Major Mistake

[mycroft]

K/S, "15-17 playing points in support of spades". 3♠ would be 18-19. Not sure which I would like, but I wouldn't want to 4♥ against Kxxx xxx xx Qxxx, so it will have to be one of the passable ones.

[DavidKok]

Being able to show 18-19 NF seems fine to me, quite descriptive. Though personally I wouldn't want such a bid in my system, but if it exists in the context of K/S that's close to the money.

[mikl_plkcc]

What's wrong with the contract? Isn't 6♠ 75% chance of making depending on the position of ♠K and Q (it fails only when both are offside, or a 5-0 trump break)

 

Nevertheless, in my system it will

1♦ - 1♠

3♠ - 4♥ (I cue first before second)

5♣ - 5♠ (missing ♦ control)

5NT (I f**king have all first round and only 1 missing 2nd round control - please bid grand slam if you have good trumps) - 6♠

[Winstonm]

What's wrong with the contract? Isn't 6♠ 75% chance of making depending on the position of ♠K and Q (it fails only when both are offside, or a 5-0 trump break)

 

Nevertheless, in my system it will

1♦ - 1♠

3♠ - 4♥ (I cue first before second)

5♣ - 5♠ (missing ♦ control)

5NT (I f**king have all first round and only 1 missing 2nd round control - please bid grand slam if you have good trumps) - 6♠

 

You are neglecting the spade 9. The opponents hold it.

[mikl_plkcc]

You are neglecting the spade 9. The opponents hold it.

Is there even a method which can be used to find out if we hold the 10s and 9s?! And how can we even know if 10s or 9s are crucial in making slams?! If one of the small trump is replaced with a 9 then it is a good slam!

 

If we always need to make sure that 10s or 9s are held before bidding a slam with 8-card fit than nearly no slams of 8-card fit can be bid!

[Winstonm]

Is there even a method which can be used to find out if we hold the 10s and 9s?! And how can we even know if 10s or 9s are crucial in making slams?! If one of the small trump is replaced with a 9 then it is a good slam!

 

If we always need to make sure that 10s or 9s are held before bidding a slam with 8-card fit than nearly no slams of 8-card fit can be bid!

 

I was just trying to let you know that in your calculations you neglected the missing 9- spot.

[DavidKok]

Is there even a method which can be used to find out if we hold the 10s and 9s?! And how can we even know if 10s or 9s are crucial in making slams?! If one of the small trump is replaced with a 9 then it is a good slam!

 

If we always need to make sure that 10s or 9s are held before bidding a slam with 8-card fit than nearly no slams of 8-card fit can be bid!

The goal of bidding is to get to good contracts, not to explain why you couldn't possibly have accounted for a missing spot card. In this particular case the king, queen or nine of trumps (in addition to the other picture cards) makes the contract very good, and there are methods to find some of these. Zeroing in on the missing nine (and present ten) is a great legal defence but may not score well at the table. I guess it depends on priorities.

[Lovera]

I do not understand why to insist on Spades when it is seen that it does not lead to a slam. Moreover, the answer does not seem to be adequate because the jump support requires a score of 18-19 points and therefore it would be possible to choose 2 Spades (both from S and N the suit is poor). Instead it was not found that the answering hand is strong having 16 points in high cards and with surpluses at ♦ and ♣ easily reaches 19 points so as to take into account the jump bid of 3 ♣(=SJS). The partner, preferring to be investiged can cue-bidding 4 ♦ and then 4NT, 5NT-7 ♣ are easy to reach.

[Gilithin]

What would 5♠ mean here? The old fashioned ask about trump quality is no longer needed if you are playing some form of keycard. Are you playing straight Blackwood?

If 4♥ is not Last Train, which appears to be the case here, the jump to 5♠ is often used to say "please bid slam if you have a ♥ control". If 4♥ is LTTC, it is much more difficult to find a good use for the call so a trump quality ask makes about as much sense as anything.

[Winstonm]

What would 5♠ mean here? The old fashioned ask about trump quality is no longer needed if you are playing some form of keycard. Are you playing straight Blackwood?

 

Btw, this is not correct - the combined hands can hold 4 controls off the K and Q of trumps and be a terrible slam or hold 4 controls with the KQ of trumps and be a laydown slam and there is no way to know which it is. The old fashioned bid specifies trump holding.

