GiB got me again

[allfail]

This time, the bidding goes:

 

N E S W

GiB GiB Me GiB

p 1H X 1S

2D 2S 5D p

p X ?

 

My hand is S KQ9 H - D KQxx C AKxxxx.

 

I redoubled, and find my GiB partner's hand was:

S x H QJTxx D Jxxx C xxx. It's still playable, but

due to unfriendly splits my partner played it to -2.

 

Does anyone have any idea how can GiB choose to bid 2D for this hand...?

[manudude03]

2D doesn't look that bad a bid, it's simply thinking it's got 4 points (sobeit 3 of them likely wasted), a stiff and 4 cards in a suit partner "promised". I suspect that if I was NV, i would bid 2D too. Some people bid on less.

 

PS: XXs in gib tourneys are suicide.

[uday]

You can mouse over (or click upon ) GIBs bid to see what the bid meant.

 

2D shows 4+D and 6+ total points ( HCP plus short suit points ).

[allfail]

Yeah, technically I agree it did not break rules bidding 2D with this hand, but I don't think bidding this is a good idea since:

(i) partner doesn't promise to have 4 Ds

(ii) partner's spade strength is likely wasted

(iii) QJTxx in hearts are worthless

And most importantly,

(iv) in the case where we do have a nice fit in diamonds, partner with game interest will overbid since the average values of this bid 2D is at least a K higher than this hand.

 

For peole to bid this 2D with lesser strength, the only benefit is in competition. But here since Opps didn't find a fit yet (looks like misfit or bad splits in spades) and we may just have 7 cards in diamonds I don't see a reason to bid. I would only consider bidding this with at least 5 cards in diamonds.

 

On the other hand, I have various successes doing XX in robot tourneys. The usual theme is that GiB is very likely to double you just with strengh when one of them opened and the other one did a forcing response. When holding some freakish distributional hands your contract can easily make +1 or +2.

 

One extreme example is that I once hold KQJxxx - - AKJxxxx and the bidding was (1H)-p-(3H) to me. I bid 6C, LHO doubled and I redoubled and get 6C XX+1.

[arigreen]

I agree with you that 2D is not a particularly great bid with this hand. However, it is certainly within the realm of normal, and GIB's hand matches it's description of the bid. As I'm sure you know, there are many examples where GIB's bidding is unreasonable, and we would like to focus our resources on fixing those cases rather than cases like these.