Response question

[aguahombre]

This might sound like one of those posts which confuses two issues, but it really isn't.

 

For those of you who use a forcing club system ( whatever it is) :

 

What does an unpassed hand response to 1♠ of 3♣ show?

 

Still Bergen?

weak with clubs?

other?

 

I could care less what you play (critique wise). Just want to know what to expect, as an opponent.

[kayin801]

Used to be a mixed raise, now it's nat and invitational

[mgoetze]

Playing Polish Club I expect this to be natural, good suit, invitational strength. A few years ago, when I had a serious precision partnership, I played this as a minisplinter.

 

I don't really see how the "forcing club" aspect is relevant. You'll find many different treatments for this call, but the same could be said if you were polling serious 2/1 players or whatever.

[Free]

mini splinter

[the hog]

Natural, invitational.

[aguahombre]

I don't really see how the "forcing club" aspect is relevant. You'll find many different treatments for this call, but the same could be said if you were polling serious 2/1 players or whatever.

Yeh, well, for some reason I am interested in how it is played by pairs whose 1M is limited.

[rbforster]

Jacoby "2NT"

[bigtrain]

Natural, invitational seems a clear choice to me. That does the most to contribute to a sensible major suit response structure in a limited opening environment.

[spotlight7]

Hi:

 

1M-3m is a natural bid that invites with a 6+ decent suit.

 

This helps with 1M-new suit being a game force, since it removes

'those' kind of hands from the 1M-1NT* forcing auctions.

 

Now 1M-1N-something-3m shows a long minor, however, it denies inv. values.

 

You might also want to know what 1M-2M means in a 'limited' system.

Some reply with very light values and others show a constructive type bid.

 

Regards,

Robert

[WellSpyder]

Strong with clubs, anyone? I know strong jump shifts are pretty unfashionable these days, but they are still the default treatment in England for those who have not discussed something different, and I don't think the utility of this particular treatment is affected much by the limited nature of 1M.

[W Kovacs]

Strong with clubs, anyone? I know strong jump shifts are pretty unfashionable these days, but they are still the default treatment in England for those who have not discussed something different, and I don't think the utility of this particular treatment is affected much by the limited nature of 1M.

My partner and I play it as strong with solid Clubs, strong with Clubs and Spades, or strong balanced.

[gwnn]

Natural, invitational.

yes please

[Gerben42]

Either minisplinter or natural and invitational are useful meanings.

[awm]

Wide-ranging weak-to-constructive, anywhere from 0-8 (or maybe a bad 9) hcp. Denies interest in game unless opener has a great fit for clubs or some very distributional hand.

 

Note that I wouldn't be able to play this range if I didn't use a strong club because opener wouldn't know what to do with a flattish 17-20 or so. And I wouldn't want to play a range of like 0-5 because it's infrequent and doesn't help me in other auctions.

 

The range I play means bidding 1M..3♣ is a decent hand (i.e. the reverse of playing 3♣ as INV). It makes more sense to me to preempt with the bad hands and take the slow route with the good hands than vice versa, especially when there is very little need to have constructive game auctions on the bad hands (unlike opposite a wide range opening bid).

 

Never been a believer in bergen raises, especially with 2NT doing double-duty as "limit raise or better" freeing up 1M-3M.

[gwnn]

That's true awm but when partner's expected HCP is 11 ish and RHO passed, it is probably more likely to be 10 ish than 6 ish. Then it makes sense to bid this intermediate/invite hand earlier because it is possible opps have game on or at least that they have a good partscore available and our 3 level invite will make it harder for them to find it. That said, I don't mind either method really and I don't think there is much to it. Minisplijters however I can't relate to: three different bids for same handtype (it is true that 4-level splinters are thebaame from this pov but there is not much need for any of those 4m bids anyway).

[straube]

I like 3D as a mixed raise but 3C as any LR (3 or 4 trump). This means our 1N response can be semiforcing. Also, after 1S-3C there is room for a counter-game try (or even to sort out 3 vs 4 trump if one prefers).

[rbforster]

Wide-ranging weak-to-constructive, anywhere from 0-8 (or maybe a bad 9) hcp. Denies interest in game unless opener has a great fit for clubs or some very distributional hand.

 

Note that I wouldn't be able to play this range if I didn't use a strong club because opener wouldn't know what to do with a flattish 17-20 or so. And I wouldn't want to play a range of like 0-5 because it's infrequent and doesn't help me in other auctions.

 

The range I play means bidding 1M..3♣ is a decent hand (i.e. the reverse of playing 3♣ as INV).

 

Never been a believer in bergen raises, especially with 2NT doing double-duty as "limit raise or better" freeing up 1M-3M.