[Winstonm]

I do not understand why to insist on Spades when it is seen that it does not lead to a slam. Moreover, the answer does not seem to be adequate because the jump support requires a score of 18-19 points and therefore it would be possible to choose 2 Spades (both from S and N the suit is poor). Instead it was not found that the answering hand is strong having 16 points in high cards and with surpluses at ♦ and ♣ easily reaches 19 points so as to take into account the jump bid of 3 ♣(=SJS). The partner, preferring to be investiged can cue-bidding 4 ♦ and then 4NT, 5NT-7 ♣ are easy to reach.

 

I would be highly impressed if you reached 7C. And well done.

[johnu]

I would be highly impressed if you reached 7C. And well done.

 

Most players bid much better when they can see both hands. Some would say they bid double dummy. :lol:

[Lovera]

Most players bid much better when they can see both hands. Some would say they bid double dummy. :lol:

 

I once said that the sight of the two hands can orient in the sense of facilitating the resolution of a bidding problem only that afterwards one has to start again to see how to use the information obtained from the examination of the two hands compatibly with the bid at the table, i.e. which it would be a likely bid without seeing the two hands. Here the search for a different bid from that of the suit of ♠ combined with the HCP and the fact that opener has bid ♦ then leads to the jump bid (re-evaluating ♣). So does the opener who has a hand between two ranges and a support to ♣ with four cards to Ace.

[Lovera]

The goal of bidding is to get to good contracts, not to explain why you couldn't possibly have accounted for a missing spot card. In this particular case the king, queen or nine of trumps (in addition to the other picture cards) makes the contract very good, and there are methods to find some of these. Zeroing in on the missing nine (and present ten) is a great legal defence but may not score well at the table. I guess it depends on priorities.

 

I also agree with this because it was what I was saying when I talked about the surplus in ♦ and ♣. It all begins when opener bids 1♦ because this means that the Queen in S has +1 surplus. Then the situation of the suit of ♣ leads, in a plastic or more optimistic view, to consider 9 as 10 which would involve +2 surplus again to have 4 honors in a suit and this remains valid even between the two hands in the probable hypothesis whether the partner has the Ace or the 10. You can see that this same situation occurs in the opener's hand for the suit of ♦ (+2) which moves the points towards the top of the range. Obviously these calculations must already be foreseen in the system regarding the evaluation of the hand.

[Douglas43]

I would probably bid: 1♦ - 1♠ - 3♠ - 4♣ - 4♦ - 4NT - 5♥ - 5♠. Think RKCB is justified on South hand once North has confirmed a diamond control, and not sure 4♥ really added much?

 

Avoids the hopeless spade slam and usually makes. Misses the excellent club slam though.

[mikl_plkcc]

What does 3♠ mean here? Is it GF? (I play it as GF)

[Winstonm]

3S traditionally shows 16-18 and is non-forcing

[Gilithin]

What does 3♠ mean here? Is it GF? (I play it as GF)

It is an important part of approach forcing bidding principles for raises such as this to show an invitational hand. As Winston write, 16-18 is the traditional range but in modern bidding, a good 18 will typically force to game so 16-bad18 is more precise. That said, it depends on how you organise your responses, since not all pairs respond equally and pairs also vary somewhat in how wide they allow their invites to be. The important part is that it is invitational absent special agreements; the rest you can adjust and apply to the specific system.

[Douglas43]

It is an important part of approach forcing bidding principles for raises such as this to show an invitational hand. As Winston write, 16-18 is the traditional range but in modern bidding, a good 18 will typically force to game so 16-bad18 is more precise. That said, it depends on how you organise your responses, since not all pairs respond equally and pairs also vary somewhat in how wide they allow their invites to be. The important part is that it is invitational absent special agreements; the rest you can adjust and apply to the specific system.

 

I too would see it as invitational, but tend to focus on Losing Trick Count (6 losers) rather than hcp.

[Gilithin]

I too would see it as invitational, but tend to focus on Losing Trick Count (6 losers) rather than hcp.

When Winston and I talk about 16-18 in a context such as this, we are not talking about hcp so much as a combination of honour values and distributional values. I really didn't think it was necessary to mention it in this forum but...

 

The most common way of making such a combination is TP, which uses standard 4321 Milton Work plus 5 for a void, 3 for a singleton and 1 for a doubleton. Some older texts will use a different way of evaluating shortage: trump length - length of shortage. Many modern schemes will use 4.5, 3, 1.5 as the AKQ values for the hcp portion of the evaluation. In many of these evaluation methods, the values are equivalent enough (or can be made so through some simple maths) that the 16-18 will still be representative of an invitational hand.

