luis

Hope you don't mind if I call you a natural-maniac, you called me mentally-blocked yesterday :-) And we both know we are calling us names just to be funny, no offenses. I love this things. Note how natural-maniacs "invent" conventions at the table to solve unsolvable problems, so far we've seen in this thread the most incredible treatments for a 5NT bid: Amazing. And now Ah..... I'm delighted.... Why doesn't 5NT ask for the SPADE KING? Why can't you have AQJxxx of spades and need the sK to win 7c ? If 5h denied the sK or one on your multiple cuebids did (which ones?) then why is 5NT not asking for excedents or queens ? I just can't believe you pretend to be serious about 5NT asking about 4 clubs :-) Next time opener will have Jx, Axx, Kxxx, KQxx and then Over an asking bid for specific kings he can bid the club king, and then over 5nt (insufficient but we have to do something) he can bid 7d because he has the spade Jack. 5NT: So you don't have the hK do you have something to make 7? 7d: "Yes! I have the spade jack!" Amazing! But we should check if your "natural" methods are legal, I don't know if you can have different meanings for the same bids based on what you know or don't know your pd holds, isn't that an encrypted method? My last 5NT proposal is: 5NT: "Please bid the right thing" 7d: "Aye sir" Cheers.

Very nice hand, I can think about two different lines: a) Duck the diammond, take the 2nd diammond and play on clubs :) Take the diammond and play a spade to the Q I'd choose line :D Take the diammond A and then play a spade to the Q

Ben.... Ben..... Ben...... Your pd WILL bid 3NT because he has the clubs stopped and he will bid 3h because he has the hearts stopped. When in your multi-succesful-tight-fitting sequence did you say you are not interested in game in no trumps? How does opener know you are looking for a slam and not for a simple 3nt game if all suits are stopped? He won't cuebid 4c, he will bid 3NT and you will end up in 6d because you won't risk bidding 7d without knowing if the 2nd keycard is the cA or the dK. I'll be collecting this hands, I'm sure you will produce the same sequence to two different contracts some day :-) Anyway I want to say that I'm having a lot of fun with this thread, it's both instructive and fun.... Now a challenge for you Ben: swap diammonds and clubs in both hands and show me your "natural" sequence to 7 clubs.

I challenge you to sit down your best 10 natural bidding pairs and see if they can reproduce this sequence. I'm really having a lot of fun reading "forced" creations to reach 7d. You setup spades as trumps, then bid diammonds and pretend to play in that suit. Furthermore note how opener bids 3h and 4h with AKx never never considering bidding 3nt with Q863 of clubs, then you """know""" he can't have the club ace... So you do bid 3nt with Axxx but not with Qxxx or after 1m-2M you never play 3NT because you have to cuebid all your honors and you always pass the 3nt level.....

Cmon, are you really bidding 7d when your pd asked you to bid 7 with 2 honors? Why is he asking? What can he do with: AKQJx Qx QJxxxx - We can't just invent auctions to justify we would reach 7d look at my 1st post I have a terrible problem playing the Chamaleon, a relay system because we can't know if pd has AK of hearts or AK of clubs (!) and I admit it.... Accept the facts you won't reach 7d wihout Exclusion Blackwood.

I'm mentally blocked but you just produced another "forced" unrealistic auction to the contract that makes North's hand xx, AKx, xxxx, AQxx 2 without the Q = checked Specific king: Heart king = checked How do you know opener's key card is the dK and not the cA ? Magic? Nah! You know the 2 hands!!! Result: Down 1 I'm not 100% mentally blocked!!!! Someone will post something like this soon: 1d 1h (1) 2d (2) 3d (3) 3h (4) 3s (5) 4h (6) 4s (7) 5d (8) 5n (9) 6d (10) 7d (11) (1) I know 7d makes so lets start cheap (2) I must tell him I don't have only 3 diammonds (3) Support , he can't pass because we win 7d (4) I have the heart ace (we never bid 3h with QJT showing a stopper in hands where 7d makes) (5) Time to bid a AKQxx suit, we never try to play in an AKQxx suit if we win 7m (6) Exactly the heart king (7) Cuebid (8) Something in diammonds (9) What? What do you have in diammonds? (10) The King (6c=queen, 6d=king, 6h=Ace) (11) The right contract!!! we did it!!!!! Credits

