rbforster

After a 1♦ negative response to a strong club, I like to play 1♥ artificial with extras (bids other than 1♥ deny extra strength by opener) and the 1♠ reply is a 2nd negative. This seems to be at least a somewhat popular method (rather than jumping to show strong hands over 1♣-1♦). My question is how best to continue after the 2nd negative: 1♣-1♦ strong (16+); negative (0-8) 1♥-1♠ stronger (19+); 2nd negative (0-4) ? I currently use this scheme: 2♣ artificial and very strong 22+ (then using standard "strong 2C" methods) 1N 20-21 2♦♥♠,3♣ 5+ nat and limited 19-21 The obvious downside to this method is that with some extra values (~19-21), hands with clubs must bid at the 3 level even if they might be only 5/4 with clubs and another suit. If you play a 2nd negative, how do you handle this issue? I can think of a number of possibilities, and I hope you'll comment if you've played any of these or on which you think might be good/best: - play something besides an artificial 2♣ to show very good hands - bid 3♣ with only 5 opposite a 2nd negative and hope for the best - make 3♣ show 6 by either bidding a semibalanced 1N (20-21) or a wide ranging 2♣ earlier (so 1♣-1♦-2♣ is 16-21 instead of 16-18). - something else? Thanks!

Well losing the ability to play in 1N is something all the 2/1 players gave up already, so perhaps you're just going with the herd/field by having a forcing NT. Passing with 6-9 and a doubleton will miss a decent fraction of games when opener has a 6+ suit and a good distributional hand (previous discussion). In 2/1, when you bid 1N forcing with these 6-9 hands as responder and opener jumps to 3M (1M-1N-3M-?), you're raising to 4M with intention of making at least on the high end of your range. You don't really want to play those hands in 1M+3, and the opponents are relatively weak and may not balance. Similar to your suggestion, I think Adam discussed a suggestion at some point here where 2♣ was kinda like a forcing NT (~6-9, usually balanced but with some clubs), but I couldn't dig up the link.

Another vote for T♠ and unblocking the K if East wins. Diamond hook and returning to the J♦ for the club finesse. Yes, this is playing opener for all the cards, but maybe with a minimum hand they wouldn't have bid again even with a 6+ suit.

4♥ for me, since I like my ruffing value with Ax in trump (they can't both attack trump and clubs fast enough). 4♠ does have the benefit of protecting partner's potential side suit honors, and that I don't have to play it. Decisions, decisions...

Picky, picky. Missed the 3♦ rebid by opponent.

The wrong kind. I'm not sure I can think of a hand that only has 3 card support and wants to force to the 3 level in the 4-3 opposite a random 6 count. Surely they have a more descriptive call besides 3♥ once they've already shown support. Maybe 3♣ or 2N or something...

I agree that there's some merit to having an invitational raise below 2M so you can stop low, and that's true both in 3rd and 4th. Drury is fine for that. Too bad that's not allowed in 1st/2nd seat at most levels :/. If by "dealt with" you mean encouraged, that's why Drury gets it's own specifically allowed spot on the GCC so you can play even if it's mainly used to cater to partner's very light openings. Other methods to do the same thing aren't allowed, but in their wisdom the ACBL decided that this one was just fine. After all, if everyone plays it, it must be legal, right? Isn't that the ACBL's default policy on just about anything?

