KingCovert

I'm not sure that I agree that partner would do better setting this contract, but, let's assume you're right. Why can't our club holding be KJTXX? or KJTX? or KT9X? or AJTX? Or any number of absolutely solid club holdings that produce two maybe even three stoppers due to how well situated we know them to be? To bid any number of NT with this hand, when you can often have a holding such as that, is to mislead partner. Partner will often set the wrong contract after a bid like that. Rather, precisely because we know the club situation, and we know the resulting implication that partner VERY LIKELY has a distributional hand on this auction, and because we have two side-suit aces and 10 points in suits that figure to matter opposite partner's likely singleton or void in clubs, we're absolutely better situated to set the contract or make the appropriate correction/invitation after partner patterns out. It would be incredibly poor bridge to allow the opponents to play two of a minor, and partner is extremely likely to have a hand that can compete. In fact, the only hand that he'd have that may pass 2♣ would be a 5=3=3=2 ~12 HCP hand that would struggle to make 1NT on such a poor deal. But, I'll just emphasize again, it's not likely he has this distribution given the club situation. As for how you catch up after a pass? If partner rebids 2♠, just raise game. If partner rebids a red suit, you can jump to 3♠ (or even cuebid clubs now). You are showing values and no spade fit, but, a spade preference. You even have the ability for partner to take a free 4♥ bid on the way to game, sometimes. For example, [hv=d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1s2cpp2sp4sppp]133|100[/hv] [hv=d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1s2cpp2hp3sp4sppp]133|100[/hv] [hv=d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1s2cpp2hp3sp4hppp]133|100[/hv] This is a rather advanced concept, but, one does have to learn how to assess the qualities of a hand and know how to upgrade or downgrade their hand in various respects in an auction. It's not simply enough to know the agreed meaning of a bid. You have to be able to exercise judgement, and players that bid No-Trump on hands like this clearly need to develop that skill further. I'll perform a simulation on this sequence to highlight just how poor No-Trump plays. I think you'll be surprised.

I agree with DavidKok. Reading the discussion in the thread so far, I think some are not using the auction to contextualize North's hand. You can decide with what odds you think partner is holding the A♣, but, short of the A♣ you have exactly one stopper in clubs when playing in No-Trump. The only way you're not getting a club lead is if East is void. Now, there only figure to be 2 clubs left in the deck. So.... You have some things in your favour. It's far from probable though. Rather, your partner is almost guaranteed to have a second suit or long spades to find a rebid, and those bids will all be available to partner at the 2-level. You have almost all your values in the red suits, including two aces. And, I can think of a lot of layouts that make 4♠ and not 3NT, but, very few if any that will make 3NT but not 4♠. Including many 5-2 fits that will play just fine. If you take just 5 seconds to actually look at the hand, and not just count and say, "Well, this is my bid because ... <insert reasons>", if you resist the urge to just bid on auto-pilot. You'll quickly see that this hand screams to play a suit contract. You bid 2NT/3NT at your peril. So, what bid preserves the ability to play a suit contract and doesn't mislead partner? Pass seems clear.

Yeah, this is the layout that I determined as well. Minor variations are possible, West could have KJ♥. But, if West holds the KJ♥, there really isn't any defense, so we have to dismiss it. The Q♦ and J♦ could be swapped, leaving diamonds up to somewhat of a guess. Are they 2-2 or 3-1? Are clubs 4-4? Leading the spade fails when West has the K♥. (West absolutely can't have the A♥). So, I think it's worth giving some consideration to the 10♣. Declarer can't play spade themselves, and still needs to get diamonds right, and the threat of South winning a third round of clubs is looming large. That being said, partner could have QJ♠, so, I'd still prefer a spade exit, since a club loses to almost all layouts where declarer holds the Q♦.

A while back I did this a little bit for fun, mostly as a way for friends to stop by and chat while I played. Unfortunately, there really isn't a clear category that would serve to make your broadcast discoverable to a more general audience. It makes it hard to really make inroads. :( EDIT: Oh. It seems that they added one? Cool.