In your dreams! With all my respect this auction is comic... Result: 7d down 1, postmortem: North: "I'm missing the trump Ace in 7 diammonds if 5nt asks you to bid 7 with 2 honors why the hell do you bid 7 with one?" South: "Sorry, I read about a hand in the forums...." North: "Can't you see we are not in the forums now? Bid like a normal person" South: "If I bid like a normal person those guys playing Moscito laugh at my system in the forums" North: "Please forget the forums!" West: "I'm gonna lead the dA and concede to prevent a revoke"

Oooops you are right I forgot we need to determine if he has the Q or the K. As Ben says I'm mentally blocked today hehe. And I don't think opener can bid 5nt because he doesn't know about the solid spades, club void, etc. I don't think we can have a solution for this hand using standard methods unless 1d shows 4+ cards and north can use exclusion blackwood. If so then a simple 1d-5c bid does all the job :-)

May I recommend you a simple convention for your bag? Use 5NT Josephine with step responses. When a fit is stablished a direct 5NT bid without a previous 4NT asks to bid 7 with 3 honors or step-responses: 6c = 0 honors in trump suit 6d = 1 honor in trump suit 6h = 2 honors in trump suit 7x = 3 honors In this case after 5NT-6d you can bid 7. Note that this is only because you know that pd has 4 diammonds. If we reverse clubs and diammonds on both hands I think we have a serious problem. Do we?

German-Moscito auction: South North 1d(1) 1h(2) 1n(3) 2c(2) 2d(4) 2h(2) 2n(5) 4c(6) 4s(7) 7d (8) (1) 10-14 no 4M (2) Relay (3) Minimum balanced (10-12) (4) 44 in the minors (5) Exactly 2-3-4-4 (6) Controls without counting the club suit? (7) 4 (8) Thank you very much The Chamaleon auction 1n (1) 2c (2) 2d(3) 2s(2) 3h(4) 3s(5) 4d(6) 4h(7) 4n(8) ? (1) 11-14 balancd (2) Relay (3) No 4M (4) 2-3-4-4 (5) Controls? (6) 4 (7) Where? (8) One in diammonds, 0-2 in clubs And now we have a BIG problem, no way to know if opener has AK of clubs or AK of hearts. So we have to guess in this system what to do between 5d or 7d. :-). Poor Chameleon A weak-nt auction 1n(1) 2h(2) 2s 3d 3h(3) 5c(4) 5s(5) 6d (1) 12-14 (2) Xfer (3) D support and h control (4) Exclusion RKCB (5) 2 Key cards excluding clubs Another weak-nt auction 1nt 2n(1) 3c(2) 3s 3n 4c 4h 4s 4n 6c(3) 6d (1) xfer to diammonds (2) I like diammonds (3) 2 with a club void A strong NT auction with inv min assuming 1d 4+ diammonds 1d 2d (1) 2h 2s 2n 3s 3n 4d 4h 4n 5h 7d Interesting to see how some relay systems may have a problem here. Natural methods have a lot of problems here and only a Inverted-Minors sequence can lead to success finding pd with 4d and hA + hA. Note that if 1d opening does not promise 4 cards you have problems knowing the missing dQ (!!!)

Pb: About Jump fits: You have to agree with your pd the meaning of a Jump-Fit and the strength and trump length. With one pd I played 1M - 3c/3d BErgen and then 1M - 3om = Splinter in some suit 1M -4m = Jump-Fit JumpFits showing 5 trumps, 5+ cards in the suit bid and no side Aces or Kings. After playing hundreads of hands I never (never!) used a jump-fit so my conclusion is that this treatment may be a waste of space. Now that I see this hand I realize it would start 1s-4h and then I just don't know... so it's not only a waste of space but a source of trouble. Other players play 1M - 3m as Jump-Fits with 5+ trump support and 5+trumps, others play that a jump-fit shows 4+ trumps not 5. You have to drop Bergen raises in order to play this maybe you must now use 2NT for all the INV+ hands with 4+ trumps. If the Jump-fit shows 5+ trumps it wont' happen :-) believe me, if it shows 4+ trumps and a side suit then it can be good because you can't show a real suit after 1M-2NT and that maybe the very crucial piece of information you need to find the right contract. Of course you can start using a normal 2/1 response but many agree that support after 2/1 shows exactly 3 cards since you should bid J2NT with 4+ trumps.... Life is not easy.... My conclusion is that the best flavour for jump-fits is to play 3x as Jump-Fit with 4+ trumps and 5+cards in the suit. You can choose if you like this approach or not. It's a matter of agreement.

