[kenberg]

 kenrexford, on 2015-August-24, 04:59, said:

FWIW, a good rule of thumb seems to be to select the forcing bid among options when you are uncertain as to how good your hand is. This hand turns out to have four covers in diamonds. It is not strong enough for a splinter. Bidding out pattern with a forcing 2H enables flexibility without commitment.

Partner suggested that I might have bid 2H and I later thought maybe so. Trump has not been set and partner will expect four hearts in my hand. Ths could cause problems but the opponents have been silent, I hae a stiff club, chances are against partner holding four hearts. But he could. If he raises 2H to 3H I could try 4H in our 4-3 fit, or I could try 4D and hope he gets the message. I didn't do it but I thought later it was a reasonable alternative to 3D.

 lycier, on 2015-August-24, 05:26, said:

If 3♦ can be regarded as a forcing raise and only forcing a round, many confusions will no longer be a problem.

This has an upside and a downside. It would have helped here, although I think partner could have bid agani even though 3D was not forcing. The downside? Well, if 3D is forcing then, when partner takes another call over my 3D, he could still be a rock bottom minimum for his 2D rebid. When 3D is not forcing then, if he bids again, I know he is at the least not a minimum.

 MrAce, on 2015-August-24, 02:30, said:

Oh I was not suggesting that we should find the slam. I agree with you that it is tough slam to find. As a matter of fact, until Kenberg replied to me I did not even check what the best contract was. But I think with this hand we should at least reach to game.

There are some interesting mp issues: I did not check the other scores but my guess is that 5D making 6 scored well, since 9 tricks seem to be the limit in NT, absent a gift.
Also, I think the odds are subtle. If we could be sure that every pair is in either 5D or 6D then I think that 6D is preferred if we see all NS cards( but not EW). It should be a better than 50-50 shot. But wait, some may play this in 3NT. . If 6D makes then we get the same matchpoint against a 3NT bidder that we would get with 5D making 6, while if 6D fails by a trick then we go from a tie with the NTrumpers (had we stopped at 5) to a loss. So probably 5D is a pretty good choice for the contract. The slam must be a good bet, but one can imagine it failing.



I found this to be a common sort of hand, but interesting.

[BillPatch]

 kenberg, on 2015-August-24, 06:08, said:

Partner suggested that I might have bid 2H and I later thought maybe so. Trump has not been set and partner will expect four hearts in my hand. Ths could cause problems but the opponents have been silent, I hae[sic] a stiff club, chances are against partner holding four hearts. But he could. If he raises 2H to 3H I could try 4H in our 4-3 fit, or I could try 4D and hope he gets the message. I didn't do it but I thought later it was a reasonable alternative to 3D.....

There are some interesting mp issues: I did not check the other scores but my guess is that 5D making 6 scored well, since 9 tricks seem to be the limit in NT, absent a gift.
Also, I think the odds are subtle. If we could be sure that every pair is in either 5D or 6D then I think that 6D is preferred if we see all NS cards( but not EW). It should be a better than 50-50 shot. But wait, some may play this in 3NT. . If 6D makes then we get the same matchpoint against a 3NT bidder that we would get with 5D making 6, while if 6D fails by a trick then we go from a tie with the NTrumpers (had we stopped at 5) to a loss. So probably 5D is a pretty good choice for the contract. The slam must be a good bet, but one can imagine it failing.

I found this to be a common sort of hand, but interesting.

2♥ is a reasonable alternative. It works well here, where partner made a reasonable underbid with his 2♦ rebid, and then seems to have lost his mind when you encouraged. If partner is frequently such a Milquetoast, perhaps such a distortion as 2♥ is justified to encourage partner. But 2♥ has other drawbacks in addition to the heart shortness you noted above. Culbertson wrote that one should underbid, not overbid with an underbidder, in hopes of a cure. But Culbertson was an incorrigible optimist. More seriously your bid shows 5 spades and encourages a raise if partner has 3, which you do not want. Also, your bid is unlimited, and partner might mistakenly overbid to explore alternative strains.

The hand is more interesting at IMPs, where the lure of larger rewards on slam hands and the lesser demerits for playing a minor game contract would have encouraged more slam tries. At matchpoints regardless of the choice opener takes with his first rebid, all roads lead to 3NT, except for a few cases of mind omission. I hope your partner recovers quickly.

[case_no_6]

3D. You have 11 dummy points - encouraging (invitational) and not forcing. This is a textbook hand for the bid. Anything else is just masterminding.

[Jinksy]

Agree with Timo. As S I'd bid 3♦, but I shouldn't have had the chance. N's 2♦ is a crime, IMO (and I'm hopelessly timorous in constructive auctions).

[jodepp]

I understand the 2♦ rebid while not agreeing with it.

