NMF or 4SF ?

[neilkaz]

With the opps passing throught and us playing generic(pickup PD) 2/1 GF at Imps, I hold....

 

Kxx

QT87x

Kxx

Kx

 

PD opens 1C and the bidding goes, 1H by me, 1S by him. I have a nothing special 11HCP, a normal 5 card H suit and maybe a black K or two fits. D's are stopped, so I jump rebid 2NT.

 

I think 2D is 4SF to game, and that my hand isn't right to rebid 2H with this many HCP and a nothing special 5 card H suit.

 

PD has AJx in H and a bit more than min HCP and carries on to 3NT and while I'm left wondering why he didn't bid 3H to offer me the choice of 4H or 3NT, he inquires why I didn't bid 2D NMF ?

 

Well I certainly thought NMF was when partner rebids NT, but is also used by some when PD rebids his suit and I had no idea that a 2D call by me was anything other than 4SF to game.

 

Comments please .. neilkaz ..

[mgoetze]

Well, that's what you get for playing 2/1 with a pickup partner. :) For serious partnerships I recommend the XYZ convention.

[mike777]

With the opps passing throught and us playing generic(pickup PD) 2/1 GF at Imps, I hold....

 

Kxx

QT87x

Kxx

Kx

 

PD opens 1C and the bidding goes, 1H by me, 1S by him. I have a nothing special 11HCP, a normal 5 card H suit and maybe a black K or two fits. D's are stopped, so I jump rebid 2NT.

 

I think 2D is 4SF to game, and that my hand isn't right to rebid 2H with this many HCP and a nothing special 5 card H suit.

 

PD has AJx in H and a bit more than min HCP and carries on to 3NT and while I'm left wondering why he didn't bid 3H to offer me the choice of 4H or 3NT, he inquires why I didn't bid 2D NMF ?

 

Well I certainly thought NMF was when partner rebids NT, but is also used by some when PD rebids his suit and I had no idea that a 2D call by me was anything other than 4SF to game.

 

Comments please .. neilkaz ..

You are correct pard should bid 3h (forcing) along the way to 3nt unless he has some 4=3=3=3 that he prefers to play in 3nt. You can win without xyz and 2d would be 4sf game force unless you have a special agreement.

 

I think bringing up XYZ is an example of convention crutch, as well as your partner's nmf comment.

 

As a side note, to rebid 1nt or 2nt depends on how junky your partner is opening.

[pbleighton]

"As a side note, to rebid 1nt or 2nt depends on how junky your partner is opening."

 

It would have to be pretty junky to rebid 1NT on an 11 count. Not a great 11 count, but you do have Kx and Kxx in his suits.

 

Peter

[mgoetze]

I think bringing up XYZ is an example of convention crutch, as well as your partner's nmf comment.

I think you're missing my point, which is that "2/1" is not sufficient discussion to play bridge together...

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

 

since the purpose of using NMF and 4SF is often

same, you should assume, that he just meant 4SF,

when he said NMF.

 

The only difference being, that quite often 4SF is played

as forcing to game, while NMF is always played as inv.+.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[HeartA]

Agree. But still, pd should bid 3H, give pd the chance to choose between 4H or 3N.

[mcphee]

XYZ rather than ABC, who cares. The opening hand failed to bid 3H with 3 card support, what good is a conventional 2D or 2C going to do, conventions will not improve simple logical methods. It makes sense to most players if the opening hand continued past 2NT to 3H they are offering a choice of games.

[EricK]

As a matter of general principles, isn't it a bit odd that 2NT is non-forcing, but 2♦ which gives you more room is game forcing?

 

Surely it makes more sense for 2NT to be GF (while still giving partner the option of showing belated ♥ support below game) and 2♦ as invitational, allowing you to play in a ♥ part score when opener is minimum with some support.

[awm]

As a matter of general principles, isn't it a bit odd that 2NT is non-forcing, but 2♦ which gives you more room is game forcing?

 

Surely it makes more sense for 2NT to be GF (while still giving partner the option of showing belated ♥ support below game) and 2♦ as invitational, allowing you to play in a ♥ part score when opener is minimum with some support.

This is not as obvious as it may appear. :angry:

 

The reasoning is that bidding (or avoiding) slams requires a lot of negotiation. Even though you potentially have a higher ceiling, it can be good to start slam investigations as low as possible to make this evaluation correctly. Making 2♦ the game force maximizes the space to explore slam possibilities, and also allows opener to prioritize shape-showing bids rather than being forced to distinguish strength early on so that responder can stop the auction in notrumps. For example, if 2♦ is "invite or better" then 2NT rebid by opener is presumably NF, so to show a maximum 2NT bid opener must go to 3NT... if you play 2♦ as "strictly invitational" then you wind up revealing more information about opener's hand pattern when all you really wanted to know was "max or min" and the slam investigation auctions will necessarily start higher and can become awkward.

