Jlall

I think the point on how many tricks we will take in 2N is pretty moot since I don't expect partner to pass a scrambling 2N :) I honestly don't know of anyone good who would play 2N as natural in this auction.

Hi Jan, yes if that was a concern with your partner it would be risky to bid 4N since as you say, you wouldn't know what they were showing if they showed 2. That being said, I would generally feel pretty confident an expert partner would take it as keycard for spades. Spades was the last suit bid, and I think generally when partner shows a solid major they have set trumps unless I later bid my suit again. There is something to be said for safety playing it if you're not sure, and bidding 4C first after which 4N will obviously be keycard for spades. Whether or not it's worth it to safety play to avoid the confusion and increase the chances that they find a killing non club lead depends on how likely it is you think that you will be on different wavelengths after a direct 4N I guess. It is hard to make this determination on a forum when we don't know who our partner is :)

That might be awful. How can you pass 1S with the east hand? You have 13 very prime with 4 hearts. If partner has a 2 suiter in the majors, your hand is amazing. If partner has a D/S two suiter your hand is very good. Basically any time partner can drive to game over 1N it will be great (he will have shape and 5+ spades), and if he can invite game in hearts that will be great. If he has 11 and you get to 2N with 24 HCP instead of 1S, worse things have happened! If you get to 1N instead of 1S, this could be fine, worse things have happened. If you get to 2S instead of 1S, they probably would have balanced anyways so you got to 2S instead of 2S. Hey, you might have even gotten to 2S instead of 3S now! But even if they were somehow not balancing, getting to 2S instead of 1S is not the end of the world. Passing when you could so easily have game should at least come with some significant/frequent upside!

Put another way its like 1C p ? WELLL I have 11, can't really GF it yet... 1D 1N p ? Partner doesn't have 4S or 3H. He always has 3 diamonds, and could have 4. Additionally he has 12-14 now, so I know he didn't open light based on a black 2 suiter or club 1 suiter with like 10 HCP. Now I'm going to GF. I'm not really sure what the best game is though... 2N showing D 3C p ? Wow! Partner likes his hand for diamonds! He likely has 4 diamonds, which is amazing in combination with a doubleton heart when I am 4-6. But he might still just have 3 diamonds, and he might have slow black cards :)... 3H, see whats up 3S p ? Wow! Partner didn't want to bid 3N. He is interested in playing 5D so his hand is not slow, he's probably got a prime hand with only 1 stopper in clubs, or maybe he just has nothing in clubs in all. My hand just keeps getting better and better. Axx xx Kxxx Axxx is a slam, that is consistent with partner's bidding. Should I drive to slam? Nah, better not, partner might have bid 3S based on no club control with say, AKx Qx KQx xxxxx. I will try for slam with 4S pinpointing my lack of club control. As a bonus, because of my failure to GF to begin with, partner can NEVER play me for more than I have. In fact he might well work out my entire hand!... 4S

I would never invite with this hand opposite a 12-14 NT, but that doesn't mean I would game force with it immediately over a 1C opener. Sometimes partner opens 1C and has less points and more shape and the hand is a misfit. It is entirely reasonable that some hands are not worth a GF after a 1C opener, but then when they learn they have a good fit they become worth a slam try even when partner shows minimal HCP The auction that I remember LOLing at kenrexford about was: 1N 2C 2H 3H 4D Where 4D is an empathetic splinter. That is a much different auction because it is the balanced hand making a slam try opposite an invite, where the person who invited has already evaluated his hand as invitational in context of having a fit.