Now for something a little off-topic ...

Maybe Responder's 2NT should be a one-round force on this auction. Opener's continuations need to be discussed, but a forcing-one-round 2NT would certainly help Responder out here.

[BillPatch]

 Jinksy, on 2015-August-24, 13:16, said:

Agree with Timo. As S I'd bid 3♦, but I shouldn't have had the chance. N's 2♦ is a crime, IMO (and I'm hopelessly timorous in constructive auctions).

While I no longer consider N's 2♦ in such a positive light, surely his final pass after partner encourages is far worse, and is the proximate cause of missing game for a bottom score.

[kenberg]

 jodepp, on 2015-August-24, 14:53, said:

I understand the 2♦ rebid while not agreeing with it.

Now for something a little off-topic ...

Maybe Responder's 2NT should be a one-round force on this auction. Opener's continuations need to be discussed, but a forcing-one-round 2NT would certainly help Responder out here.

Ok, I gotta ask. The Jo in Jodepp is for Johnny? Not that it is any of my business!

I like 2NT to show a hand suitable for NT. I realize this is a very unusual approach

[zillahandp]

3d, which is more enc. than 4d which would besecond choice, ax anything over 4d so could be a good bounce but AK mean wont get the chance agiainst decent opps

[jodepp]

 kenberg, on 2015-August-24, 15:11, said:

Ok, I gotta ask. The Jo in Jodepp is for Johnny? Not that it is any of my business!

I like 2NT to show a hand suitable for NT. I realize this is a very unusual approach

yes, I'm a Johnny Depp fan

[jodepp]

Playing 2NT as natural is what I prefer but I could understand why someone would want to play it as a one-round force, on the theory that some people never want to play 2NT, period... so it might as well mean something else.

[kenberg]

 jodepp, on 2015-August-25, 06:00, said:

Playing 2NT as natural is what I prefer but I could understand why someone would want to play it as a one-round force, on the theory that some people never want to play 2NT, period... so it might as well mean something else.

I was sort of joking, sort of not, about a natural 2NT being an unusual approach.

When I look over results, and decide which are due error and which are due to not having the right convention available, the error list swamps the convention list. With the partner I had for tis hand, we don't play 2/1, we don't play Bergen, we don't play a lot of stuff. We do pay Flannery, he likes it, although I prefer a weak 2D. The hand was from a two session event, 48 boards. There was not a single hand where the result depended at all on whether we were or were not playing these conventions. There definitely were some where better judgment would have helped, and even some where decent judgment happily did help.


I am not knocking conventions, they are useful or they would not exist. But I think that those of us who play from time to time with this person or that should not expect conventions to save us from our bad choices.

[BillPatch]

 jodepp, on 2015-August-24, 14:53, said:

I understand the 2♦ rebid while not agreeing with it.

Now for something a little off-topic ...

Maybe Responder's 2NT should be a one-round force on this auction. Opener's continuations need to be discussed, but a forcing-one-round 2NT would certainly help Responder out here.

Yes. Kokish has popularized the treatment of the natural 2NT one-round force on this and similar auctions where partner has implied 6 or more in a minor at he 2 level.

[kenberg]

 BillPatch, on 2015-August-26, 13:48, said:

Yes. Kokish has popularized the treatment of the natural 2NT one-round force on this and similar auctions where partner has implied 6 or more in a minor at he 2 level.

I assume that "natural" is a key part of that sentence. The idea would be that after 1m-1M-2m-2NT (natural) it is likely that whenever the strength for 3NT is not there it is reasonably likely 3m will be a good contract. This makes some sense. With the hand that I had, reproduced below, I am not so sure I would think of 2NT as "natural".

mathchpoints

---

I guess it depends on how stretchable "natural" is. In the actual hand 3NT makes, but so does 6D.

I have thought a little more about what 3H over my actual choice of 3D should be, with or without the double by the opponents. Maybe it is best to play it as sort of a "last train" attempt at 3NT. The message being something like "There are two suits we haven't mentioned. If I was sure NT was right I would bid it. I am not sure it is right, but it might be." It seems to me that there is simply not room to reliably sort out club and heart stoppers, and anyway, unless they can run five tricks, we might be fine with one suit unstopped. So a general suggestion that maybe 3NT is right seems useful. If partner had bid 3H (which he didn't) and if we had that understanding (which we don't) what would I have done? Well, clearly I would bid 6D. Joking. No, I can't say I am sure what I would have dome, but we would have been playing in either 5D or 3NT.

[BillPatch]

While I suggested that the forcing natural 2NT might be used on this auction, neither I nor Kokes would recommend it for this particular hand. A 2NT forcing rebid was being considered to try to solve this problem, and I just wanted to say that that Kokes Koached teams had a 2NT forcing rebid available, and the method is published.