Are you happy with your WJS-style 1M-3C? I can certainly see the merit of the slow invite, since sometimes you'll uncover a 6-2 major fit along the way,etc. What do you think of just passing with the weak hands and using the direct 3C for some convetional use? Are you happy with your major suit raises, etc? It seems like when opener is limited and you've got a WJS hand, you could just pass and let the opps try to sort it out (likely their hand, but they may notbe able to double with club shortness).

[awm]

Well I play a fair amount of top-level matchpoint competition, and playing hands in my 5-1 major suit fit when I have roughly half the high cards rarely scores well in this format. So I would say I'm not eager to pass hands where I have a modicum of values, a misfit for partner, and a long suit of my own.

 

Maybe at IMPs it's more palatable, but you're still turning a plus into a minus on a fairly large proportion of partscore deals.

 

I know a lot of people like to have half a dozen different ways to raise partner to the three-level, but for the most part I haven't been impressed by the results of this approach. The individual raises rarely turn up and some of the time you play three going down when the opponents would've sold to two making. A well-designed 1♠-2N (or 1♥-2♠) structure can compress a pretty large number of hands, so I don't really see the need.

 

Perhaps another point is that when partner opens 1M and I have a fit, my RHO bids or doubles a pretty high percentage of the time. So all my wonderful raises don't come up that much. But when partner opens 1M and I have a misfit with my own suit, the opponents surprisingly often let us play in 1M, which is usually not a great result for our side.

[mikegill]

We have been for a while now playing 3♣ as preemptive and the other bids as raises (dist LR or better, 3-4 card limit, 4-card mixed, weak). This sort of combines the two approaches. 3♣ is clearly the best suit to have a weak jump in since it makes 1M 1N 2x 3c clearly inv, and frequently you will be able to freely bid 3♦ as an invitation. I think the next best approach would be to play 3♣ and ♦ as preemptive and lose the weak raise.

 

Many good players seems to like invitational jump shifts but I've never understood the appeal. This seems cleaner to me - you get to do more describing on your invitational hands (like finding out if partner has a 6th card in his major when you're 2xx7) and jump on your weak hands to take up their space.

[dake50]

I have another method for mini-spl, another for C-fit bid, another for C-spl. So it fits as strong JS similar to Soloway: str bal if NT next; solid suit if C-repeated; slam adv Q if new suit next showing that and C-control and SKxxx.

[straube]

We have been for a while now playing 3♣ as preemptive and the other bids as raises (dist LR or better, 3-4 card limit, 4-card mixed, weak). This sort of combines the two approaches. 3♣ is clearly the best suit to have a weak jump in since it makes 1M 1N 2x 3c clearly inv, and frequently you will be able to freely bid 3♦ as an invitation. I think the next best approach would be to play 3♣ and ♦ as preemptive and lose the weak raise.

 

Many good players seems to like invitational jump shifts but I've never understood the appeal. This seems cleaner to me - you get to do more describing on your invitational hands (like finding out if partner has a 6th card in his major when you're 2xx7) and jump on your weak hands to take up their space.

We used to use only the 3C bid to show GI clubs and kept 3D as a mixed raise and 2N as LR+ but we had a little trouble collapsing the LR+ and noticed that our 3C bid seldom came up (and had the danger of missing 6-2 spade fits).

 

Using 3C as a WJS makes more sense to me than as GI.

 

I ran 600 hands opposite a spade opener and found 5 hands that I thought would qualify as a WJS. I excluded hands that had a poor suit (imo) or a spade fit (obviously) or a heart holding. Of the 5 hands, 2 were clear winners for the method. One picked up a 6-2 club fit (vs a 5-1 spade fit) and the other picked up an 8-0 club fit. The three others were more doubtful because a 2S contract was arguably better.

[Zelandakh]

What does an unpassed hand response to 1♠ of 3♣ show?

I play it as a GF raise without a splinter, like modified Jacoby. 2NT is a mini-splinter in any suit or an in-between splinter (~16-19 support pts). 3D is an invitational raise without splinter. 3H is a mixed raise. 3S and 4S are preemptive. 3NT is a void splinter, 4C/D/H are singleton splinters.

[mycroft]

My partnership plays it as "Bergen" - go on a Goren-standard opener, basically. That effectively splits the range in half. We play 3D as "go only if you would have opened 1C if you were promised 4-card support". I don't really like the mixed raise as in standard in a Precision framework - I'd rather miss the odd game and stick it to them with a 0-mixed direct 3M bid.

 

I'm not saying I like this method - it's one that partner is wedded to - but I don't find it much worse than any other.