Remember that you don't need Drury at all if you only open "real" opening hands in 3rd/4th seat. Drury is primarily a psychic control so that you don't get too high when partner in 3rd seat decided to tell you what major to lead against their game by bidding 1♠ on: AKxx xxx xxx xxx or even KQJx xx Kxxx xxx The downside of 2-way Drury comes in terms of helping out the defenders against 2M. Leading a trump is often right against the 2M contract in a 4-3 fit when the defenders have the majority of the strength, while it's usually wrong against a 5-3 or 5-4 or 4-4 fit where the defense usually wants to make more aggressive suit leads. An ambiguous 1-way Drury raise doesn't provide this information to the defense, leaving them much more in the dark. The 4 card raise is very effective when it comes up (telling partner how much to compete, if at all), but the 3-card raise hurts when opener was "joking" and announces a weak hand with potentially only 4 trump. Now when the opponents choose to defend 2M, they know whether or not to lead trump. Certainly there's an argument for playing 2♦ as 1-way Drury so that the much more likely 6-11 hand with 5+ clubs (and no weak 2 bid) can be shown with 2♣, rather than the much more limited set of equivalent hands with diamonds than were unsuitable for a weak 2♦ opening. That said, the more people are opening "light" in 1st/2nd seat, the less use these 2/1 bids have by passed hands. In that regard, it's not such a big loss to use 2♦ for something, it's just that I don't think 3 vs 4 trumps is the right distinction. My personal preference (back before I started opening all 10 counts :)) was to play encrypted 1-way Drury, where you showed the number of AK honors held in partner's suit (2♣=1, 2♦=0/2). Together with the reasonable requirement that partner must have at least 1 of the AK in his suit to open "light", this allows the signoffs and game tries to be encrypted in many cases to prevent the opponents from knowing what was going on. For example, in "normal" Drury, you have an auction P-1♥ 2♣/♦*-2♥ Drury; weak sub-minimum opener When 2♣ or 2♦ shows a normal Drury raise (1-way or 2-way), the opponents now both know they can balance with the good shape since their side has about half the deck. On the other hand, in the encrypted method (which works best when the opener's side each have one of the A and K between them), it goes: P-1♥ 2♣*-2♥* 3+ limit raise with A or K♥; weak with the A or a balanced game try with the K♥ Now the next hand doesn't know whether or not it's safe to bid, and even when it gets to the opponent in balance chair, he can't tell whether responder passed since he knew opener was weak or whether he passed because he declined a balanced game try. Balancing with shape is very likely right in the former case, and very likely wrong in the latter and the encryption, when it works (A and K split between opener's side), keeps them in the dark about this. Even if opener doesn't have the weak hand, he can make encrypted game tries (short suit vs long suit) which responder can understand but the opponents cannot. Since game tries often help direct defense to lead (or not lead) the suit mentioned based on whether it was showing length or shortness, the encryption helps make the opening lead more difficult for the defense.

Maybe I'm not seeing something better, but testing for hearts 3-3 (ruffing high) and failing that ruffing our 3rd club and hooking the diamond seems like ~65%.

It's not like 1♥-1♠-2♦ is the best start to a constructive auction in standard methods either. That, together with the weakish hand and too many quacks make this a clear pass in standard for me. Like Justin, I like opening these hands, but you need to have a system that lets you do it "safely", so that partner is expecting a bad 10-11 count as a typical hand when he responds.

Again, you would have the same problem in a standard system. True, I guess I was thinking in comparison to a 1-way strong club, where you don't have this problem. Responder knows opener's minimum and he can act with appropriate strength and shape. The "invitational" range is always hardest to sort out when someone preempts - basically you have to upgrade (and act) or downgrade (and pass) in a lot of situations. What system you play determines how wide the invitational range is, which tells you something about how vulnerable to preemption you'll be. Playing transfers by responder with superaccepts by opener might help some, but that's going to work a lot better with a 2♦ jump overcall than a 3♠ one.

No, you also lose when you have to pass as responder with only intermediate values (fearing the weak NT), but opener actually has the strong hand and can't reopen with his shape/values at the high level (fearing you're broke).

No one treats these bids as "conventional" and they are part of standard bidding in many areas. - Almost all 2/1 players open 1♦ 3+ with a longer suit - just look at those 12-14 hands 4432. They've got 2 longer suits, somebody ban that method! If you want a two-suited example (instead of a balanced one), look at my above post on 1435 shapes. - Likewise, it's also 2/1 standard (and in many other systems too) to open 1♦ with minimum hands that are 4=5 in the minors, intending on rebidding clubs. First it was "open your longest suit", then came the canape players who open their 2nd longest suit. I think we should just cut to the chase and open our shortness. :blink:

If by "natural" you mean normal, no one things opening x63x hands in the 3 card suit is normal. But the GCC is very clear that an opening bid or response is consider natural if showing 3+ in a minor (or 4+ in a major), without regard to length of any other suits held. You may even find some ACBL experts choosing to open certain 1435 hands 1♦ intending on rebidding 2♣ over partner's likely 1♠ response! Of course unless you are systematically opening hands with less than 10 points, under the ACBL you can open 1m on absolutely anything you want including exclusively 3m-6M hands if you're really so inclined.