Ben: How did you know I'm mentally blocked? I'm struggling to hide my condition without any sucess.... :-) I'm not saying all natural bidders won't reach 7 I just said that some of them may not reach 7 because they methods may not be well suited for this particular hand or having more than one option they may choose the one that won't lead them to 7. I agree with you this is not a difficult 7 and many many natural bidders will bid it, the interesting thing is that they are not "forced" to bid 7, they have alternative routes to miss the 7. 1s 2NT(1) 3d(2) 3h(3) 3s(4) 4c(5) 4n(6) 5s(7) ? (1) 9+ 4+ spades any (2) Not minimum unbalanced (3) heart control, slam-interest (4) What else (5) Club control (6) RKCB (7) 2+Q then 5+trumps because I can see the Q And now what? 6 or 7? and why? What do you need for 7? You don't know. This is just one of the auctions that can fail and it's not unreasonable. On the other hand all relay bidders will bid 7 because you have no other choice. I disagree when you say some Moscito players won't bid 7 that's impossible unless you have an accident. Precision does have a problem too, after 1c-1s do you ask for controls with 1nt or do you ask about spade support with 2s? The meaning of new suits is different in super-precision after 1c-1s;1n or 1c-1s;2s... Why do you have to take a decision now without knowing what pd has in detail? Sometimes it is good NOT to have options in the bidding, in the presented hand you may start with a J2NT, a Jump Fit a 2/1 2h or a splinter, for some pairs all the options may be reasonable to bid the hand, you have the chance to fail. My point was to comment on the advantages and disadvantages between half-duplex and full-duplex systems and found this hand interesting even if I do agree you can easily reach 7 playing natural. Just that.

Fatigue? Imagine the degree of stress while LHO thinks about the opening lead after your "simple" auction are you sure you can win 7s? Probably... but are you SURE? Will you be able to ruff the hearts for a discard? How many discards do you need? Can pd have only 4 trumps and "invented" a 3h bid only to find you playing 7s with QJxx of trumps missing? My "long" auction is automatic after you study the system and declarer can relax and claim if the opening lead is not ruffed so you can let LHO fatigue finding a lead agains a cold 7, relax, you know all your pd's cards.... Write +2210 in the card and talk with RHO about what your pd has while LHO struggles at the other side of the screen to find a lead :-) Of course if pd missbids a relay auction can lead to a disaster (my last disaster lead to 7n making, I was lucky) but an accident can't be intentional! it's not something that pd can do because he wanted to do it on purpose! As I said I believe you would play 7s I just don't believe all natural/standard bidders will find this grand slam automatically. And yes I think many will start with 1s-2NT in fact I play 2NT as any 9+ hand with 4+ trumps with my pd I'll ask him to bid this hand with me and we may bid 7 or not but I'm not sure....

I'm replying myself, if you are a psychriat and found this serious let me know ;-) Another interesting option is to use the relay as a cuantitative-trump-ask, a bid deviced by a friend of mine, you add points for honors in the trump suit (in this case the major) and side aces and kings and then answer: - 1st step 7 or less (new relay asks again with step responses) - 2nd step 8 - 3rd step 9 - 4th step 10 - 5th step 12 - 6th step 13 Maybe this is better to evaluate if we want to bid a game or play a par-score, after the CTA is finished a relay will ask for the doubleton and then you can ask for queens or specific queens or something like that

