Are you a victim of Lebensohl?

[Gerben42]

You're playing with a pickup partner and your hand is:

 

[hv=d=n&s=skxxhkxxdkxxckxxx]133|100|[/hv]

 

Partner opens 1NT (15-17), righty bids 2♥.

 

Okay, I know what I want to play... 3NT. So I bid 3NT.

 

Uh oh, partner alerts and explains upon inquiry: We play Lebensohl, this shows a GF hand without stopper. Suddenly you remember that the "Leb" in partner's profile is exactly that.

 

Doh! To play 3NT you must bid 2NT, then 3NT.

 

Who invented such horrors?

 

Alternatively I like what I learned from Polish players:

 

1N (2♥) 3N = To play

1N (2♥) 3♥ = Asks for stopper

 

1N (2♥) 2N then 3N = To play with 4♠

1N (2♥) 2N then 3♥ = Asks for stopper with 4♠

 

You don't get to vote for "Transfer Lebensohl" or "Rubensohl" here.

[whereagles]

There's a better way out of this: forget about stoppers and bid 3NT whenever the hcp are there. When was the last time your opp overcalled with AKQxx anyway?

[DJNeill]

Hey,

Most of the local people I play with play Lebensohl and say they know that direct denies, but only 1 out of 4 remembers it. Direct denies, slow shows is the way it is written up in, say, Modern Bridge Conventions. It hasn't really cost except, no wait yes it cost 1st place in NAOP-B on the penultimate board.

 

Thanks,

Dan

[awm]

I've never had this particular problem with lebensohl. On the other hand, I have been passed or raised to 3NT on several occasions on the auction 2M-X-P-2NT(leb) where partner decided I had an intermediate balanced hand with a stopper. This usually did not work out well....

 

I don't see any particular reason the alternative method would be easier to remember than regular lebensohl though. And playing negative doubles tends to fix these problems (since you don't need a "stayman" bid anymore and can just use 3NT=to play and 3H=stopper ask).

[brianshark]

I don't think you should agree leb unless you have explicitly agreed which type you are playing. It doesn't come up too often but I can't remember me or my p ever forgetting it. I play slow shows a stopper with one partner, slow denies a stopper with another partner and slow shows a 4 card major with two other partners (who incidentally are poles!) ;)

 

I play wj05 with them all but I guess the irish dudes are familiar with their slow shows/denies stoppers version.

 

Having said that, if pressed for a more common version, Direct Denies (/Slow Shows) seems more common. The illiteration is nice. :)

[gwnn]

I think the Polish one is nice. Of course negative double puts in question whether the 4 ♠'s issue is relevant.

[BillHiggin]

Which causes more problems:

Sticking with a standard that may be suboptimum but is consistent across all your patnerships.

Tweaking a percieved weakness but then having to remember which partnerships use which version.

 

Unfortunately, you do not have to do your own tweaking. Others will do it for you and you still end up having to track minor version differences of multiple conventions.

 

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from"

[mr1303]

When I first learnt Lebensohl, I learnt fast shows. I have only rarely seen the alternative in the UK.

[skjaeran]

Fast denies, slow show, cuebid=4cOM is ingrained in me - except that these days I play negative doubles, so lebensohl have changed.

[david_c]

With my first regular partner we had to work it out for ourselves, and we thought that this scheme was the most intuitively obvious:

 

- direct 3NT = to play

- 2NT then 3NT = no-trumpy hand but needs partner to help with the stopper

- direct cue = 4 spades, no stop

- 2NT then cue = 4 spades with a stop

 

This still seems intuitively right to me. Possibly this is because the meanings of 3NT and the cue-bid are the same as they would be if we were playing old-fashioned methods without Lebensohl. But people kept telling me it was inconsistent. :lol:

[paulg]

When I first learnt Lebensohl, I learnt fast shows. I have only rarely seen the alternative in the UK.

You clearly have not played in Scotland ... slow shows is the standard here.

 

Paul

[jdonn]

I always intuitively remembered slow shows by telling myself that when you bid notrump an extra time you have a stopper. Always worked for me.

[Echognome]

With my first regular partner we had to work it out for ourselves, and we thought that this scheme was the most intuitively obvious:

 

- direct 3NT = to play

- 2NT then 3NT = no-trumpy hand but needs partner to help with the stopper

- direct cue = 4 spades, no stop

- 2NT then cue = 4 spades with a stop

 

This still seems intuitively right to me. Possibly this is because the meanings of 3NT and the cue-bid are the same as they would be if we were playing old-fashioned methods without Lebensohl. But people kept telling me it was inconsistent. :)

It does seem inconsistent to my brain.

 

I learned fast shows with the rule that "all bad hands (varieties) go through 2NT".

 

So that:

 

2NT then

New suit (below opps) = NF

New suit (above opps) = Invitational

Cue = Staymanic without stopper

3NT = Balanced hand with values, but no stopper

 

Whereas direct:

New suit (below opps) = F

New suit (above opps) = GF

Cue = Staymanic with stopper

3NT = Balanced hand with values with stopper

 

That seemed to make sense to me. Moving back to the states, it has taken me some getting used to "slow shows".

[whereagles]

I think we could just skip stoppers. I remember like 3 situations out of.. what..? 10000 hands? where stoppers were an issue. Every time 3NT was the winner.

[kenberg]

I guess I have played slow shows in all my partnerships where it has been discussed but still I second whereagles contention that not worrying about stoppers has merit. As mentioned, overcaller rarely has an immediately running suit, and the less informative your auction is about where stoppers are/aren't the better. Maybe overcaller should lead his suit to get started on establishing it, maybe leading it gives declarer his ninth trick. From what I have seen in my casual partnerships w/o leb, this is not just a theoretical possibility but rather a practical approach. Moreover, it seems particularly good against agreements such as dont where the overcaller (at least those I often encounter) has two trashy suits instead of one decent one.

 

Which of course leads to another issue about Leb, namely that overcalls are often two suited. Playing Leb, I assume (preferably I agree beforehand) that 1N-2D(=D+M)-3N still denies a diamond stopper but opener may be on his own with whatever major overcaller has. Whether this is of greater help to partner or to the opening leader is unclear.

 

Many years back, not playing Leb, the auction went 1N-(2H)-3N. I tabled a dummy with a couple of heart spots and my rho went livid when 9 tricks rolled in. He gave me a long lecture on the utter stupidity of my bidding. We still wrote down the 600 our way.