Jinksy

So this does seem peculiar in that there seems to be some sort of claim passed around - and I'm not sure from this thread whether it has any legitimacy - that you should ask about the bidding if you're not considering a call other than pass. If this injunction does exist, what sort of substance does it have, if (as it sounds here) there's no penalty from persistently ignoring it?

Sigh, that's what I get for rushing before bedtime. Fixed diagram in OP.

I'll pass twice. The first time, if I bid 2♥ I'm expecting P to make a phantom sac. The second time, I know P has a void and still isn't good enough even to preprotect. They're vul, so if they go off we're getting a decent score, and if they hav the power to make, we could be down several tricks doubled.

I'll just be over by the bar, leaning on this here sig.

I'm not sure the mnemonic issues of playing 1S 1N / 2H showing Hs and Ss is what present the difficulty on this hand... (though this might be a bad time to admit that in the actual auction, P forgot the system, GFed, and then passed us out in 3♥ :P We figured afterwards this was the auction we'd probably have had otherwise)

I read somewhere they opened promising full strength way back when they first developed the system, but switched to the potentially weaker version early on.

In our system he opens 2M (or 1N if (54)22). Fantoni-Nunes (and most, though not all of the other Fantunes versions around) do open them 1M, but we figured life was too short to deal with all the consequences of that, and we haven't noticed any consistent loss from our approach. The 5-5 hands were the really nasty ones, but that's the main reason we have the 2N opening option. Do you think, btw, that if N had opened 2N, S should have put him in 4♥s?

East. Why?

I'm not doing this well :( Rebidding 2H showed a minimum(ish) for his initial opening. His initial opening was at least a king stronger than an SAYC 1S bid (Aguahombre sounded ike he thought I meant it was *at most* a K stronger.

I guess I didn't make this clear. N has shown a *stronger* hand than usual (well, maybe slightly lower ceiling after failure to Gazzilli, but significantly higher floor) - see OP for clarification.

Sorry, fixed.

Thanks. I do not believe N had any deceitful intent.

This is the same hand from this thread, which I posted as a sanity check, since I haven't been playing much recently and was wondering if the rest of the room had much chance of finding this game: (ETA, in case it wasn't clear before - 1♠'s minimum value is a king stronger than normal - it's unlimited upwards. So in Fantunes terms, on HCP he's a sub-minimum) Poll 1: [hv=pc=n&s=sq2h8653dq852ca63&n=sak743hqt942dk4c9&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=p1s(A%20king%20stronger%20than%20normal%201S%2C%20forcing)p1n(0-9%2C%20semi-forcing)p2hp3hppp]266|200[/hv] So matchpoints. We play a form of Gazz, so with the same shape but slightly more strength/solidarity, N would have rebid 3H (eg on AKJxx KQJTx xx x - it's nominally '16-18' , but, while we're still calibrating, it seems like most 5-5s with most values in the long suits should upgrade frequently). Forgot to alert it in the description, but since we play Gazz, N is also capped at 17 points. Should N or S be more optimistic, or are we just missing game along with the rest of the room? Poll 2: We might also have had a very different auction, if N hadn't upgraded initially: W can open 2N, showing nominally 5+ spades + (5+ hearts or 5+ clubs) and 10-13 points (that is, the same playing strength as a normal Fantunes 2-bid), so again, upgrading into and out of the range is common). If he does so, S bids 3♣: pass or pull-to-3♦, and N with hearts does the latter (perforce, except on highly distributional hands) Should N have opened this, or do you agree with his upgrade? Either way, supposing he did, is S now worth a punt at 4H (given that the opps know relatively little about his hand)? On both poll questions, do your decisions change at IMPs?

[hv=pc=n&e=s9632ha8dakqt42c4&d=s&v=e&b=3&a=1h(5%2B)p4h]133|200[/hv] MPs. Choose what you'd actually call first, but after that, does it affect your decision that P is relatively inexperienced and might take X-then-5D (over 5C) as strength, rather than ELC.