 

Of course, there are some advantages to a "4th suit invitational+" or "4th suit invitational" structure, but it's very much an oversimplification to say that "higher bids should show stronger hands" especially since a great deal of modern bidding theory actually emphasizes the opposite approach (i.e. many 2/1 players use 1♠-2♣ as game force and 1♠-3♣ as invitational, and virtually everyone plays 1♠ as stronger than 2♠).

[EricK]

Of course, there are some advantages to a "4th suit invitational+" or "4th suit invitational" structure, but it's very much an oversimplification to say that "higher bids should show stronger hands" especially since a great deal of modern bidding theory actually emphasizes the opposite approach (i.e. many 2/1 players use 1♠-2♣ as game force and 1♠-3♣ as invitational, and virtually everyone plays 1♠ as stronger than 2♠).

But I wasn't making the generalised point that higher bids should be stronger than lower bids.

 

If I was going to generalise, it might be that invitational bids should only be made once you have told partner enough about your hand so he can make a sensible decision, or at a low enough level so he can find out what he needs to know.

 

And you will note, for example, that very few modern players use 1M 2NT as natural and invitational any more. Also 1M 3M as natural and invitational is a rarity, and 1m 3m as natural and invitational is on the way out.

[mgoetze]

So, what's 1M-3M used for, nowadays? Personally, I thought 1m-3m was much less likely to be invitational than 1M-3M, inverted minors having been around for a while.

[EricK]

So, what's 1M-3M used for, nowadays? Personally, I thought 1m-3m was much less likely to be invitational than 1M-3M, inverted minors having been around for a while.

1M-3M is normally played as weak, pre-emptive based on LOTT.

 

Actually, I don't know if I am right to say "normally". Can anybody confirm whether most expert pairs use 1M 3M this way?

[awm]

I'm not sure there's a lot of expert consensus on 1♠-3♠. Limit raise, preemptive raise, and mixed raise all seem to be fairly common. Certainly in the US where Bergen Raises are popular, preemptive is quite common.

 

In general people like to preempt to whatever level they think is reasonable on weak hands, to make life difficult for opponents. This is in fact a change from very "old school" bidding philosophy where higher bids tended to show better hands, but that change happened pretty far back.

 

The more interesting question is on invitational or better hands, where "preempting the opponents" isn't really a major issue since you have the majority of the strength. You can choose to "go slow" or "go fast." In general bidding slowly gives you more information about how well the hands fit and helps to make accurate decisions about whether to play game, partscore, or slam and in which strain. The disadvantage to going slow (and the advantage to going fast) is that the same information is available to the opponents when they are defending the hand. There's also an issue in that only so many "go slow" bids are available and occasionally you are forced to make a choice. A simple example is the 2/1 response to 1M. If you make this game forcing, it improves your slam bidding substantially but hurts your ability to judge invitational hands. If you make the 2/1 response invitational-plus you get the opposite effect.

 

The general trend in modern bidding seems to be "go slow with hands where you might have slam, go fast on invites." Examples of this include:

 

(1) Most modern players seem to use 2/1 game forcing rather than inv+.

(2) Invitational jump shifts are popular.

(3) Fourth suit forcing "to game" is popular.

(4) Many players use various jump shifts to show raises, and there are often many ways to show a game forcing raise but only one to show an invitational raise (for example Bergen raise structure). In addition there is rarely much space between the invitational raise and 3M for detailed inquiry (note that bergen raises use 1♥-3♦ as limit which has no advantage at all over 1♥-3♥ limit; the point of bergen raises is to allow you to preempt the opponents with weak or mildly constructive hands and not to substantially help your decision of whether to bid game on invitational hands).

 

Note that in certain versions of old-fashioned standard bidding, when you have a three-card limit raise you start with a 2/1 call and then bid 2M. This lets you stop in 2M when you're not going to game, and also gives opener information about responder's pattern/location of values to improve accuracy in the game/no game decision. This is obviously a better way to treat a three card limit raise than bidding a forcing notrump followed by 3M (which means you have to play 3M when opener declines the invite, and opener has no real info beyond "3-card limit raise" with which to make a decision). However, most modern players have discarded this treatment, perhaps because using 1M-2x-2y-2M as a game-forcing inquiry can be quite helpful in the slam/no slam decision.

 

Of course there is certainly merit in "going slow" with invitational hands. There are plenty of imps to be won by avoiding bad games that people bid after a simple invite. But this goes against mainstream modern expert practice, which puts a great deal of emphasis on slam/no slam decisions and hopes that the lost accuracy in game bidding will be compensated by giving the opponents tough defensive problems when you bid a bad game on an uninformative sequence.

[luke warm]

Can anybody confirm whether most expert pairs use 1M 3M this way?

not being one, i can't speak authoritatively, but i do kib a lot of *very* good players, and my sense is that most of them play it as preemptive... i actually can't recall seeing anything other than that usage