OK so you think that we can still play 6♦ after this start. I understand that normally a bid of 6♦ after a 2♦ bid would be a suggestion to play or just to play, but after 3♠? Sure, we can always play in my suit in slam. Sometimes we might need to play there because: 1) I could have 9, 10, 11, or 12 diamonds. 2) My diamonds might be more solid than partner's spades (3S shows a solid suit but we can forgive him for having AKQTxxx sometimes). In that case diamonds might need to be trumps even if I have as few as 6 diamonds (we can ruff out the spades etc). 3) Sometimes we might need to rightside the contract while still having a trump suit, so we might need to play diamonds for that reason. 4) We might be void in spades with a ruffing values somewhere else, like a stiff heart, and in spades we have no trumps to ruff hearts, but in diamonds we can. 5) Partner might be void in diamonds in which case diamonds will often need to be trumps (similarly if we are void in spades, spades might need to be trumps). 6) We might have our actual diamond holding and be down in 6S on a diamond ruff if partner has 2 diamonds, but we won't go down on a spade ruff ever. etc etc etc etc. More to the point, I have made one bid and it was diamonds and I'm still unlimited, and they might well be the best trump suit, so playing a system that precludes us from playing diamonds seems realllllly bad! I don't think you should ever be precluded from playing a slam in a suit that you've shown already, almost regardless of the auction. This doesn't apply at the GAME level of course, but slams are different.

My plan is just to bid 4N over 3S. I will go to 7N if we have them all obviously. If we have only 2, I will bid 6D. If partner just had solid spades and out I think he might just open 4S, so I am going to hope he has solid spades and at least 1 side Q, preferably both side queens or the HK obv. If he has the HK we have no problems. If he has no HK then: If he has the CQ we will need to ditch our heart on the spade. If he has the HQ and no CQ then maybe we will be able to ruff a club if partner has a doubleton club (reasonably likely). Alternatively maybe they'll lead a heart from the king and the queen will win. The biggest problem with this plan is that if partner doesn't have the CQ they will be able to kill our dummy on a spade lead. An expert opponent might well find this lead also. But again, we can fall back on being able to ruff a club, or barring that being able to hook a heart if partner has QJ, or barring that being able to hook a club if partner has JT... The same problem arises on a club lead if we knock out the DA and they can shift effectively to a spade. The other big problem is if partner has EIGHT spades we might end up needing 2-2 spades. I do not cuebid first becuase I want to maximize the chance I get a favorable lead (like a club, possibly away from the queen, when partner has the jack!).

Yes, sorry. Any agreement on if 3S also shows extras also or can it just be a solid suit with not much else

I'm a Fed fan.... GL SIR

You don't specify, but can I assume you play 2/1 and 3S shows a solid suit?

Cool, I'm about to get a top a vast majority of the time then. What could be better? Does anyone really think they're so good that they can win a pair game by avoiding good slams routinely? I mean this IS your edge over the field, you get to good slams and they don't. If you always pass up on your edge so that you can do what the field does you will perform as badly as the field. Unless you are some kind of bridge god I don't see how you can pass up on this kind of chance in a 1 session MP game.

How about just cuebidding 4S and leaving the ball in partner's court? He now knows you have at most about 11 points, you have no club control, and you have controls in both majors, and you are 4-6, and you are still making a slam move opposite a 12-14 type hand. Seems like he knows everything then and can make an intelligent decision.

When you say partner will understand 5S, what do you mean? If that means he will take it as asking for good trumps, sign me up. I want to be in slam opposite good trumps. That being said I'm sure we'd all bid 5S if we had AKQxxx xx xxx xx so I'm not sure why 5S SHOULD be asking for good trumps. But if that's how partner will take it... I'm not too worried anyways, if he has a high trump honor he won't think we're showing good trumps and nothing else, and if he doesn't have a high trump honor he won't be looking at either minor suit ace anyways so he won't be bidding 6. Maybe 5S should function as a 2 way bid, either showing bad trumps + everything else or showing good trumps + nothing else. Both passing and jumping to slam seem pretty lol.

With a GF 55 he would rebid 3♦. ok, so partner is like 4-6 GF? Make that Jx KQxx AQxxxx x then, same concept. Then he would have bid reverse by starting with 1♠ (xfer ♦) and rebid 2♦ (xfer ♥) So partner is not 5-4, or 5-5. Partner is also not 4-6 GF. So it seems like partner must be invitational when he bids 2N showing diamonds and hearts (else he would start with 1S first)? Then when you show that you like diamonds, he can GF. That being said, it seems obvious that when he bids 3H he is still looking for the best game, and when you bid 3S he is no longer interested in 3N (he has short clubs) so he bids 5D. It does not seem possible in your system for partner to be trying for slam since he would start with 1S then show hearts with a GF hand with 4H and longer diamonds, and he would bid 3D over 1N with 5-5 GF. Is this accurate? FWIW if you want better answers to your problems when you give an artificial system it would help if you listed everything you knew about the auction so we wouldn't have to guess. If everything I said is right, 5D is an extremely poor bid. Partner has already limited his hand by not starting with 1S first, and he has a super max for that limit! He surely should try for slam in this context. I mean slam is great opposite as little as Axx xx Kxxx Axxx and thats an 11 count.