This hand came up last night. I was E, I don't know N, but he seemed like an experienced and at least reasonably competent club player: (ETA fixed the bidding; ReETA - though forgot to include the alert that opening 4441s 1N is systematic for us) [hv=pc=n&w=sat98hk976daq76ct&e=skqj32hadt32caq63&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=p1np2hp3cp4cd4dp4sp4nppp]266|200[/hv] This hand did not exactly cover me in glory, but I was quite annoyed by how it had gone down (I didn't involve the director at the time, since it was my first time at the club, and I didn't really care that much about the hand when we were doing so poorly anyway). After W's Xfer break, N started to ask questions about whether we play retransfers and what the break showed. We were well behind at the time and feeling very rushed, which if not justifies, maybe gives some context to the rest of the auction. I'd been planning to sign off in 4S to catch up, but since N seemed substantial enough to know that he shouldn't be asking questions if he wasn't thinking about bidding, I thought he ought to have the KC, and decided to make the slam try - but quickly changed my mind after S's X. My partner carried on - I now think rightly, and that I should have been able to place him with a singleton if I'd trusted him, but at the time I was feeling flustered, and figured that he'd lost his mind and decided to bid RKCB (I'd also forgotten that, by our agreement, his 4N was Turbo). Since any (RKCB) response could excite him and I was still feeling flustered, and he was showing values in my weak suits, I figured passing would at least end the pain, hopefully ensure a positive and might even score us a similar number of tricks to spades and conceivably be our last making contract. So, 0 out of 10 for my decision-making on this board. Nonetheless, when I wondered about N's hand, and when I saw it later, felt that he'd acted unethically in asking questions with such a poor hand. Had I been in a really competitive match, I thought I might have asked for a director ruling, on the grounds that (I claim), he'd talked us out of 4S (for about 50%, as opposed to our approx 6% for 4N managing to go off 1). So, had I done so, how would the ruling have gone?

[hv=pc=n&s=sq2h8653dq852ca63&d=w&v=0&b=8&a=p1sp1np2hp]133|200[/hv] MPs, assume no particular gadgetry available, so 3♥ is pretty much your only game try . If you pass, would you be more ambitious at IMPs, either vul or non?

Auto 2♥ for me. Swap diamonds and spades and I'd hesitate slightly longer at MP, for fear of pushing them into 2S (but then probably still bid it).

I have definite game interest opposite a passed hand with that hand (eg make E your partner and convert his TD to the J, and game looks excellent. Even as his hand is, it will have play)

I like the idea of this, but what do you do when P *hasn't* shown shortage and you want to hunt for grand? Do you just make up a cue? The trouble I find with losing grand-slam tries where you want eg the Q opposite your AKJx is that often(/usually?) when one of you has a good source of tricks in a side suit, they've shown that suit in the auction. Maybe I'm answering my own question, and if you've shown 2 suits in the auction you can cue in a third to similar effect. That still leaves the question of what to do if P's the one who's shown side suits, though, or trickier still, if you both have.

In my book 2nd in unfavourable preempts need to be pure - ie good ODR. If I found P with with any side suit aces here I'd get a new partner. I might as well go via 4N, in case he's opened on an 8 card diamond suit to the jack and out (though that sounds more like a 4♦ bid to me), then (assuming he shows the AD) place the final contract as Cyberyeti.

3♠ for me too. P knows we don't have four, and if we belong in NT (seems doubtful) he can bid it.

What about (eg) 1♠ 2♣ 2♥ 2♠? - ie where opener has no room for a cheap 4sf bid? Is 2♠ now normal 2-card preference? Would you now jump to 3 more frequently?

A lot of the stronger players here prefer to bid a decent side suit in preference to showing a 4-card raise of P's major more often than I suspect I would - but I think there's a lot of disagreement among them about when? Anyway, I'm looking for some general principles about when to prefer one over the other. Is it based primarily on the quality of the side suit, or are other factors (eg the quality of the trump suit/overall strength/shape of the hand etc) equally as important?

What determines when 2N is nat vs when it's Lebensohl?

This was bidding practice. We had robots, but they might have been deterred by my 20-21-point balanced hand.