I agree with Ben, responses should be re-structured but that can be done easily with the assistance of a master-optimizator... ie: Me :-) My first question is: Is it better to bid a relay to ask for the doubleton or number of controls? Asking for controls can be useful to find if we want to play game AND if we want to play slam/grand. So maybe it is better to ask for controls first and then for the doubleton! Method a) * relay asks for controls * new suits show stoppers looking for 3nt or 4M (no slam interest and game forcing) 2h - 2s 2n = 2 controls 3c = 3 3d = 4 3h = 5 3s = 6 2s - 2n 3c = 2 controls 3d = 3 3h = 4 3s = 5 3n = 6 A subsequent relay different than 3M can then ask for the doubleton, and then you can use denial cuebids or similar if you want to explore for slam or grand slam. If the number of controls is not enough for game you can just bid 3M as a signoff. We can easily build a simulation and know depending on the strength of responder hand's the number of controls that we need for game.... What do you think?

After examining Ben's auctions I think that in order to reach 7s responder must be able to show club shortness and a heart suit, that's why the 1s-2h can succeed. You can tell me you will bid 7s anyway and I believe you, I just don't believe that that's the only posible path of action for the hand, it can surely end up in 6s in many partnerships. BenL With my best respect I found your auctions a little "forced" pin-pam-pum-7s .... very unlikely to happen at the table unless opener is "obfuscated".... I don't think you can bid 7s after a 1s-2NT or 1s-4c.... If you bid 1s-3h (JumpFit) then maybe after 1s-3h;3s-4c; showing both the club control and the heart suit.... Relay systems have superior tools to find grand slams, that's a known fact but it doesn't mean that they are better than standard/natural methods. I think we can agree that finding 7 on this hand playing standard depends on non-exact factors. You may play 7 you may not but you are not "forced" to bid 7. A relay system forces you to 7 unless you don't want to bid what you can make. Full-duplex systems like SAYC have the probem of introducing a lot of "noise" in the auction due to the different actions that both declarer and responder can take without being wrong example: Do I show the heart suit or a club splinter? Do I bid a Jac2NT or not, etc.... Half-duplex systems (relay) systems have very little noise and that's why they are in my opnion superior in uncontested auctions and inferior in contested auctions to natural. Just some comments...

Auction (a): German-Moscito D P 1c(1) 1h(2) 1s(3) 1n(4) 2c(3) 2s(5) 2n(3) 3c(6) 3d(3) 3s(7) 4c(8) 4s(9) 4n(10) 5n(11) 7s (1) 15+ any (2) 4+spades 9+ positive (3) relay (4) Spades and hearts (5) Spades = Hearts (6) Short clubs (7) 5-5-2-1 exactly (8) Controls? (9) 4 (10) Where? (denial cuebids) (11) A or K of sp, A or K of hearts, nothing in d or c denies sQ Very clear-cut and straightforward auction :-) In this moscito version the strong hand asks and responder answers. The distribution is known at the 3s level and then 4c asks for controls (3nt always to play), then denial cuebids are used to find if the 4 controls are the sA and hA or the sA, hK and cK (yuck) Auction b: The chamaleon 1c(1) 1s(2) 1n(3) 2h(4) 2s(3) 3d(5) 3h(3) 3s(6) 4c(7) 4s(8) 4n(9) 5n(10) 7s (1) 15+ any (2) Spades 9+ positive (3) relay (4) Spades and hearts (5) Spades = Hearts (6) Short clubs (7) Controls? (8) 4 (9) Where? (10) hA, sA, no sQ Note that in less bids the distribution is known at the same level than in German Moscito, funny! Then exactly as in the prev version, ask for controls and denial cuebids.

Do you mean 2h as 12-14 Balanced with 5h and 2s=12-14 Balanced with 5 spades? I assume you will be using a multi 2d so you don't have to sacrifice your weak 2h and 2s bids. It's an interesting idea the major flaw I can find is that if the opps buy the hand they can play it double dummy knowing the strenght and distribution of the 4 hands due to the very descriptinve 2M opening. The other problem I can see is that after 2M-dbl responder may have problems without a fit for hearts, if he passes and RHO passes 2M can be set for a number on the other hand if he bids it can easily start a rotational doubling sequence while a pass may find RHO bidding something different than a penalty pass... Summarizing I find the idea interesting and worth trying, let us know your results!