Ahhhh, yes, I usually play a 10-12 1NT and so I wasn't processing this. It's showing 15+. Thanks. Still, I don't really see any reason why with a beginner pair this changes anything. I suspect that, after 1NT, 2♣ is natural for them, and that they expected that 3♣ is stronger than 2♣. 3♥ still seems like it can only be an ask for a partial stopper? Perhaps this is too advanced a meaning for a beginner pair, but, given the actual hand, I struggle to assess a different meaning that seems believable. 4th Suit Forcing is a particularly useless agreement at this stage, as surely 3♥ is forcing and well, kind of hard not to reach at least 3NT at that point. I want to be clear though, I'm not advocating for this sequence as being a great sequence or set of agreements, but, given their apparent agreements/understandings it's simply my assessment. I suspect that I'd have arrived at 3NT in 4 bids under the best set of agreements that I play. Interestingly, 4♠ looks like it has more play than we've given credit for so far. It makes on a 3-3 spade break and some 4-2 breaks.

I don't understand the commentary in this thread so far. I think the sequence, without better agreements, clearly showed the shape and invitational strength, and given the actual hand it's pretty hard to suggest that 3♥ was anything other than an ask for a partial stop in hearts. OP seems to think it's 4th suit forcing, which is clearly a misunderstanding, and this most likely resulted in a poor result, hence the thread. This auction should have ended with a bid of 4♣.

3♥ is a one round force, and it asks you to bid 3NT with at least a partial stop in hearts. Your partner would like to play 3NT, but, intends to run to clubs if not possible.

I do agree that the percentage of hands that it makes on goes up after the redouble, and that there is certainly value in introducing clubs, I just won't believe you or anyone else in this thread that would themselves demonstrate "bluff or bluster" if they claim that they'd ever make a 7-level call. It's simple logic that, at the table, will reign supreme. If you think you're making 6♥, you're not going to accept taking a certain minus on this hand. And, anyone who disagrees with this, I would probably be tempted to call liar. Edit: Heck, if I'm going to take such a staunch position, I may as well just go to the limit. If you think you're a good enough player to make a 7-level call here, you should know, you're actually bad enough to do it.

I ask only to make a point, but, why would you even need to simulate this to figure it out? Rest assured, possibly everyone in this thread is passing, despite how obstinately they might protest. Other decisions don't have merit. I hesitate to call them liars, they're not. It's simply that the integrity of these discussions are tainted by the fact that these post aren't made unless the actual result was abnormal. And, now you have a bunch of people trying to rationalize a way to be "right", and in the process, they are so very wrong. Don't get tricked into believing that you need any sophisticated justification for pass here, you're simply falling into the trap.

I think the narration here has us contemplating something we should never contemplate. Just pass. So what if you're wrong? Based on the odds, are you really willing to take a guaranteed minus here? Forget not making 620/650/680 or 1430, but, a minus? What's more likely? That West has two voids? Or that West is praying his partner has one minor suit ace? South did open 1H with 22HCP, which is more than anyone would reasonably expect, even on this auction. North did jump to 4H, instead of making a cue-bid. I think it's reasonable for West to expect more values than East will actually end up having. I think the better narrative to consider here is: When your partner explodes at you for continuing here, how are you going to convince them not to quit your partnership? I don't think anyone realistically expects 7 hearts to make. This kind of decision is a partnership killer.

Seems like your partner has weird ideas about what her various raises mean here. More concerning though is that her ideas are ideas that she can't reasonably expect anyone else to play without discussion. And yet.... Nowadays, standard treatment in these situations is that jumps are preemptive, simple raises are constructive or show some defensive values, and cue-bids are invitational or better. I feel like this entire situation really just boils down to the fact that bridge is a partnership game. It's more important to have ANY understanding than it is to have a GOOD understanding. Obviously, a good understanding is better though. Your partner can have her methods, but, it's silly and losing bridge to make bids intending meanings that you are certain your partner cannot possibly accurately interpret.