With a GF 55 he would rebid 3♦. ok, so partner is like 4-6 GF? Make that Jx KQxx AQxxxx x then, same concept.

lol you guys and your searching ♥

With that agreement, it's clear to bid 3♦. To be more clear: partner's 2♠ bid denied 3c♠. Otherwise he would have bid 3♥/3♠. Seems like 3♦ is hoping for a ♦ fit? I find this really hard to believe. You would always bid 3H/3S to begin with when you had 3 spades? This seems to be the equivalent of saying you would never pass a weak 2S opener with 3 cards in spades which seems pretty ludicrous especially vul at imps, and especially when we know partner has hearts (so if he has a pretty good hand there isn't much need to preempt them immediately rather than trying to buy it in 2S).

Imo it will cost you much more often if you don't have the 6th club than when you don't have the 4th spade. That being said, when it does cost you to not have the 4th spade it can be pretty costly, so my first sentence doesn't necessarily mean it's right to bid 1S. I would expect at least 20x as many experts to bid 2C as 1S obv.

But 2♣ does not show more strength then 1NT? Don't you think he showed slem interest by first bidding 3♥. He could have assumed a ♣ stop after my 1♣ opening and denial of 4c♠ and 3c♥? 2C has a higher upper limit both in HCP (could be 15, and on a rare occasion 16 if you try hard enough) and in playing strength (6+ clubs is obviously better than a balanced hand even with the same amount of HCP). I mean, for instance you'd never pass a 2C rebid with 10 and some kind of club fit, but you would routinely pass 1N with 10. I don't think a 1C opener shows a club stopper. If partner had something like Jx KQxxx AQxxx x couldn't be bid this way? It doesn seem realistic to bid 3N after 3S with this hand.

Yes obviously if 3D shows 6-5 then bid that.

wat? Pretend that the post actually named me and that my english is not so good. I go to a moderator and say "I think they are making fun of me with this post". It would seem quite appropriate for that moderator to immediately delete the post. It had no substantive content, named an individual and (in this somewhat contrived example) offended that person. Deletion is appropriate. (Of course it is entirely possible that no such complaint actually happened). Guess I don't agree, if there is no offensive material you should not delete a post just because someone got offended. There have been many examples of this in BBF history. To me it is obvious that if someone gets offended by something that cannot reasonably be labeled offensive, that is their problem. The extremely funny thing about this thread is that ritong, a yellow made a post that [in justin's opinion should be deleted if others were - inquiry. edited out because with search funtion it is too easy to pick up context]. His post is still there! Why is one an attack worthy of deletion, and one is still there? Oh, I forgot, ritong is a yellow.

wat?

Yeah I would also rebid 1S because I'm allergic to rebidding a 5cm, but I didn't really want to distract from the point of don't bid 1N by saying something weird heh.

This was almost exactly the post in it's entirety. BTW this post was NOT by me and was by someone who does not really ever use personal attacks.

If I have a stiff or void in their suit, and partner would have made a penalty double and I would have passed I will try to reopen double regardless of my high cards. This excludes shapes like 6-5 and hands with 7+ spades. I would also not reopen double with a shape like 6-1-2-4 even if I would have sat for a penalty double from partner. If I had 2 hearts, the chances that partner has a penalty X of hearts goes way down, and I would not always reopen with a double. If I had Hx of hearts especially, I would frequently pass it out. With xx of hearts I would reopen with 5233 and 52(42). If I had 6 spades and 2 hearts I would generally reopen with 2S. With 3 hearts I would never reopen with a double.