andy_h

3♠ then 4♠

♠10 for me too.

Although not ideal I also like to play system on with the addition of XX available for a good bal hand that's interested in penalising (forcing the auction up to 2NT).

That makes sense, cheers for that Ken.

Sorry guys, a slight edit - responder had bid 1♥, not 1♠.

Matchpoints - 1st seat, unfavourable. ♠J6 ♥1098743 ♦A1065 ♣A 2♥ Opening: -YAY -yay -nay -NAY Edit: Assume down the middle preempt style (whatever that means, but it does mean the hand is a pass at IMPs) Which is it? If yes, what if the heart suit was weaker?

Not sure what the best memory jolt is, but after posting this thread I'm sure you will never forget it now lol That always happens. Well something similar also happened to a friend of mine when he was playing with me and I wanted to play something simple so 2D/H/S weak it was. However he had a European background so he had never played natural weak 2D in his life before so the first two or three times he had a 2D opener he forgot to open them. After that he started to think "damn I wish I can open these hands..." and that was the all he needed.

2S, my suits are not bad at all.

This may be based on agreement, but I would like to know what your preferred style is. The topic in question is about the last train cue-bid that's made after partner has denied a control in a particular suit. Assume spades is trumps. Case 1: You and your partner have cuebid up to the 5 level. An arbitrary example would be something like 1S-4H(splinter)-5D. The 5D cuebid denied a control in clubs and responder, regardless of how good their hand is, is forced to last train with 5H which says "I have a control in clubs that you have denied" and it says nothing about the nature of the heart shortage. Agree? Case 2: This time the cuebid starts at the 4 level. Let's say the auction was something like 1S-3S(limit)-4D (Assume 4D=cuebid and you don't play anything fancy like 3NT asking or w/e). How do you play 4H now? Is it "I have a club cue, says nothing about hearts" or is it "I have a club cue and a heart cue"? If your answer is the former what would 5C mean? If your answer is the latter are you always prepared to forgo keycard when you only have a club cue without a heart cue? (This might be meaningless but) Regardless of which one you choose it seems like you will sometimes (or rarely) need to forgo keycard to show your cuebids. When the opener bids 4D denying a club cue, do you think it's more likely that responder will have a hand that has "club cue no heart cue" than "club+heart cue" so therefore you might not want to deny 4NT keycard when you just have "club, no heart" with a 5C bid, thus making better use of the 4H last train as just "club cue, may or may not have heart cue" and also the fact that opener is likely to have a heart control anyway? (I have no idea if that came out right, apologies if that was a bit confusing) Case 3: Same as Case 2 but this time the opponents have bid hearts. Something along the lines of 1S-(2H)-3H-(Pass); 4D Are the answers the same as Case 2? Case 4: Assume you're partnering with a pick-up expert and you haven't really discussed the depths of last train. You can be confident that if the denied cuebid was at the 5level partner will understand that the last train only promises the cue that has been denied (E.g 1S-(3H)-4H-(Pass); 5D-(Pass)-5H), however you are unsure if this is also the case if it was at the 4level. So if Case 3's auction came up at the table, what would you do if you had a club control but no heart control (or, what do you think "expert standard" is, if there is a such thing)?

IMPs - 3rd seat, favourable. You hold ♠AQ103 ♥Q102 ♦A862 ♣53 Auction, with partner as dealer: Pass-(1♣)-Double-(1♥) (Edit: So sorry, it was 1♥, not 1♠ response) Pass-(3NT)-All Pass. 3NT=explained as good hand with (almost) running 6+club suit. Your lead.

I like bidding out suits if there is still potential for a trump fit like 1NT-4NT or something, but if it's not possible for a trump fit to be found (for example after an extensive 2-over-1 auction where we have already looked for a trump fit) then I would show the # of Aces.

