3NT Opening

[awm]

What's the best meaning for a 3NT opening? Vote for one of the above, or suggest your own favorite.

[Walddk]

Pre-empt in a minor. Then you have 4mi free as Namyats. 3NT as gambling is silly; if once in a blue moon 3NT is the spot, it's almost always wrong-sided anyway.

 

Strange that a minor pre-empt isn't among the options.

 

I use 3♣ as any solid suit.

 

Roland

[Guest Jlall]

Roland, its up there... Namyats, 4 of a minor preempt.

 

Anyways, I voted for reverse namyats since I think it's superior to namyats.

 

Advantages: More preemptive when you open 4 of a minor (if you open 3N they have X then pass, X then X, pass then X) and better slam auctions when you have a namyats auction. Opponents dont have an immediate cuebid over your real namyats hand.

 

Disadvantages: You cant play 3N with a 4m preempt. You don't know the major immediately.

 

About the disadvantages, usually with a 4m preempt you don't want to play 3N, especially from your side. Even when you do, 5m might still make. So you need 3N from your side to be cold while 5m is down for this to be bad. Also, most of the time you'll know the major if you play namyats=solid suit simply by having an honor in the other major. Even when you don't its rare that it will help to know.

 

This being said when i play namyats its normal namyats since i doubt i would remember it the reverse way lol. But reverse is better i think. Anyways, I agree with roland gambling is useless.

[Walddk]

Roland, its up there... Namyats, 4 of a minor preempt.

So it is, my apologies. I have no strong preference regarding normal or reverse Namyats, as long as 3NT is not gambling.

 

Roland

[fred]

I have a theory that a 3NT opening should show a hand for which one of the following is true:

 

1) There is a good chance that 3NT from your side of the table is a reasonable contract.

 

or

 

2) There is almost no chance that your partnership belongs in 3NT.

 

In my regular partnerships I use 3NT to show a weak hand with at least 6-5 in the majors. This definitions satisfies condition 2) above.

 

To the best of my knowledge this convention doesn't have a name. Feel free to call it "Fred" is that will help you to remember it :rolleyes:

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[han]

Could anybody post reasonable follow-ups to a reverse-namyats 3NT opening?

[Guest Jlall]

I have a theory that a 3NT opening should show a hand for which one of the following is true:

 

1) There is a good chance that 3NT from your side of the table is a reasonable contract.

 

or

 

2) There is almost no chance that your partnership belongs in 3NT.

Interesting, I guess by this logic reverse namyats is better than namyats

[fred]

I have a theory that a 3NT opening should show a hand for which one of the following is true:

 

1) There is a good chance that 3NT from your side of the table is a reasonable contract.

 

or

 

2) There is almost no chance that your partnership belongs in 3NT.

Interesting, I guess by this logic reverse namyats is better than namyats

I don't even know what reverse namyats is :P

 

I think normal namyats is that 4C and 4D are used to show "strong preempts" in the corresponding major. In my experience playing against this convention I have not been very impressed with the results that my opponents have had. A recurring theme is that when the responder has a moderate hand he has no idea if it is safe to try for slam or not because he doesn't know if a side suit holding of something like KQx is facing a void or something like Ax. There is little room to try for slam and the 5-level is often not safe if the hands fit poorly. Opening at the 1-level and autosplintering after a (semi-)forcing 1NT response has to a be a better way of bidding pairs of hands in this family.

 

I realize I have greatly simplified things, ignored tactical considerations completely, and made some assumptions about the kind of hands that people open mamyats with. Furthermore, as I have said, I have never tried this convention myself. My point is that it hasn't worked very well for my opponents.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[awm]

I've actually tried most of these treatments. My experiences were:

 

Strong balanced hand never came up. Played it when I first started playing competitive bridge, but gave it up pretty quickly. Besides, it's pretty easy to bid these hands after opening strong 2♣ or 1♣ or whatever.

 

Gambling (with no outside stuff) I've played with a number of partners. It's certainly easy to agree to. But it wrong-sides the contract. I've actually gotten a lot of bad scores after opening gambling 3NT, and the few good scores came when opponents had an accident that might not have occurred if they had discussed their defensive bidding a bit (i.e. what doubles mean and stuff). Eventually I decided that better uses could probably be found.

 

Gambling (with outside stuff) I've only played in 3rd/4th seat. It works okay, but doesn't come up much, and usually these hands could be bid some other way (starting with 1-minor or an artificial strong bid) without much being lost.

