Responding to an overcall

[ABadPlayer]

A friend of mine was relaying to me a problem she had earlier and after some discussion on the topic I decided to ask the experts here. An auction began...

 

1♣-1♠-P-???

 

Now the question is what would would various responses show?

 

Is a cue-bid GF while 3S shows 10-12 and 4 card support?

Or does cue-bid show limit+ and 3S in the 6-10 range with 4 crd support?

Or is it something completely different?

 

And if you begin with a cue-bid and partner responds 2S what would a bid of 3S, 4S or some other call then show?

 

Sorry if this is sorta a loaded question covering a lot of possibilities, but any help would be appreciated.

 

Edit: btw, the question is more directed towards what you would expect playing with a pickup pard that plays something like SAYC or 2/1. Not looking for somebodies homegrown overcall structure here.

[Stephen Tu]

Ugh. With a pickup partner, I don't think you can really expect anything and hope to be right more than half the time.

 

The official SAYC booklet only says "cue-bid is a one round force", and everything else is NF. If consistency with the rest of the system is to be assumed, I guess jump raise should be invitational, 4 trumps. But I wouldn't be surprised if partner assumed this was a weak preempt, it's a dangerous bid. It's safer to cue with your game inv+ hands, IMO, and always bid to the limit of your hand thereafter. If you want to be in game, after the initial cue bid, bid game to be safe. After an opening bid by the opponents, you won't have slam that often anyways, it's not a huge loss to not be able to agree partner's major, forcing, below the game level.

 

Playing 2/1, I'd assume jump raises in competition are weak (so here, ~4-bad 7, 4 trumps). A clear heavy majority of 2/1 players play weak jump raises in comp these days.

[ABadPlayer]

I believe she was playing 2/1 with a regular partner, but they evidently didn't have a specific agreement about this sort of thing. Personally I'd take the jump to 3S as weak with 4 trumps and cue-bid as Limit+.

 

As it turned out my friend had 14 points with 4S and she wasn't sure how to show this hand. I would just bid 4S directly and not screw around giving away info about my hand or letting ops get any more bids in. But she wanted to know how to show a strong hand with 4 trump without doing this. Like if you begin with a cue-bid and partner responds 2S then I assume 3S would be a STRONG invite saying "Bid game with ANYTHING more than minimum" which I guess you could do if you're P likes to overcall with trashy hands.

[Free]

What I consider standard (I don't live in ACBL land however) is:

cue = stopper ask or invite+ with 3-card support

2NT = invite+ with 4+ trumps

 

With a pickup partner you might agree to play transfer advances (if he knows this), this has more possibilities and is easy to use imo.

[kenberg]

There are pick-ups and then there are other pick-ups. After 1C-1S-pass, playing with a pick-up, I would bid 2C only if I had spades, not as a general game force or a general invitation. I would intend it as invitational, and trust I won't be playing 2C. With your partner's hand, I would bid 2C and then, over 2S I would bid 3S. It's hard to see how that could be misunderstood while it still let's us get out if partner believes in overcalling on real trash (I don't, but he might). Playing with a pick-up, we do our best. If he passes 3S with a decent but modest holding thinking he would never overcall on anything less then maybe you should have bid 4. That's life in the pick-up lane.

If I had the premptive type hand, I would raise 1S to 2 and then, if there is further competition, I would raise again to 3. Of course it is better to bid 3 right away, and I would do so with any regular partner, but with a pick-up I would sacrifice optimal bidding for the safety of bidding in a way that cannot be misunderstood. So I hope.

 

All this depends some on the setting for the pick-up, whether I have any reason to believe he is apt to think of the game more or less like I do, and so on. Yesterday playing with a partner I have played with before but not often, the bidding began 1D on my right and continued 1D-pass-1S-2D(partner). Uh huh. I like to play that as natural, and I had only two diamonds, so when rho passed I did also. Partner had diamonds. Whew. They continued, after 2H, to 2NT and I led a diamond to beat it. There is guess work in pick-up partnerships.

 

Ken