Constructive raise, limit, or gf?

[Cthulhu D]

How sound are people's partners' openings where this is a game force?

[kenberg]

One more thought from one who voted for bidding 2♥: Sometimes it boils down to who will take the responsibility for the decision. If I bid 1NT and then, over partner's likely 2♣, bid 3♠, then partner will mostly count his high card points. What else can he do, he knows nothing about my hand other than i deem it invitational. He doesn't know his Qx of hearts is golden or that his Qxxx of clubs is worthless. I'm the one with the shape, I think I need to choose whether this gets played in game or not. I bid 2♥. Of course it might go wrong. But if I make a three card invitational raise I think we have a fine chance of plus 170 on hands where I would not at all quarrel with partner's pass. If I am wrong, I'm wrong, but I think I am better placed to assess the hand's potential than partner would be after a forcing NT sequence.

[mikeh]

If partner expects me to make a limit raise with blah 10 counts, then I have to force to game, but this is why we play constructive raises: a blah 10 count bids 2♠.

 

This in turn means that for me to show a limit raise, I have a shapely 10 count up to a really soft, shapeless 12 count. This hand, with a shapely 10 but with poor trump, seems to me to be comfortably within the description afforded by our limit raise.

 

Of course, this valuation works best with the 'invite heavy, accept light' school of invitational bidding that I have described in numerous posts.

 

To me the danger of bidding 2♥, gf, is that partner may have a good hand. Everybody seems to assume that we're always stopping in 4♠ after this start, but partner, who hears us make a gf and then bid spades, may have other ideas. How would we bid Qxx AKxxx Qxxx x for example?

 

Give him AKxxx Qx Kx AQxx and try to get him to pass 4♠. Sure, 5 usually makes, but who in their right mind wants to get that high at imps, and who can blame partner for making a move?

[steve2005]

2♥+4♠ can't see that option on the poll.

2♥-2n-4♠ my vote too, not an option

not a blah hand has a singleton and a 5 card suit headed by AK

[aguahombre]

May I assume that none of you who advocate 2H, then a jump to 4S with the OP hand are the same ones who acknowledged in the past that the sequence shows a "picture" with all of our game-force values in the two suits and no control in the other two?

 

That is just a side note. Mikeh's evaluation (invite) seems right to me.

[JLOGIC]

If partner expects me to make a limit raise with blah 10 counts, then I have to force to game, but this is why we play constructive raises: a blah 10 count bids 2♠.

 

This in turn means that for me to show a limit raise, I have a shapely 10 count up to a really soft, shapeless 12 count. This hand, with a shapely 10 but with poor trump, seems to me to be comfortably within the description afforded by our limit raise.

 

Of course, this valuation works best with the 'invite heavy, accept light' school of invitational bidding that I have described in numerous posts.

 

To me the danger of bidding 2♥, gf, is that partner may have a good hand. Everybody seems to assume that we're always stopping in 4♠ after this start, but partner, who hears us make a gf and then bid spades, may have other ideas. How would we bid Qxx AKxxx Qxxx x for example?

 

Give him AKxxx Qx Kx AQxx and try to get him to pass 4♠. Sure, 5 usually makes, but who in their right mind wants to get that high at imps, and who can blame partner for making a move?

 

I agree, this is a good hand to make a LR with if you play constructive raises.

[kenberg]

May I assume that none of you who advocate 2H, then a jump to 4S with the OP hand are the same ones who acknowledged in the past that the sequence shows a "picture" with all of our game-force values in the two suits and no control in the other two?

 

That is just a side note. Mikeh's evaluation (invite) seems right to me.

 

 

Honestly (as one of the few 2♥ folks) I had not planned out my next bid. Over 2NT I suppose that I would just bid 4♠. I don't think it much matters exactly what that would show, or at least not usually. It's true that the 2NT bidder might have an 18 count, in which case the lack of clarity might matter, but in the more common case where he has 12-14, or maybe a bad 15 that he decided to open 1♠ instead of 1NT, he will pass, and he will find out what I have when the dummy hits.

 

I appreciate this discussion of why LR might be enough if playing, as stipulated, constructive raises. I hadn't thought along those lines. I have never really cared much for constructive raises (and I don't want to hijack here by getting into that, the conditions clearly set out that constructive raises are being played). But I often find myself agreeing to play them, and it follows that we should get the max out of this agreement.

[aguahombre]

I am not sure why it makes a difference to this discussion whether we are playing constructive raises or not. If we are, this isn't one; it is an invitational raise. If not, this hand is still an invitational raise.

 

If we are not playing constructive raises and we raise 1M-2M, we accept game tries with constructive raise values; we don't accept if our raise is weaker and hasn't grown because of the type of invitational game-try used.

 

If we are playing constructive raises, the raise itself is not a game-invite; it just narrows the range of the simple raise in case the auction gets competitive --maybe that information at that particular time is vital to some pairs, we don't find it to be.

[mikeh]

I am not sure why it makes a difference to this discussion whether we are playing constructive raises or not. If we are, this isn't one; it is an invitational raise. If not, this hand is still an invitational raise.

 

If we are not playing constructive raises and we raise 1M-2M, we accept game tries with constructive raise values; we don't accept if our raise is weaker and hasn't grown because of the type of invitational game-try used.

 

If we are playing constructive raises, the raise itself is not a game-invite; it just narrows the range of the simple raise in case the auction gets competitive --maybe that information at that particular time is vital to some pairs, we don't find it to be.

Absent constructive raises, and ignoring Bergen, splinters etc, for these purposes, we generally have 3 major suit raises:

 

single raise: 5 to 9 hcp, tho could be a really soft 10 especially nv or at mps

 

limit raise: good 9 to bad 12...some would say 12 is too much but I am discussing an awful 12 count

 

gf raise: better than limit

 

These ranges are not necessarily optimum, and I don't mean that you may disagree with my exact parameters. Change them to be your preference and I will still maintain that they are not optimum. You will overbid to some games opposite all of them and stay out of a few good games opposite all but the gf raises.

 

By adding more forms of raise, we allow for better, more precise definition of hand valuation, which automatically increases bidding accuracy. We could simply divide the single raise into two categories and leave the limit and gf unchanged, but that seems inefficient, unless we are very comfortable with our limit and gf boundaries.

 

By using the constructive raise to include not only the sound single raise but also the previously minimum limit raise, we can increase the precision of the remaining limit, even if we slightly increase its upper range, thus ever so slightly beefing up our gf raise.

 

When we do this, we no longer need be aggressive with our limit raise: what was previously a bad limit raise is now a good constructive. That makes it safer for opener to accept the invite when we limit, and this hand is a classic example.

 

If we only had 3 ranges, this hand falls, imo, very close to the dividing line between limit and gf, and I can understand the urge to gf at imps. But with constructive raises, this hand is now, imo, clearly within the limit raise spectrum that starts about 1.5 hcp (or equivalent value) higher than before and ends about .75 points higher than did the earlier range.

 

All of these figures are estimates and I haven't tried to be analytical, plus I don't value hands this way at the table. I use the figures to illustrate the point, not to say that this is a 'precisely accurate' description.