 

Namyats, I have mostly gotten good results from. I guess the reasoning is that the field can't actually play 3NT on these hands because they would open 4-minor, so when we play 3NT it is usually a pretty good board despite being wrong-sided. Also had a good result the one and only time a namyats-like 4NT (showing a 5-minor preempt) came up. On the other hand, despite playing a lot of hands with the namyats agreement, the 4♣/♦ openings never came up! Fred's observations that these openings lead to bad scores could well apply to my partnerships too, but I've noticed some good results from the 3NT open, which is really the opposite of what one might expect to happen...

 

Reverse namyats I have spent the least time playing. My follow-ups were pretty simple, 4♣ asks partner to transfer to his major, 4♦ asks partner to bid his major, 4♥/♠ are to play (presumably major is known). 4♣/♦ can be followed by keycard or exclusion. Perhaps something better is possible, like I said not much experience with this one.

 

For a while I played 3NT showing a weak 6-5 in hearts and a minor, which seemed to satisfy Fred's requirements number (2) the best. But honestly this bid never came up.

 

Recently I've been wondering about 3NT asking for specific aces. I've had a fair number of recent hands where I really wanted to bid this and couldn't. Perhaps will try this for a while and see where it leads.

[fred]

For a while I played 3NT showing a weak 6-5 in hearts and a minor, which seemed to satisfy Fred's requirements number (2) the best. But honestly this bid never came up.

Whatever your 3NT bid means, having it not come up very often is probably a good thing.

 

Whatever your 3NT opening means, either:

 

1) 3NT describes a very specific type of hand that has enough offensive potential to play at a high level.

 

or (and I don't mean and/or)

 

2) You don't rate to have a good constructive auction after opening 3NT

 

If 1) is the case, then your 3NT opening will not come up very often (because the sort of hands described in 1 are rare).

 

If 2) is the case, then you will be better off if your 3NT opening doesn't come up very often :P

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[awm]

An interesting note on frequencies. I ran a hand generator to try and find out how reasonable a 3NT opening asking for specific aces would be. This is sort of hard to quantify, but I ran the following check:

 

Hands with a 7+ card suit, 3 or fewer total losers, and at most one loser in any suit:

 

87 out of 100,000

 

Hands with an 8 card minor, less than 10 hcp, and 6 or fewer total losers:

 

113 out of 100,000

 

So the strong hands that might reasonably bid 3nt to ask for specific aces (with followups for specific kings etc) are not much less frequent than namyats 4-minor openings.

[Chamaco]

In my experience playing against this convention I have not been very impressed with the results that my opponents have had.

 

........

Fred , is it possible that the real advantage of a Namyats does NOT occur when you use it but it rather helps when you do NOT use it ? (something like the strong club opener, noone seems to like it but many players enjoy the fact that strong club hand-type are excluded from limited openings)

 

I mean: having a well-defined Namyats hand-type, when your pard opens a direct 4M opener OR a 1/2/3M opener, pard knows that he cannot have a Namyats-type of hand.

[helene_t]

I voted for gambling.

 

I know that in theory it tends to wrong-side the contract. It's just that so far it has never been a problem. I've never had a bad result from opening a gambling 3NT. And I've had only one good result playing against a gambling 3NT, which was when we defended 4♣ doubled while the field was in 4♥, the trumps splitting 5-0.

 

Maybe it's due to plain luck, or lack of other methods of showing a solid suit, or selective memory, or lack of expeperience with alternative meanings of 3NT. But so far I'm happy with it.

 

Btw, "Reverse Namyats" is the same as "Stayman", isn't it?

[Gerben42]

3NT = Preempt in a minor. Because of your broken suit you are even less likely to want to pass 3NT.

 

Namyats is a must for me, especially we need it on the hands where we don't use it so partner will know when a slam is not on.

 

In 4th seat: 3NT means "Gambling type hand, I think 3NT has a good shot". Leaves everyone in the dark.

[joker_gib]

I play it as preempt in a minor with 4♣, 4♦ = Namyats

 

I'm very tempted to switch to reverse Namyats which as Justin says seems superior.

 

Alain

[Chamaco]

I play it as preempt in a minor with 4♣, 4♦ = Namyats

 

I'm very tempted to switch to reverse Namyats which as Justin says seems superior.

 

Alain

It is unclear to me how 3NT as reverse Namyats might be superior to 4C/D as Namyats.

