Flameous

Hmm, must admit I somehow though it was Vul versus not, when my W2s somewhat overlap with 1 lvl openings. All vul this is indeed a bit too strong.

I think you misunderstood this a bit. Point is that 4m bid also includes mild slam invites and when opener holds a good hand for slam, he bids the middle step, very much similar to namyats. Also you can still play 4M as natural, which means that when you happen to hold the tenaces yourself, you can just bid the game. Turbo users have to distinguish 1/3 on great many auctions and occasionally 2/4. Of course partnerships that can play Turbo, have quite a bit more detailed agreements about Serious 3NT and such that they will never have problems while some random Gerber users easily might. In many relay systems 4♣ is always some sort of control asking bid, not that it really relates to anything. Just found it quite interesting. During my early ages, I found out about Baby RKC (3NT), and I tried to make use of it all the time. (I knew about cuebidding so Gerber was still no-no :P ) I think it's quite natural for beginner that when you have a bid that gives you easy direct information, you want to use it because other methods are simply harder. Now-a-days I would never play Baby RKC over Non-serious 3NT. :D

I prefer 2♠, not that it would be too weak or anything for 1♠ opening, I just rather put some pressure on opps.

Everybody praises how Kaplan interchange solves problematic Flannery hands. However, what I don't quite get is how you find that 4-4♠ fit afterwards? I'm assuming it goes 1H - 1S - 1NT, where 1NT either is 45xx or balanced hand. Do you throw some additional convention here to find spade fit with weaker hands, or do you just use nmf to find them when inv+? (Essentially coming to the same situation as bidding 1NT in 1m - 1H, skipping spades) For what it's worth, I've played 2♥ opening showing 9-12 54+ majors either way. This was of course much more a pre-emptive tool than Flannery is. It also nicely took the minimum openings away enabling better relay sequences. (This was in a strong club context)

Shape is enough. At least usually as I can't immediately come up with a situation where I wouldn't bid with just extra shape. I might not bid here with lousy 6 carder but typically yes.

Having played under similar methods, this seems easy pass and 2NT. I admit that I'd probably prefer to be playing 2♥ on this deal like rhm suggests, but I haven't even nearly showed my values if I just bid 2H and partner could have some real extras even for balancing double. And regarding this, at least usually playing negative freebids don't interfere with negative double promising 4♠ unless GF. However not playing 2NT as natural has couple of approaches, others just passing these natural 2NT bids and hoping we aren't missing anything if partner can't bid again. Other is to double with these hands and have the trouble with partner holding spade hands that can't just bid game now.

Declarer seems to be holding 6331 shape. If I'm right we can beat AQJxxx AQx T9x x. We need partner holding DJ because otherwise declarer has no D losers if he runs DJ next. We can't spare a diamond cause then declarer could duck one round and throw a heart to fourth D. We also can't obviously pitch two hearts but one should suffice. Clubs are seemingly useless but we may need two of them to escape an endplay later depending what declarer does. If declarer continues with a spade to partner's king, we must discard a club. For signaling purposes, we need partner to play a heart to take us off coming endplay, so CQ seems like the right first discard to guide partner.

Yeah, I use Rubensohl sort of structure after weak jump overcalls. I actually consider it quite odd this isn't standard practice like it is after (2M) X (P) I'd bid here: 1D (2H) 3C (4+, unbal, inv+ D) 3H - 3S (GF looking for stopper/advanced cue, cue) 4C - 4H (Cue, kickback) 5C - 5NT (2Keys, grand probe confirming all keys) 6C - 7D (Ekstra trick(s), that's it)

Sidetracking, what is 4♦ here?

♠T makes me open 4♠. If my club was a heart, I'd be more inclined to open just three, as it's more likely they would end up playing 4m or 3Sx.

Free presented many of the differences between FP version and strong club based version of Moscito. However for reasons of comparing which is better, little was said. I'll try to give a couple of most important points. Pass (13+ or so) vs. 1♣ opening (15+) Obvious advantage of the pass is that it saves one step and loses in definition only a little. This loss of definition might also work to your advantage, as it comes more likely your opponents have game of their own and must dedicate bids for constructive purposes instead of destructive. This point has been debated a lot for optimum strong club opening range but I don't think there is any conclusion. I think the advantages of stronger opening are obvious so I'm not listing them. Fert vs. pass I'd only consider using either 1♦ or 1♥ for fert. I guess the best would be to change according to zones. I have used 1♥ fert and for what I can say, its pre-emptive effect is huge and it's really hard to defend against. You essentially have to defend against it like opponent passed but you are losing two steps of bidding space. Occasionally opps don't have anywhere to run and you can kill them but during all the time I have played FP (not much, but I guess more than most), it has happened only once. Of course your own constructive bidding is also hell after your fert which has caused much more trouble for me. This is related to that you must make your openings very light to take the load off from your fert so that it doesn't start to work against you. This is of course usually to your advantage. However there will be a lot of overlapping with openings and pre-empts, something that needs to be accurately defined in partnership to avoid problems coming from having two openings for same hands. Loss of pass outs You just can't have them, this means that you will create automatic swings on some boards. This can work to your advantage or not, at least it adds the strain in long matches when you don't get any easy skip boards. And the one time your partner forgets to pass instead of fert or something... well it's something to remember :D Of course this isn't a real problem for anyone who has been playing FP for ages, but when you are tired and losing focus, it's something that can and has happened. I could ramble some more about two way passes and semiforcing passes, but that'd already be totally off topic and I guess this wall of text is enough.