 

LTC is a scheme that uses AKQ values of 3, 3 and 3 with VSD values of 9, 6 and 3. A 6 loser hand in this context is 18 points. The Modern LTC is a scheme that uses AKQ values of 4.5, 3 and 1.5 with VSD values of 9/4.5/1.5. 6 losers is again 18 points. There are plenty of other alternatives too - Zar Points is one of the more recent ones. To scale the hcp portion of ZP to regular points you multiply by 0.75. The distributional part is more difficult to convert - the simplest way is to subtract ~7 after the x0.75 scalar, which is not perfect but does give a more or less comparable figure. The OP North hand is 32 ZP, which gives an equivalent evaluation of ~17. This is a mild undervaluation, primarily due to the way the distributional conversion works. For comparison the LTC value is 18 (invite) and the MLTC value is 21 (game). As for Milton, the antiquated method gives 17 (invite), the traditional TP valuation is 18 (borderline invite/game) and the modern TP value is 19 (game).

 

And there are plenty of other methods that can be brought to bear, particularly if you want to produce less accurate results. It is irrelevant - Winston uses an evaluation scheme where the hand is an invite; I use a scheme where the hand is a game force....but we both understand what the bids mean. And they do not mean to look only at your hcp and ignore everything else.

[pescetom]

LTC is a scheme that uses AKQ values of 3, 3 and 3 with VSD values of 9, 6 and 3. A 6 loser hand in this context is 18 points. The Modern LTC is a scheme that uses AKQ values of 4.5, 3 and 1.5 with VSD values of 9/4.5/1.5. 6 losers is again 18 points.

Please can you explain the meaning of VSD and what the three values refer to (or provide a link) ?

[nullve]

Please can you explain the meaning of VSD and what the three values refer to (or provide a link) ?

V = void

S = singleton

D = doubleton

 

So simple LTC is to equivalent to a point count method where

 

A = 3

K at least doubleton = 3

Q at least third = 3

doubleton = 3

singleton = 6

void = 9

 

Must be good!

[Douglas43]

When Winston and I talk about 16-18 in a context such as this, we are not talking about hcp so much as a combination of honour values and distributional values. I really didn't think it was necessary to mention it in this forum but...

 

The most common way of making such a combination is TP, which uses standard 4321 Milton Work plus 5 for a void, 3 for a singleton and 1 for a doubleton. Some older texts will use a different way of evaluating shortage: trump length - length of shortage. Many modern schemes will use 4.5, 3, 1.5 as the AKQ values for the hcp portion of the evaluation. In many of these evaluation methods, the values are equivalent enough (or can be made so through some simple maths) that the 16-18 will still be representative of an invitational hand.

 

LTC is a scheme that uses AKQ values of 3, 3 and 3 with VSD values of 9, 6 and 3. A 6 loser hand in this context is 18 points. The Modern LTC is a scheme that uses AKQ values of 4.5, 3 and 1.5 with VSD values of 9/4.5/1.5. 6 losers is again 18 points. There are plenty of other alternatives too - Zar Points is one of the more recent ones. To scale the hcp portion of ZP to regular points you multiply by 0.75. The distributional part is more difficult to convert - the simplest way is to subtract ~7 after the x0.75 scalar, which is not perfect but does give a more or less comparable figure. The OP North hand is 32 ZP, which gives an equivalent evaluation of ~17. This is a mild undervaluation, primarily due to the way the distributional conversion works. For comparison the LTC value is 18 (invite) and the MLTC value is 21 (game). As for Milton, the antiquated method gives 17 (invite), the traditional TP valuation is 18 (borderline invite/game) and the modern TP value is 19 (game).

 

And there are plenty of other methods that can be brought to bear, particularly if you want to produce less accurate results. It is irrelevant - Winston uses an evaluation scheme where the hand is an invite; I use a scheme where the hand is a game force....but we both understand what the bids mean. And they do not mean to look only at your hcp and ignore everything else.

 

Thanks Glithin, and sorry the "hcp" was lazy typing. I've never really got into the "add points" methods of valuation suit contracts, and tend to count points only when looking at no-trumps, using LTC with a trump fit. So when I see a point count I tend to assume hcp without even thinking about it. Should have engaged brain!

[mikl_plkcc]

3S traditionally shows 16-18 and is non-forcing

So what's the forcing bid here?

[mycroft]

4♥ would be useful with that shape. 4♠ shows a hand stronger than 3♠, but not strong enough to open 2♣. Otherwise, a reverse or jump shift. Yes, sometimes you have to fake one. Luckily in this case, you can go back to spades ASAP and get the point across.