I think the auction was fine up to the point of 4H. At first I thought opener should probably just keycard given responder denied any cuebid in diamonds but then I thought it would get us to a silly slam opposite Jx AKxxx Qxx Kxx or something. But on the other hand it is often the case when nobody keycards and both sides cuebid up to the 5 level noone can be very certain how many keycards we are missing. So it boils down to what the 5 level cuebids by opener means. What does 5C show/deny? Does it only promise 2nd round control in diamonds for otherwise you would have cuebid 5D? Or does it merely confirm 1st and 2nd round control in clubs with either 1st or 2nd round control in diamonds? It feels like for me that when opener cuebids 5C (as opposed to keycard) they are probably looking for a source of tricks somewhere as they might be looking for 3rd round control fillers. If opener has a diamond shortage then most likely they are looking for something that can handle 3rd round controls in hearts/clubs, but if opener's diamond control was in the form of say Ax they either would have keycarded or they are also interested in a source of tricks. But what would 5S over 4H be? Maybe it announces something like this hand (no 2nd club control, no 1st diamond control, not much help in hearts therefore good trumps)? Given the proposed auction can opener have something like AKJxxx xxx KJx A? If so then responder probably can't bid 6S over 5S in the proposed auction. Well I don't have a solid solution. Maybe you can assign a meaning of 5D "cuebid" for responder which doesn't say "I have 3rd round control in diamonds (assuming the 4-level cuebids were 1st or 2nd round)" but rather give it a meaning that might be more useful. Or maybe you can incorporate a 3C multimeaning after a 2/1 auction of 1M-2x-2y-2NT so you can differentiate strengths when opener needs to bid 3M somewhere along the lines to show the 6th spade? They're just some ideas... Btw I'm curious - how did you know opener has 3H instead of 2H? You mentioned that with 6S2H they would bid 3S over 2NT, but what if opener had 6133 or 7123 do those hands bid a 3m fragment, or...?

Congrats to the Dutch team! Commiserations to USA2 but certainly a job well done!

Best of luck Justin, go kill em!

"Takeout/values". Something like a 2425 hand or possibly 2434 with 9 count and xxx diamonds or something. I don't think partner is necessarily a 5332 since there are hands with any 5422 or something that they'd rather pass than force to show, so if we have a trump stack I can expect partner to make the takeout double. I don't think the suits will always be breaking that badly as aguahombre suggests since 4th seat may sometimes X with say a flat-ish 15+count with 3 spades.

I just want to keycard (or splinter then keycard) or just do something then keycard. I have a 15 count with a 7card suit and partner just told me about an awesome card! Ideally you would like to keycard below 4NT so you can bid 4NT to play after hearing 1 keycard opposite.

I love 2-way here.

Definitely penalty, but I guess 2-way is possible although I'm not sure what kind of hand I would make a delayed t/o double with that couldn't X or bid 2D/3D on the previous round...maybe a 5530 with a 1 count. Also, a delayed 3D bid probably doesn't exist for me since I don't think I can resist not bidding with support on the previous round.

There are some 5-5's I would make a trial bid with but this surely isn't one of them as it's way too good. Bidding 3D will let LHO come back in cheaply but if they have a marginal hand I hope to keep them shut by bidding 4H now.

One option is for North to bid 2S over 2H. Although I don't have any experience in raising with a doubleton, having the Ace can't be that bad. Having said that I would personally (probably) bid 3C over 2H as a slight overbid. Yes it's lacking in the hcp department but with a good 6-card suit, Ax in partner's suit, experience has told me to stretch a little in competitive auctions. If North decides to pass, I don't think I like double as South.

3D, but I like double as well. Will never consider pass.

[hv=pc=n&s=s4h53dkq5caqt9532&w=sakt5hajt82dj82c6&n=sj9863hq7da93cj84&e=sq92hk964dt764ck7]399|300[/hv] I don't really care for the methods proposed because obviously there are pros and cons to them all. Some people like to play 4m (4C here) as natural forcing (self suiter) to help with their slam investigation thereby either passing or sometimes overbidding (5m) with those competitive hands. Some people just prefer everything natural so 4C is competitive (these hands easily exist) not because they want to stop on the dime of 4C (but still possible) but to get those long clubs non-super hand off their chest with 4C and still have room available if their partner has slam interest (since if you bid 5C with those hands then you will have to guess between pass vs 6C). I think what the OP is trying to suggest is in the same camp as a "switch" bid where you switch two bids to gain a bit of bidding space. If you play 4m as natural and forcing then you can swap the meanings of 4C and 4H to gain some cue-bidding space when you have the spade fit but lose some accuracy when you have the self-suited clubs. You can shuffle the bids around with say 4C=clubs competitive, 4D=spades, 4H=diamonds which gives a last train available over 4D=spade fit or if you want to incorporate self clubs at the cost of diamond-club two suiter then you can go 4C=clubs competitive, 4D=spades, 4H=clubs, 4NT=diamonds etc etc, but whatever you choose most likely you will have to give up something.

Yes I double.

I guess it is just semantics but I understood the OP saying that they know two types of actions taken with this hand around the room (not necessarily the OP's system) and asked how we would bid with this hand as opposed to which of these two actions would we pick from.

What about 2NT? I think 4H should be natural.