I notice in a lot of these methods there are bids at the 3 level showing things like specific 5/5 minimums or 6/4 minimums. Do you find that those bids are relatively "safe" opposite a weak responder? I've been thinking I'm a little more partial to methods like Adam's where one of opener's cheap rebid over 1♦ negative (like 1♠) is sacrificed for showing some of these minimum 2-suiters. This frees up the higher bids to be shapely but with extras, maybe 19-21ish. This in turn makes the natural bidding after a 2nd negative more precise. For example, after a 2nd negative sequence 1♣-1♦-1♥(19+)-1♠(0-4), if 2♥ is natural but can't be 5♥/5m (since that has a special bid earlier), then 2♥...3m by opener shows that the minor is clearly shorter.

and here i was thinking 1♥, wtp? I'm bidding 1♦ since I think LHO is going to declare hearts and I want the lead. My spades aren't so good I feel like mentioning them with my one bid and they'll break badly even if we do have a fit.

K♠ and then Q♦, hoping.

I also like 1♠ to show balanced to get NT right, although of course this will sometimes wrongside hands with 4 spades, or 5♠332 the way we play. If you want to use 1N for something unlikely to be wrong-sided, both majors is probably a good choice. I have some symmetric relay stuff where I was thinking of doing this, but in order to have enough space I think I needed 1♦ as some strong hands with hearts.

A better example is where you find that opening leader has in fact underlead his king from Kxx(x), but might or might not have another suit with (K?)xxx. Since he clearly chose to underlead a king, he's more likely not to have the other Kxxx since if he did, he might have underlead that one instead. There are other more exotic applications, such as this one where a preemptor leads a singleton against your slam. With no other suit inferences for choosing his lead, like: (3♣)-X-(P)-6♠ obvious singleton ♦ lead you proceed through the play and conclude that opener had 3118 or 3217 with a bad suit. In the end position you play him for 3217 because, among other things, if he had 2 choices of singleton he might have lead the other one.

Yup.

I've seen a lot of ambiguous preemptive methods over a strong club, things like suction or psycho suction or DONT. Since everyone (or at least the regulators) seems to whine about how hard 2♥ non-forcing multi is to defend (in contrast to forcing methods like suction or naturalish methods like DONT), have people included this multi bid as part of their defense to a strong club? If so, what do you use the rest of the defensive overcalls for, to go well with this? What about similar ideas that instead of 50-50 are 2-out-of-3? Something like 2♦ = 2 suits from clubs/diamonds/hearts You are actually even more likely to be able to pass (than a 50-50 bid like multi) since now there's an a priori 2/3 chance that partner holds his suit bid.

I play all actions as game forcing at this level, and wouldn't bid 2♠ under those conditions. At all red, the opps may not be happy to play in 2♦ if my partner has lots of them. If partner doesn't have extra strength, we may not miss a game. If he does have extra strength, he'll have to act if 2♦ passes back to him (maybe with 2N given his likely diamond length?), in which case we can transfer and/or bid our spades then.

4♦ - hey, that's a 4 loser hand, right!

T♣, then another club is my guess.

Not to comment on the WBF rules, but these 1♣♦ openings would be legal at the lowest levels of the ACBL (who's known for restrictive rules on conventions). The ACBL allows 1m openings to mean anything you want as long as they promise 10+ points. As such, OP at least has a point that his bids are similarly (if not exactly) nebulous in the way of a precision 0+ 1♦ which are allowed at much lower (or all) levels.