name that tune

[cherdano]

Wizard splinter is obviously a better name than 5431 convention.

[jdonn]

All these bids are not as uncommon as you make them seem, they certainly come up for me. But also, frequency is not the only issue, if you change the meaning of those bids it should be to fill a hole. Using it for easy stayman hands or quantitative bids has negligible value since these are easily biddable hands anyway. It is minor suit oriented hands that don't otherwise have good bids after a 1NT opening.

[han]

It came up yesterday for us.

[Gerben42]

I know of people who play 3♥/♠ showing 4 cards in the other major and balanced.

 

I know a convention for this! Stay... doh! forgot it :P I see the point of this convention but I'm not sure it's useful.

[goobers]

Actually I saw that mentioned on Mike Develin's blog; I believe he called it one of his favorite gadgets.

 

The purpose is to conceal opener's major suit holding, so the defense have a tougher time. Apparently it really came through for them, as 3NT at all the other tables went down because of a different lead from the normal stayman auction.

 

All this is paraphrased, I'll go double check his post later.

[han]

I know of people who play 3♥/♠ showing 4 cards in the other major and balanced.

 

I know a convention for this! Stay... doh! forgot it :) I see the point of this convention but I'm not sure it's useful.

Really? I think it is a great idea. For the people who play this, would you bid it with 4333's too?

 

I like wizard splinters too so it's a tough choice.

[Cascade]

I know of people who play 3♥/♠ showing 4 cards in the other major and balanced.

 

I know a convention for this! Stay... doh! forgot it :) I see the point of this convention but I'm not sure it's useful.

Really? I think it is a great idea. For the people who play this, would you bid it with 4333's too?

 

I like wizard splinters too so it's a tough choice.

What is a wizard splinter?

[keylime]

I call 'em lightning splinters; as in when they come up it jars you like a bolt of lightning, and...I love the hockey team of its name. :)

[han]

I know of people who play 3♥/♠ showing 4 cards in the other major and balanced.

 

I know a convention for this! Stay... doh! forgot it :) I see the point of this convention but I'm not sure it's useful.

Really? I think it is a great idea. For the people who play this, would you bid it with 4333's too?

 

I like wizard splinters too so it's a tough choice.

What is a wizard splinter?

See page 2 of this thread:

 

They call them wizard splinters over here.

[karlson]

Really? I think it is a great idea. For the people who play this, would you bid it with 4333's too?

I play this with many people, and yeah, we'll bid it on 4333 sometimes. Basically it's the same question of whether you'd stayman with 4333. I remember a thread on this a while ago and certainly people admitted that they'd stayman at least sometimes, so I don't see why this would be different. I believe we play 1n-3h-3s as cog (probably 4333), so sometimes you can get out in 3n even with the 4-4.

 

Ironically, we do have a way to show the wizard splinter over the 2n opener.

[karlson]

Also, when I played wizard, it was actually reversed (so 3s showed 3-1 and 3h showed 1-3). The wrong hand plays it if you end up playing the major, but otoh, they don't get to double as often. Thoughts? Of course it never came up, so I can't tell you how it worked out.

[Impact]

Yep , I also play it as fragment style - and have for about 20 years....for that reason and also because my general preference has been to bid length rather than shortness:-

 

my responses 3NT: T

4m: good with definite choice of suit: sets suit

4fragment: T

4 shortM= slammish asks for SHORTER minor eg with both minors

4NT= slammish asking for longer minor

5m= T min placing contract after picture bid

 

Bear in mind that I tend to use these bids with hands which cannot afford to relay as room insufficient to find opener's shape and concentration below 3NT, hence there is a ceiling on my use of the picture bid which may not be applicable to others.

 

 

regards

[jdonn]

One note about the convention, it's much superior to bid the shortness. Hiding opener's hand is very important since if that hand is exposed the defense is double dummy. Letting them double the shortness showing bid seems insignificant to me, what are they going to do sacrifice?

[MickyB]

One note about the convention, it's much superior to bid the shortness. Hiding opener's hand is very important since if that hand is exposed the defense is double dummy. Letting them double the shortness showing bid seems insignificant to me, what are they going to do sacrifice?

Possibly, but more likely find the right lead. I'm not sure which method is better.

 

FWIW, I play 1N:3M as 4M 0-1oM and with (13)(45) or (13)(36) I xfer to the minor then bid the fragment. This was lifted from Charlie Garrod's modification of Keri, but I prefer it with Stayman+4 suit xfers.

[jdonn]

So you transfer to the minor first with 5? I don't think I like the sound of that at all... I play this convention with Justin, but the 3♥ shortness showing bid could have 3 or 4 spades and there is still room to sort it out (3♠ by opener 3NT by responder), that helps some.

[MickyB]

Yup that works fine, giving away more info about opener's hand though, and it means you lose our meaning for a 3♠ bid on this auction (it shows a good hand on the auction, no wastage if minimum)

 

Transferring to a 5 card minor feels strange at first, but I don't see a problem - 1345 and 1336 are bundled together relatively painlessly IMO. Certainly better than ambiguity over whether the hearts are three cards or four, or not having a way to bid the hand at all.

[awm]

The nice thing about not actually bidding the shortness is that it maintains the short suit as an anti-cuebid. Even fairly minimum GF hands with a singleton can produce slam opposite a maximum with nothing in the short suit. For example opposite a strong notrump:

 

x

Kxx

AQxxx

Qxxx

 

xxx

AQxxx

Kx

AKx

 

The north hand doesn't really qualify as a "slam try" opposite 15-17 by most measures (it's only 11 hcp) but you can see that slam is actually pretty decent on this pair of hands. There are many such examples. It's nice to have methods where you can distinguish the bottom hand from some hand like:

 

Qxx

AQJx

Jxx

AJx

 

In both cases you want to play in hearts opposite a 1-3-(45) pattern, but the first hand makes slam pretty easily opposite very mild extras from responder, whereas the second hand you are happy to be in 4♥ instead of 3NT and don't really want anything to do with 5♥. Playing 3♥ as the fragment, opener can bid 3♠ to show a "perfect hand" like the first one (leading to a relatively easy path to slam) whereas a direct 4♥ (bypassing the 3♠ call) would show a hand like the bottom one. If 3♠ shows spade shortage, then you'd have to bypass 4♥ to show the good hand, which turns out to be fine when you have slam but is not so good when responder is dead minimum (say the same hand without one of the minor queens) and you end up playing a level higher.

 

This also helps decide when you want to play 4m after opener bails with no stopper, versus when you want to play 5m (or similarly 5m and 6m).

 

Against well-prepared opponents, it shouldn't really help you in terms of lead direction to bid the shortage, because they could easily agree that a double of the short suit asks for the lead of the fragment (you're not going to play in responder's singleton doubled at the three level in any case). The only issue is that bidding the fragment sometimes "wrong-sides" a contract, which is probably a more serious concern when the notrump opening is stronger (Keri Garrod and to a lesser extent the original Keri was designed with weak notrumps in mind).

[mcphee]

I dub the convention, No Name. It was great to hear from so many who didn't know :P

[Gerben42]

"No Name" is a silly name for a convention, or for anything really.

 

The one with the wizard is nice.

[hrothgar]

I dub the convention, No Name. It was great to hear from so many who didn't know :P

While this convention doesn't have a name, "No Name" is already in use.

 

"No Name" is a Polish strong pass system. I doubt that this would cause much trouble in North America. Most of the players don't know what a strong pass system is, let alone that No Name is an example of one. However, the purist in me cringes at using the same term...

[glen]

sp1iNTers