Reading the original post, I'm choosing to place a bit more emphasis on what I think are the most important parts of the post: I don't really feel that this thread is asking what treatments are possible/viable here, but, rather, which treatment we believe to be best? I think that the options have been clearly presented already by others, so, here's my two cents: I'd rebid 1NT on both. I realize that others will disagree, but, I generally have many concerns about minor suit openings in 2/1, I'm not a fan of the system in general, and I think this treatment is the best at mitigating them. My primary concern with a minor suit opener is that it can simply be too many different types of hands. It can be a weak balanced hand (12-14), it can be a strong balanced hand (18-19), it can be a weak unbalanced hand, it can be an intermediate hand with a long single-suited minor, it can be a strong hand with a long minor, or it can be a reverse. Which is really to say that a minor suit opening says almost nothing about what your hand is, and more about what your hand is not, it's not a 2NT opener, not a 1NT opener and doesn't contain a 5-card major (unless you have some 6-5 I guess). It's primarily for this reason that I find minor suit openings in 2/1 to be incredibly easy to take advantage of by competing aggressively with agreements designed to place an emphasis on describing shape. But... this point is irrelevant given that these are uncontested auctions. To return to the topic at hand, I think it would be advisable to bother to tell your partner what kind of hand you actually have, at some point, and I don't see a good reason why this isn't the time given these fairly boring hands. 1NT clearly states that you have a weak balanced opening hand, and partner can adjust expectations accordingly. As with most treatments, there are hands that you will get worse results on, and hands that you will get better results on, but, I think that you will generally be more able to arrive at sane contracts and avoid a lot of train-wrecks that can only occur by bidding a major here. Responder is now also better able to understand when to penalize, or how high to compete if opponents decide to balance. I'm sure that extremely experienced pairs will be able to navigate this effectively without re-bidding 1NT here, but, frankly, having to exercise that much judgement in such a routine sequence is itself an indictment of the sequence.

I'd suggest that you read MikeH's response in between yours and this one. We disagree on 2S vs 2NT, but, the process is clearly correct. You have to define bids within the context of available options. 3S is weak and to some extent preemptive. It does not inherently guarantee 4 spades, but, most bids of 3S without 4 spades are insanity, especially vulnerable. Nonetheless, 4 spades is not a requirement, even though it's clearly advisable and this is fundamentally why we won't agree on this. If you want to say that you play different meanings for 2♠ and 3♠ given that you have fit jumps or transfers available, that's absolutely fine, but, it's also a pointless argument. When talking about what's standard, there's no value in bringing in non-standard treatments, even if I do agree they are effective treatments. If 2S shows 0-9 and 3♠, 3S shows 0-9 and 4♠, and 2NT shows all limit raises, well that's a horrible set of agreements. Sounds like a great way to play losing bridge.

I think that 2♠ showing 3-card support may well be your understanding of the bid, but, I think that's far from consensus. Personally, I think that such an agreement/treatment is a serious mistake. I'll try explain why. 2♠ should clearly be more constructive than 3♠ and less constructive than 2NT (if you play Jordan here). I think if the auction 1♠-2♠ can hold something like 7 HCP and 4♠, which is the correct bid with such a hand without intereference, there is no reason why 2♠ here cannot hold 7 HCP and 4♠. It's simply the normal and correct bid. The goal is to agree primary fit, and to do so while conveying the proper attitude towards this hand. Responder's hand has defense and constructive values, 3♠ is a massive underbid, as it is the weakest available bid to agree fit. The 4th spade in support is not nearly as consequential as properly conveying your attitude towards the rest of the auction, and it's often not particularly relevant/useful in making the contract. As someone who has regularly played 4-card majors, this would be a support double sequence, as I'd care about differentiating between 3-4 card support in that case, but, here it's just excessive. And, clearly, it has poisoned the thinking of many players in properly proceeding in this sequence. This is an easy raise to 4♠ over a 2♠ reply, just as it would be over the auction 1♠-2♠ without interference. It's hard to fault someone passing 3♠ when in order to bid it, you'd have to be about a queen lighter than this hand is, maybe more.

There are only 4 tricks remaining. There's one heart and 3 diamonds remaining. Clubs and Spades have been emptied, and the Q♥ was won.

This is an easy 3♥ bid. Don't overthink it. Your diamond suit is an asset, you have great intermediates in the black suits, and obviously, you have support in hearts. This hand is too good to pass, so, what are you bidding? Well, you don't have enough to invite or force game. So, raise to 3♥. If you had more, you could consider bidding a minor as some sort of game try. Let's say you had KQx♥ and KQJxx♦. I'd be bidding 3♦ on that hand, which I'd consider semi-forcing due to your prior pass. Some might disagree though. In this auction, you'd be protected by your previous pass, as a new suit at the 3-level would necessarily have to have length or heart tolerance. For game-forcing sequences (let's say you'd never passed), you could cue-bid spades, or simply shove game after bidding a new suit (forcing without a pass now IMO). You could also raise 4♥ with a weaker more distributional hand with long heart support.

