raise or show shape

[straube]

Let's say partner has shown 4 or more hearts and could hold a longer minor, you hold 1-3-4-5 and you know that together you have at least 21 hcps. You haven't shown a minor yet and in fact partner doesn't know anything about your shape. Your rebid will limit you to 2 or sometimes 3 hcps.

 

1) Would you rather...

 

A) raise to 2H, staying low

B) bid 3C to show exactly 1-3-4-5, getting to the best strain

 

2) Would you rather

 

A) raise to 2H

B) bid 2N to show exactly 1-3-4-5

 

The difference of course with this last one is that you have the chance to play 2N on a misfit.

 

I have a third question but it's better to lock in your answers for the first two as it's prejudicial.

Let's say you prefer a 2H raise for one or both situations, would it be enough to change your mind

about not bidding 2H if your 2H raise would then always guarantee 4 hearts?

 

Btw, I'm not interested in rebids of 2m or other solutions to show this pattern. That's not really the question.

 

Thanks for any opinions

[nullve]

1): A)

2): A)

3): No

Edited November 21, 2017 by nullve

[awm]

Sam did some analysis comparing 2M on a 5-2 fit against 3m on a 4-4 or 4-5. The perhaps surprising conclusion was that 2M is better double dummy. This was more true at MP scoring of course but held even at IMPs.

 

Obviously the parameters here are a bit different, but I’d bet the 4-3 heart fit outplays 8- and 9-minor fits as well.

 

Another consideration is the lack of bidding from opponents, which tends to imply that unless partner has a lot of extras there’s a good chance he has four spades and/or hearts are breaking.

 

All of this suggests to me that the 2H raise is much better. I’m actually not so convinced of the merits of 2H always four here, since opponents have already failed to bid a bunch of times. It seems like partner has plenty of room for an ask most of the time over 2H?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

2H for both #1 and #2. Difficult to answer #3 without context, but my guess is that bidding 2H would be a deliberate systemic deviation as stated?

[foobar]

Ouch... mobile+spotty network equals multiple raises of the same post😁.

[straube]

Thanks for the answers. I thought it might be a little closer, but the verdict is in.

[straube]

moved

[benlessard]

Finding quickly a playable low level partscore (even if its not the best partscore) is a very underrated concept.

 

Even if 2H is far from sure to be your best partscore it limit your strenght and allow partner to pass without extras and that all his continuations show extras, so your making your partner pass a working bid. If you make an artifical or a semi-natural bid that is forcing you force partner to keep bidding weither hes got extras or not, later you will need bids to untangle the GF,the inv and the to play hands and this will cost a lot of overall bidding space and your slam/game bidding will indirectly suffer.

 

So if you can bid 2H NF that is fairly precise of value or choose a 1Y/2Y bid that is forcing partner to bid you often do surpringly better with 2H.

 

I play a strong club with xfers for many years and for the first couple of years ive play

 

1C-1D-1H (1C=strong, 1!D= 4!H or pts, 1H as 2way bid strong or natural, the idea was a common one to simply keep a maximum of forcing auction especially the cheapest bids)

 

At one point after struggling with the SP positives hands and poor partscores a friend suggested to me to start looking that 1H show 3+ cards 15-20 but non-forcing and a jump to 2H would be 4-5 cards but around 20 pts. Even if we did this to solve partscores problems the biggest surprise was that we saw the greatest gains in our slam bidding.

 

Now after more than 10 years that ive made the switch I really understand why, the idea is that opener will often be 15-20 with at least 3H compared to the fairly rare 20+ hands and by 1H being non forcing all the hands were responder got 0-5 pts are now bid with a round 2 pass. We are losers in cases where opener is super strong and could bid an ecomnomical Forcing 2way 1H but these are rare compared to the frequent cases where responder is 0-8. By dealing neatly with many of our 0-5 and making xfer bids that are SP or GF our slam bidding accuracy just become a lot more sharp.

 

Standard players can understand the same idea with 2/1 & 1Nt semi-forcing, 1M-1NT main strenght is not that 1NT is likely to be the best partscore its that many of the others bids are now GF allowing you to have a lot of bidding space to find the best game/slam. So a cheap NF bid that is a decent partscore got a lot of indirect value for your constructive bidding.

[benlessard]

It seems to me that many of these auctions are just to find the best partscore, IMO you would better to quickly settle on a playable partscore even if its not the best and have many of these auction for games & slams bidding.

[nige1]

Let's say partner has shown 4 or more hearts and could hold a longer minor, you hold 1-3-4-5 and you know that together you have at least 21 hcps. You haven't shown a minor yet and in fact partner doesn't know anything about your shape. Your rebid will limit you to 2 or sometimes 3 hcps.

 

1) Would you rather...

A) raise to 2H, staying low

B) bid 3C to show exactly 1-3-4-5, getting to the best strain

 

2) Would you rather

A) raise to 2H

B) bid 2N to show exactly 1-3-4-5

 

The difference of course with this last one is that you have the chance to play 2N on a misfit.

 

I have a third question but it's better to lock in your answers for the first two as it's prejudicial.

Let's say you prefer a 2H raise for one or both situations, would it be enough to change your mind

about not bidding 2H if your 2H raise would then always guarantee 4 hearts?

Btw, I'm not interested in rebids of 2m or other solutions to show this pattern. That's not really the question.

Thanks for any opinions

Agree with the foobar consensus:

1. Given the binary choice, I would raise to 2♥. Especially at MPs, where the 2-level seems safer than the 2-level; and majors score more than minors. With a wider choice, I would rather do something else, e.g. rebid 1N or another suit.
2. Ditto.
3. If 2♥ is a 4-card raise, however, I would definitely opt for 3♣, 2N, or whatever; although I might also argue for the system to be changed in future.

[fromageGB]

A A Yes

If I have an agreement that 2♥ is always 4 then of course it changes my bid. But we have an explicit agreement that a 3-suiter raises on a 3 card suit as if it was 4, because of the value of immediate ruffing in the short trump hand.