mgoetze Posted November 3, 2015 Report Share Posted November 3, 2015 A quick introduction for those unfamiliar: Zirconia is a convention devised by fellow poster Adam Meyerson awm wherein 1♥-1♠-2♦ shows 3 spades and 1♥-1♠-1NT shows 4+ diamonds or 2=5=3=3 shape. The purpose of the present post is to discuss followups to these bids. 1. What is 1♥-1♠; 2♦-3m? In his notes which he graciously shared with me, Victor Chubukov (karlson) has these as natural, INV+, confirming a 5-3 spade fit. That does make a lot of sense, especially for slam exploration, buy my partner was quite disappointed to learn that he would have to play a 4-3 spade fit when he had 4 shoddy spades and a nice 6-card minor. We ended up agreeing that with an invitational 4♠6m hand he should jump shift, and then opener with 4 spades should make sure to bid 1♥-3m-3♠ en passant when accepting, but the question remains whether it would be better to have 3m available as a weak takeout for below-invitational strength hands. 2. How does opener checkback for a fit after 1♥-1♠; 2♦-2M? Does he simply bid 2NT/3NT and hope responder will correct? What if opener wants to play 3NT even if there is a 5-3 fit? What if opener has game or slam interest only with a fit? 3. How to continue after 1♥-1♠; 1NT? Adam in his original writeup suggests 2♣ as 4th suit invitational, with 2NT+ as natural and game-forcing. Victor suggests 2♣ as a near-puppet (opener bidding 2♦ unless he has 2=5=3=3), showing either a weak takeout to diamonds/spades/clubs or an invite (shown by bidding hearts or 2NT), with 2♦ as an ART GF. The latter seems more attractive to me, but perhaps that is because it is closely related to methods I already know well whereas 4th suit invitational is foreign to me. I'm not even sure whether I always have to jump with a maximum when responding to 2♣ ART INV. Perhaps someone can expound on the workings and advantages of that method? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awm Posted November 4, 2015 Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 Often I play some method that limits the opening and makes #2 moot (i.e. strong club, or Zirconia/Gazilli). Otherwise I'd play that opener bids out his shape when holding extras (so 3m is like 3514, 2nt is like 18-19 bal, etc). I think the way to think about #2 is that opener has shown 8 cards of his hand and responder has shown four, so opener should just pattern out. For #3, the way I play 4th suit invitational is that opener rebids in steps. So opener's 2♦ rebid is very min, 2♥ is medium, and higher is GF and sort of natural. The main advantage of this is letting us out in 2-red on declined invites a lot, which also means we can invite on a wider range of hands and helps with some tough hands like 15 opposite 10. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wank Posted November 4, 2015 Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 am i getting confused? i thought you played 1nt as ♦ inc 2533 or strong a.k.a gazilli and 2♣ over that as the gazilli positive with anything else being a descriptive negative. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgoetze Posted November 4, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 4, 2015 am i getting confused? i thought you played 1nt as ♦ inc 2533 or strong a.k.a gazilli and 2♣ over that as the gazilli positive with anything else being a descriptive negative.That's a possible variation but not the basic convention. I think it's probably even better with Gazzilli but my partner and I aren't quite ready to work on all the followups after 1♥-1♠-1NT-2♣. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgoetze Posted November 6, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 6, 2015 Should 1♥-1♠; 3m-3♠ promise 6 spades when playing Zirconia? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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