I would assume here that we can't be playing in spades. (Opener didn't bid them and responder didn't use negative X) Thus if I were really on the same page with partner, I'd assume 4♦ to be slammish with hearts and 4♣ slammish with clubs. This leaves 4NT as natural. However I wouldn't be surprised if it was taken as RKC for hearts.

[hv=myhand=M-20619595-1322594756]400|300[/hv] 1♦ is light natural 4+ and unbalanced and may have longer clubs. 1S natural, balanced GF may start with 1♥ (GF/relay, might have been better) Any way to bid the seven comfortably or should east just punt? Also, can I make that diagram bigger somehow? :rolleyes:

I play that if 2C opener's suit is given preference, it sets trumps. It is usually practical as is here. The negative inference of opener just bidding 4S suggests club void and minimum, meaning 3-4 losers. South should have no problem valuing his hand with three working cover cards. (DQ should be a fast entry) I'd cue DQ as south and north shouldn't stop short of slam.

I like 5C now. It's not to fetch 5D cuebid, it's to complete the description of your hand. You already showed both majors without slam force, so now moving must be club void. I'm not sure partner will be accepting with the CK but at least that's the best try now. Problem is that we don't need partner to have anything near max. Here he has CK wasted and slam is still ok.

In 6♥ you also have the chance for QJx in spades. Only better thing than 6H from south would be 6H from north.

Easy pass and bid after double. Indeed swap my pointed suits and I'd be a bit more worried but not much. At the moment partner has shown us no values. Saying that we pass to sit partner's double is really absurd, we expect partner to show us the values we need to venture to 5lvl. I don't know, maybe your opps are really fixed with their pre-empts after their partner has passed, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if RHO held something like AKxx - AQxxxxx Kxx

Oops, double post

Seems like advertising time again. http://toohighagain.blogspot.com/2011/04/garbage-stayman-twist.html Seems others have come up with the same approach since this was the first time I heard someone else suggesting this 2♠ bid to be weak. I like it, it gives me way to scramble with 4144, 40(54), 41(53), 41(62), 40(63) shapes I otherwise should mostly pass. Of course this is much more important for me as I tend to play weak or mini NT. My other choice would be 5 card invite (any) since getting retransfers after transfers makes your slam bidding accuracy skyrocket. That's just not much of a goal with weak NT. I wouldn't play a structure where I have to go through stayman without majors, 2S and 2NT should easily take care of both balanced invites and minor hands.

This is kind of funny auction to interpret, it means opps are silent with huge amounts of hearts. I couldn't take 4H as anything else but a splinter with likely something along 3154 shape and some extras. 5C is a sign off after partner still tries with 5H, showing 3064 or maybe 3055. 5NT seems like a try for grand but can't quite get what 6H could be. Maybe it shows HA if we could play 7NT but it doesn't seem we could have enough strength for it after my 5C sign off. Oh well, better make your partners know about 4th suit forcing :)

[hv=pc=n&s=sj4hk8752dj52cqj4&n=sakhaqt9dqt96ck76]133|200[/hv] You're a declarer as south in 4♥ after a small spade lead. You cash the heart honor from dummy and see RHO show out. Plan the play.

lol, wrote a huge block of text to just realize my analysis was wrong :D retry: I assume declarer holds 3721 or 2731, with more extreme shape I think we have even less chances though I haven't though them through. In the second case we might have two diamond tricks to cash now or we could gift declarer if he holds DK. The thing is that we are in no hurry to cash those diamonds as partner can ruff the club if declarer tries playing on them. So we can just shift to a spade. We will get in with the heart and maybe partner's signals can help us figure out the position.

Seems for common results we have: Pass: -90/+50 2C: -100/-50/+90 X: -180/+100 Then we should just give some relative frequencies for each of the outcomes and easy time figuring which is best :P I think pass is the easy middle way choice that probably results in good score if we just defend a trick better than most. 2C has something to do with how often opps will double you. I think they are in a pretty good position to double when it's right so it only seems tempting against worse players. X seems to be playing for tops or zeros, but as other choices aren't so tempting I might do that. This of course depends on how light we open.

I wouldn't open 1C, even though I have the playing strength, I need to start showing shape. Seems quite hard hand without special methods. Maybe with 4S now if it's void showing. Still hard to check for all key cards. My auction: 1D - 1H (Nat, unbal, may have longer C / nat or GF relay) 1S - 1NT (4+C, any strength / weak, asking for longer minor or GF relay) 2H - 2S (15-17 with 3H / relay) 3S - ? (0355) Now you can actually count all the HCP in opener's hand excluding the CJ and just bid 7.