 

1) Vulnerability to interference: responder ignores which is pard's suit, hence opps can easily compete; if we use 3NT as MAJOR unspecified, all too often we are at risk to lose game in 4M, whereas this risk is less if it is a minor;

 

2) UNCONTESTED AUCTIONS:

I am really curious how the subsequent slam investigation can save room compared to standard Namyats.

One point that was raised as Namyats defects is that there is very little room for slam investigations.

I wonder how this can improve by bidding 3NT a Namyats hand:

 

.....a. if a 4C step is used by slammish responder to ask "which major?" , and opener responds 4D= H, 4H = S, we are one step higher than using plain Namyats, just to show which suit we have; we have lost one VERY VALUABLE STEP to investigate slam;

 

.....b. one could argue that most times, if responder has a good hand, he will KNOW which is pard's solid suit (it's the only one where responder has no honors), so there should be no need for a relay asking which suit;

This might be true, on many hands.

However, it restricts the use of Namyats to SOLID suit only, whereas many players use more relaxed critaria (a la Romex Namyats), which is based on playing tricks rather than suit solidity; under such agreements, they'ss open a Namyats even with 8.5 playing tricks, even missing the trump A or K or Q; in such occurrence, responder will ignore pard's unspecified suit.

 

I personally prefer Romex Namyats specifications, which do not guarantee a solid suit, therefore, in such scheme, responder would need to know which is opener's major, losing valuable bidding room.

[Free]

At this moment I play it as 4-level minor preempt. I'm also interested in followups for a reversed namyats, since I always want to improve whenever possible ;)

[whereagles]

I think 3NT should be used to the freak hand type that comes up more frequently.

[Antoine Fourrière]

In my opinion, Namyats is awful because transfer preempts and multis make sense only when the opponents still have some room, the big balanced hand is awful because you need room yourself and the solid minor isn't that useful because you can open at the one-level and rebid your suit until responder agrees to utter no trump (or 2/3N yourself if you have a lot of extras).

 

So I guess 3N should probably show a two-suiter, but also some problem hand. I would suggest 8-12 HCP with five spades and either six decent hearts or a good six-card minor. (In other terms, a hand you are unsure which suit you should open at the one level, such as this hand.)

Answers: 4♣ pass or correct, 4♦ asking and 4♥ natural.

[Walddk]

Another option is to let 3NT show a good pre-empt in a minor, i.e. where 3NT is actually a possibility opposite Hx. Then you have 4mi available as a bad pre-empt, and you can skip Namyats (which never comes up anyway).

 

Non vulnerable

x

Qx

AQ10xxxx

xxx

 

Vulnerable

x

Kx

AK10xxxx

xxx

 

x

xx

xx

AQ10xxxxx

 

Those 3 could all be 3NT openings, promising 2 of the 3 top honours. Then you can bid 4mi non vul on

 

xx

x

KJ10xxxxx

xx

 

and

 

xx

x

Kx

KJ10xxxxx

 

vulnerable.

 

Roland

[pclayton]

I have a theory that a 3NT opening should show a hand for which one of the following is true:

 

1) There is a good chance that 3NT from your side of the table is a reasonable contract.

 

or

 

2) There is almost no chance that your partnership belongs in 3NT.

Interesting, I guess by this logic reverse namyats is better than namyats

I don't even know what reverse namyats is ;)

 

I think normal namyats is that 4C and 4D are used to show "strong preempts" in the corresponding major. In my experience playing against this convention I have not been very impressed with the results that my opponents have had. A recurring theme is that when the responder has a moderate hand he has no idea if it is safe to try for slam or not because he doesn't know if a side suit holding of something like KQx is facing a void or something like Ax. There is little room to try for slam and the 5-level is often not safe if the hands fit poorly. Opening at the 1-level and autosplintering after a (semi-)forcing 1NT response has to a be a better way of bidding pairs of hands in this family.

 

I realize I have greatly simplified things, ignored tactical considerations completely, and made some assumptions about the kind of hands that people open mamyats with. Furthermore, as I have said, I have never tried this convention myself. My point is that it hasn't worked very well for my opponents.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

Fred - 2 years ago I heard about this treatment that was being used by Grant Baze. We've had the discussion on here prior and someone else mentioned that its older than that.

[pclayton]

Could anybody post reasonable follow-ups to a reverse-namyats 3NT opening?

Hans:

 

My original post:

 

http://forums.bridgebase.com/index.php?showtopic=4953

 

I still play it pretty similar to this.