shows a moderate hand with five cards in Y: the idea was to avoid silly mixups about who really has the length in Y. In the sense that the double of 1Y shows length in the suit (even though only four), I guess that makes it a penalty double.

Correction to previous post: The Italians bid 1D-1S; 2S-4S.

"would be proper" Those are the first three words on p. 200 of the 1979 edition. I don't have the 1936 edition, but I have a partner who does. "Churchill preempts" were virtually non-existent. Somewhere in this thread it says he played weak two-bids, but that is incorrect: he didn't play any two-bids at all. (If partner insisted on playing some kind of two-bids, he would play game-forcing strong two-bids.) And yes, A10xxx A10xx xxx x was an opening bid in Churchill style, but not because it had "eight points." It was an opening bid because it had two "essential tricks" (which were really just quick-tricks), plus favorable 5-4-3-1 shape, plus good intermediates (the major-suit tens), plus length in both majors. I don't believe he would have opened Axxxx Axxx xxx x (without the tens) or xxx x A10xxx A10xx (without the majors) or KJxxx KJxx xxx x (without the essential tricks). Church disdained artificial counting methods, including "points." He also hated artificial bidding conventions, and didn't play (for example) Stayman or Blackwood. The Churchill style had little affinity with Acol (which was developing at pretty much the same time on the other side of the pond): many bids that are "limit" (and non-forcing) in Acol were unlimited (and forcing to game) in the Churchill style. T.L.Goodwin

(Robert, July 7, 2007, 4:10 pm)I won a bunch of IMPs many years ago when I bid 1D-1S-2S-4S at my table. Partner looked at my three card raise with a raised eyebrow. He make game with his weakish shapely 5-5 hand. At the other table, they rebid the diamond suit and it went 1D-1S-2D all pass. Responder 'did not' have the values to continue to bid 'without' spade support. This happened in the Bermuda Bowl in 1958. The Italians bid 1D-1S; 2S-2S and made it (although it would have been defeated with a different defense). The Americans, constrained by Kaplan-Sheinwold methods, bid 1D-1S; 2D-P and went down in a 5-1 "fit."

Alan Truscott played and advocated that the negative double of one heart denies as many as four spades. That would seem to be the ideal solution to this sort of problem. If you object that this gives up the distinction between bidding one spade to show five spades and doubling one heart to show four spades, Truscott would have answered that you were going to bid one spade on four or five spades if No. 2 had passed, so how bad can it be to do the same thing once No. 2 has bid?

A similar idea was propounded in about 1929 (!) by S. Garton Churchill. The book to read is "Churchill Natural Bidding System At Contract Bridge," 1979. Churchill played that the "negative" response over all of the one-bids was 1NT, not the cheapest bid (except 1NT over 1S). He called it the "Utility Notrump." I am not at all sure you can play "cheapest-bid-negative" under current ACBL convention regulations -- even though, like the Utility Notrump, it goes back to no later than the 'thirties, when it was known as the "Herbert Negative." It was part of the Vienna system. As a corollary, new-suit responses, including one-over-one responses, were "positive" or "constructive" in Churchill's style. And as a corollary to that, Churchill played that new-suit over new-suit bids by opener were forcing: responder would never want to pass anyway, because he had already shown positive values. TLGoodwin

There are two questions here: (1) Do you open all balanced 12-counts? (2) If you don't, why is this particular one "yukky" (assuming "yukky" is a technical term for a 12-count that you wouldn't open)? If you open all balanced 12-counts, either with a weak notrump or in a suit, then you don't have to bother with part (2). If you don't open all balanced 12-counts, then you should have some sort of standard. The tried-and-true rule was that you needed at least 2 quick-tricks (and some would have said 2 1/2). The example hand doesn't qualify by that standard. Another tried-and-true rule was to subtract a point from a hand for being 4-3-3-3; if you do that, this hand becomes an 11-count, and again not an opening bid. Having said that, the various posters are right about the merits of 2H vs. 2NT. And the support-doublers implicitly raise an interesting partnership question, whether the failure to make a support double denies three-card support for responder's major. TLG

One possible solution to the problem (2C-2D; 3D) is to play strong two-bids in diamonds. This was common, or at least not unheardof, a few years back on the West Coast of the U.S. It has been suggested, perhaps not entirely seriously, that doing this has the positive effect of eliminating whatever 2D gadget you use now. . . . As I recall it, using "strong 2D" means the sequence 2C-2D; 3D shows long clubs with secondary diamonds, something like x-x-4-6. I played this method for a while, but I do not recall that the 3D rebid ever came up. TLGoodwin