My process is generally something like: 1) Assess the auction, information from the lead (such as leader's length and potential honour situation in the suit), dummy, and my hand. As Rik says, I'm trying to gather an image for how the hand will be played, by determining what our source of tricks are, and what the threats to them are. For example, I may have a slow trick that can go away if declarer can get a discard. Having a plan for a hand is crucial, as it contextualizes everything you're about to keep track of. 2) Based on the plan for the hand, determine the relevant missing spots in each suit, pay attention to those carefully. Make sure to account for promotions of cards. If the 9 was relevant and some trick starts with the 8 covered by the 9, note that mentally. I find that it's much easier to check troublesome cards off a checklist than it is to count everything. 3) As the cards are played, I count the number of whole tricks played to by each player. I can often keep track of this rather easily by referencing my initial distribution. This can be problematic when you forget about your own discards though. You need to be diligent in properly tracking discards. This makes keeping track of the number of cards played in each suit somewhat easier for me, and thus the number of remaining cards. It really helps to do things like determine an opponent's distribution. If an opponent pre-empted at the 3-level in say hearts, and then has played to 3 rounds of clubs, this helps to properly orient my mind as to the relevant length considerations in the two remaining suits. 4) Use the information gained in #2 and #3 (as it comes), consider the unexpected information, the auction, and the remaining relevant spots and use them to update my plan for the hand. This will gradually narrow the relevant information in the hand, and we only need keep track of relevant information by the definition of relevant. I think it can't be overstated how much having a plan for the hand helps to track the relevant information. I suspect the reason for this is that when you have a plan, in order to deliver that plan, it's a requirement that you pay attention. Sometimes it can be really easy to just play cards normally. And, it can be important to do this from time to time in longer events and conserve mental energy, but, doing so often results in the situation where it's the case not that you don't remember what cards have been played, but, simply that you weren't paying attention and simply don't know. So: 5) It's important to know when to pay attention, and if you need to: pay attention!

I think it would be rather easy to write a program that allowed for descriptions of hands, based on the bidding, and then the refinement of those descriptions as cards became known in order to provide analysis on the lines of play that worked best on average. It's basically an extended double dummy solver. Definitely doable, and it would be an effective learning tool in addition to it's obvious potential usage for cheating purposes.... Sadly. I've coded up a hand generator before that would be able to randomly generate hands based on specifications. Wouldn't have been much of a leap to take the extra step and do this I guess.

My preferred system doesn't have weak twos available to it, and so, in this situation you describe I'd be opening this hand 3♠. And, I'd be happy to do so. Preempts are simply effective, if you have a preempt, you should make it. Although, admittedly, the lower the preempt the less effective it is for obvious reasons. Second seat vulnerable being the classic exception to this. I suppose the way in which this goes wrong is if you end up going -200 due to misplaying the hand severely, or some freakish deal where opponents have incredible defence but no game. This is acceptable though, because, when weighed against the slams they will sometimes miss, and the games they will sometimes miss, and the times that you will make, or the times that down 1 is wins you an imp or two... The potential to gain is pretty evident. The nightmare is when you preempt partner and miss game yourself, which is one of the primary reasons that 2nd seat vulnerable preempts should be solid preempts. We can't have partner guessing whether or not vulnerable game is making.

It's really not complex bidding, but, perhaps we could better explain the bidding to you if we could see the hands. 1H-3H by opener shows a better hand than 1H-2H, long hearts in either sequence, but it's not as strong (nor game-forcing for some/most) as say 1H-3C would be. Responder bid 1S in response and decided that they knew enough to bid grand, perhaps that was a stupid decision that happened to work, or perhaps they can simply count enough tricks. Good contracts don't always make, you'll do better playing contracts with good play, for a grand slam that is usually somewhere around 75%-80% chance of making for most. Perhaps they simply thought those odds were likely at this point and couldn't imagine not playing grand, and decided to forego the dog and pony show of ace asking sequences. I'd assume responder was holding a hand full of keycards.

