Jump shift

[Flame]

I wonder what is the common way to play jump shifts especially by world class players.

In Israel you wont find even 1 percent of the players playing strong jump shift, but i believe this is different in other places.

[mikeh]

This has evolved over time (while getting less popular due to the use of jumpshifts to solve other perceived problems).

 

Soloway Jumps are (if memory serves) either self-sufficient suits in a hand with some slam interest or good suits with a good fit for opener's suit, and some slam interest. This allows bids of side suits, by either player, to be cuebids rather than length.... the partnership is committed, by the jumpshift, to play in either of the first two suits or notrump.

 

The other approach is to include in the jumpshift strong balanced hands, where the jumpshift suit need not be particularly long. I don't have any experience with this approach, since I have rarely played strong jumpshifts in the last 20+ years, and, when I do, it is a Soloway approach.

 

'Some slam interest' doesn't require 18 hcp or the like.. that was the common approach 40 years ago, and derived from an era in which psyches were very common, and frustrating when responder held a hand that might make a game opposite a psyche.. jumpshifts were forcing even on a hand that had psyched... but very few players psyche opening bids in 1st or 2nd seat these days, so the need to hold a huge hand has declined.

[rbforster]

I think people are slowly realizing how rare classic "strong jump shift" hand are, so in the same way strong two's went out of fashion, the strong jump shift is getting used for other things.

 

Plenty of people play other jumps besides strong ones - Bergen raises, natural invitations, weak jumps, mini-splinters, fit-showing jumps, etc.

 

Solloway jumps are at least a move in this direction since they cover a couple of hand types instead of just one (making them more likely/useful). If you're willing to play relays over your strong jump, you can compress all the Solloway jumps into the cheapest jump shift (i.e. 1♥-2♠ or 1♠-2N). This is useful to free up the other jump bids for showing some of the popular treatments I mentioned above.

[Finch]

If you have a look at the convention cards from the top pairs at the World Mindsports Games, you will see a huge range of meanings for jump shifts, I don't think there is a 'standard' any more. It's probably fair to say, though, that the popular classes of meaning are:

 

- an artificial raise of opener's suit of some description

- a weak distributional hand of some sort

- a bid to pick up a particular hand type that cannot otherwise be bid easily (e.g. 'reverse flannery')

 

- some jumps are multi-way and cover a combination of the above

 

Strong jump shifts are less common than all of these.

[Roupoil]

In France, the Standard remains to play strong jump shifts, but there has been a big move for a few years towards weak jump shifts. I think that now quite a lot of players play weak jump shifts, but surely the percentage of those who kept thier strong jump shifts is much more than 1%. That's for the big crowd, concerning the experts, I believe very few play strong jump shifts, but I must say I don't know what exactly are their methods for these bids. From what I have seen, I would guess Reverse Flannery is quite poular, but that's all.