Insufficient Bid

[hrothgar]

Steve Willner pointed me to the following thread on rec.games.bridge

 

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.b...deaa1bfc7c73e42

 

which has a practical example of some of the issues involved

[Echognome]

Who says that they have to correct to 5♥?

 

Doesn't seem that anyone has considered the other possibilities... one being a correction to pass.

[jdonn]

For the life of me I still wonder why anyone would accept the 5♥ bid. How could anything go wrong if we just have him take it back, and he will either pass or 5♥ in which case we know our agreements easily? Is someone really worried 5 will be too high when partner bids blackwood and we have such a nice hand for slam and nothing wasted in hearts?

[cherdano]

For the life of me I still wonder why anyone would accept the 5♥ bid. How could anything go wrong if we just have him take it back, and he will either pass or 5♥ in which case we know our agreements easily? Is someone really worried 5 will be too high when partner bids blackwood and we have such a nice hand for slam and nothing wasted in hearts?

My only worry is that we are missing one keycard and partner is not willing to risk slam when he can't find out about our ♥Q.

[jdonn]

That seems like a fair point, but it won't really matter. Partner will assume the queen if there is no room to ask because

- we might have it

- we might have 5 spades

- they might break 2-2 or he has the jack or we have it etc etc

- partner very likely has 6 spades anyway in which case it won't matter

[skjaeran]

I'd only accept 4♥ if I had a hand where I'd expect to beat 4♥ enough to score better than our game and not make slam. Then I'd accept 4♥ and double. That's to me the logical reason to accept an unsufficient bid here - I don't think the extra space will be important. Thus accept followed by double is business. In practice I can't see that happen..... Btw, you can't be sure to be able to double 5♥ for penalty, since 4♥ can be replaced with a pass.

[Impact]

I cannot imagine accepting 4H and doubling for penalties when I could either force them to bid 5H (sufficient bid) or something else with the resulting penalty (both bidding and lead potentially) given partner has indicated a slam suitable hand for S (in fact by his action virtually said Slam is on if we have enough KC). This is NOT a co-operative dialogue but rather having shown the limit (slightly understated IMHO for S) of the hand partner has asked a single slam-determinative question : to which we should supply a straight answer.

 

The HUGE disadvantage of 1430 with the particular method is that holding one KC it gives partner room to go wrong if you double (he shouldn't but it does whereas if you passed over 4H it must be encouraging - but that is second step!! on your agreement - so for safety I bet you wish you were playing the inferior 0314 on this particular hand).

 

THe other important point is that by accepting you save room in a slam -suitable situation where the SQ may be important to show.

Hence I bid double (first step of the insufficient bid) and hope to survive.

 

Note unfortunately the logic in the particular auction where Keycards are being requested does not directly apply to other auctions where cue-bidding or non-suit agreement is pertinent.

 

regards,