You're probably never going to give exact count in this situation. But, returning the T♣ has given clear attitude on whether you'd like to attack this suit. It's simply enough. In the same way that, really, any club is enough. But, the T♣ is the best, and clearest, way to collect the suit.

I've spent over 30 minutes trying to write this comment as diplomatically as possible, but, I'm really just struggling. So I'm simply going to quit on being diplomatic. I don't really understand why you think only one defender is capable of considering an unexpected void, or why only defender here is able to count to 13, or why only one defender is capable of considering declarer's club length. The lead was the 3♣, it's not exactly an ambiguous lead with respect to the length considerations. The T♣ return establishes the line of attack for the defenders, a line that the opening leader would do well to respect given that they could have no idea if diamonds are running for 6 tricks. Second guessing partner's judgement in situations like this is not only an insult to partner, but, it's simply going to result in a slew of mis-defended hands.

This is an awkward discussion. It depends so much on your agreements. I find myself agreeing with almost everyone in this thread at times and disagreeing with almost everyone in this thread at times. As someone who often plays systems that doesn't have a weak two available, I'm used to pre-empting rather light at the three level, often with 6 cards. Second seat vulnerable is an exception to this, as it is for many players, and for good reason. I think, given the AQXX in your hand, 2-7-4-0 shape on this auction seems extremely likely. I must admit, I have read the response stating that it is 2-7-4-0 shape, but, I did come to this conclusion prior to reading it. Furthermore, I think it would be poor bridge to add any value to the hand because it holds a club void (assuming it has one), what happens if it goes P-3H-P-4C? 4C is forcing, natural, and you'll never be able to ensure you get to the right contract, although, you may luckily fall into it. So, I'd never provide extra values for holding a void alongside KJTXXXX when deciding if I want to preempt in 2nd seat while vulnerable. Especially not a club void, I'm not scared to compete over clubs later. So... a second seat preempt must still have some significant extras here. Some crappy diamond holding like JXXX, or even QXXX, is not really extras, you're just preempting a potential diamond fit. If diamonds break 5-1, I'm probably not defeating 5♣. If they break 4-2, I'd be surprised not to defeat it. If we're not making 5♥, well, I probably won't agree with partners preempt. I'm expecting: xx KJTxxxx QJxx - or Kx KJTxxxx Qxxx - If partner put down something like: Kx KJT9xxx Jxxx - or Qx KJT9xxx Jxxx - or Kx KJT9xxx xxxx - I'd be pretty upset.

I suspect that I should have worded my first post slightly better. Opener has shown 10-14 HCP, 4+♠ and 5+♥. 2♦ is a 2/1 Game Forcing response unless the suit is rebid. So, I wrote, "invitational or better and forcing to 3♦". My mistake.

Okay, it's an interesting point that is definitely worthy of discussion. Essentially, your position is that responder's diamond suit is so bad that even they don't want to play diamonds. I have a few questions: 1) What alternatives do you suggest to 3♦? 2) For each possibility in #1, and given that every alternative establishes a game-force, explain the rationale that would lead you to prioritize that option over 3♦ given that your hand is this bad. 3) Almost all, if they believe South's hand to be an opening hand, will open 1♠, and will rebid 2♥ on it. Why does suit quality not matter there, but, it now matters when making the weakest, and most correctly descriptive, possible bid in a forcing auction? Those questions are leading, but, I'm certainly not agnostic on this decision. And, to highlight why I believe that 3♦ is correct, I'll just make a few observations: 1) South still has a bid, it's an invitational sequence, it certainly doesn't force South to pass. If South felt their hand warranted a correction back to hearts, they could certainly do so. Clearly this hand doesn't though, so we'd have to consider hands that would warrant such a correction. 2) All systems will contain sequences in which the correct bid, by agreement, will force you to bid some suits you'd rather not. The failure to do so will often erode partnership trust. I'd sigh and accept down 1 on the hand that you describe, but, I'd question the skill of any partner that game forces with North's hand given the agreements. This is a far worse outcome. 3) And, for the sake of argument, it's not clear to me that the hand you describe plays much better in hearts, possibly only a trick better. Or not at all. You were more than generous giving yourself as many spots as you did as well.