I think I need to post a clarification. First of all this is a match to have fun and to promote bridge ,usually this matches doesn't prove anything but they do create very good material to analize and comment about methods and play. Second I consider Richard and Ron friends, and it's an honor to me to play with Paul Marston in my team if they consider we don't have to play then no problem if they think we have a chance to play then even better. We'll have three pairs for our "Moscito-team" and Richard is our captain. We'll be practicing because as maniac-scientists it's in our nature. I really hope to play against a very strong naturalist team. We study a lot and practice a lot to play a system we love and we enjoy playing, please respect that. And my most important wish is please don't fight, this is a game and I proposed the match as a way to promote bridge, promote BBO and create some interest in modern systems like Moscito. Naturalists and Scientists is a bridge classic, like Zia vrs the Computers, Roma vrs Lazio, Packers vrs Bears..... I really believe 2/1 and gadgets is natural today and Moscito and relay systems are "scientific", let's play let's have fun and enjoy !!

IMO if you play parity signals you should use the prism, you just need to signal two things and the whole distribution of the hand is know. Yes, I know, you have to learn how to use the prism and that's hard.... I wonder if there're top pairs playing prism signals either in the trump suit or in other ways maybe we should investigate records of hands played and check signals :-) CSI work. I've thought some time ago about this variation: On the 1st suit played by declarer play hi-lo with even parity or lo-hi with odd parity, no matter if the suit is trumps or another suit. Then in the other suits play low if the suit is NOT your odd suit (the suit with different parity) or high if the suit is your odd suit. Once the parity and odd suit are known you can play suit preference and attitude since the count of the hand should be known.

1) I don't think parity signals can be considered encrypted because the information transmitted is not based in something about your pd's hand that declarer doesn't know. I think it's just a normal signal like any other. 2) I don't understand the question once you have transmitted the parity of the hand you only need to tell pd which is your "odd" suit, the one with different parity than the others and then using dummy and those two signals the whole distribution of the hand can be obtained (Prism signals) Maybe you can clarify to me what you meant by "parity when following suit" 3) I've played prism signals it was a nice way to get the whole distribution of the hand, and after that we just signaled suit preference when declarer was leadingor attitude if pd was leading.

My planned rebid is 2c. I don't know if it is right or wrong but I plan to bid 2 spades over pd's 2d bid. I fully sympathize with the 1nt opening the problem is that it will be hard to determine if the hand belongs to nt or hearts due to the heart suit being blocked.... Example 1nt-2d;2h-3nt now what? Play 4h in the likely 5-1 fit or try our chances in 3nt ? Pd may have: Qx, QJTxx, Qx, Kxx and 3nt can go down while 4h makes.... Difficult isn't it?

I guess pd would have passed 4sx. I don't see any reason to bid 5h with a defensive hand where the law indicates that defending their 10 trick contract is the right choice. Had he bid 5h I have a good reason to cuebid 5 spades showing the void.

Well at the table I did bid 5 spades and realized that it was very likely a terrible overbid. Pd bid 6h (poor guy) and then had to play 6h on this layout: - Kxx AQ98xx Axxx and Jxx AJxxx T7 KJT Lead: spade ruffed in dummy. Club to the jack (held!), diammond ten to the Q (RHO plays the J!), hK, h to the Ace (hearts are 3-2 Q doesn't drop) diammond to the 8 (RHO discards) diammond ace discarding a spade, diammond ruffed, club to the Ace, diammond discarding the last spade, claim..... You can't argue with success :-) Field scores: 4h down 1, 4h down 2, 5h down 4, etc. I think it was easier to play 6h than 4h on this deal, what do you think?

A2 KJT654 T752 A 8653 A9 AK6 K765 I'd try a minor suit SQZ against east. Take the sA, draw trumps discarding a spade, play club Ace and duck a spade. If West returns a diammond or club then play cK, ruff a club and cash the last 2 trumps hoping to squeeze east in diammonds and clubs. If west returns a spade then ruff, diammond to K, cK and club ruff and the last heart should SQZ east in the minors.