[Balrog49]

You have 5-5 in the majors and it goes 1♣ (P) 1♦ to you. Which cue bid is Michaels? How do you play the other one? We had no agreement and got a bad board.

[ahydra]

Standard, I believe, is for cue of opener's suit to be Michaels and cue of responder's to be natural. Some people however don't treat a short club as natural so 2C becomes a genuine club suit instead.

ahydra

[ggwhiz]

On my card both cue bids are natural. That's a consequence of playing sandwich notrump where a 1nt bid would show majors with less than an opening bid and with a full opener we have to double.

Not perfect but might explain where the miscommunication came from.

[kenrexford]

 ggwhiz, on 2015-November-20, 13:35, said:

On my card both cue bids are natural. That's a consequence of playing sandwich notrump where a 1nt bid would show majors with less than an opening bid and with a full opener we have to double.

Not perfect but might explain where the miscommunication came from.

Same here, except that I often play 1NT as takeout of diamonds and weak.

[mgoetze]

 Balrog49, on 2015-November-20, 12:53, said:

You have 5-5 in the majors and it goes 1♣ (P) 1♦ to you. Which cue bid is Michaels?

2NT.

[Zelandakh]

There are a lot of options here. Some examples:-

1NT natural
2♣ majors, 5-4 or better
2♦ natural
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ natural
--

1NT natural
2♣ majors, 5-4 or better
2♦ natural
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ majors, 5-5 or better, extras
--

1NT natural
2♣ natural
2♦ majors, 5-4 or better
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ majors, 5-5 or better, extras
3♦ natural
--

1NT natural
2♣ natural
2♦ majors, 5-4 or better
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ natural
--

1NT natural
2♣ 5+♥4♠
2♦ 5+♠4♥
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ natural
--

1NT 5-4 majors
2♣ natural
2♦ natural
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ natural
--

1NT 5-4 majors
2♣ natural
2♦ natural
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ majors, 5-5 or better, extras
--

1NT 5-4 majors
2♣ 6♥4♠
2♦ 6♠4♥
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ natural
--

1NT 5-4 majors
2♣ 6♥4♠
2♦ 6♠4♥
2NT majors, 5-5 or better
3♣ natural
3♦ majors, 5-5 or better, extras
--

I am sure you can come up with plenty of alternatives with so many potentially free bids available. Basically Michael is correct though, most schemes use 2NT as unusual, which is the closest to the most common way of playing Michaels (5-5). The original Michael, where both majors might be 5-4, is a different thing and depends on specific partnership agreements. With a PUP I would assme a cue of LHO's suit is artificial and RHO's suit natural (first scheme listed) but it is something that requires discussion with a regular partner.

[Cyberyeti]

 Balrog49, on 2015-November-20, 12:53, said:

You have 5-5 in the majors and it goes 1♣ (P) 1♦ to you. Which cue bid is Michaels? How do you play the other one? We had no agreement and got a bad board.

We play 2N 5-5, 2♣=5♥/4♠, 2♦=5♠/4♥

[fourdad]

Frankly, it is not posible to provide a worthy response without any knowledge as to the strength of your 5-5 hand.

[jodepp]

You can't discuss every contingency when playing a convention, even a simple one like Michaels. Personally I think the answer to the author's question shouldn't be a list of how 'one should do this or that'; this is a situation where default agreements should take precedence.

"If we haven't discussed an ambiguous bid, it's natural" is an example of such a default agreement (I'm not saying that 2♣/2♦ should be anything - this is just an example).

Default agreements aren't perfect, but at least they eliminate doubt as to what undiscussed bids mean and in my experience promote stronger partnership trust. I'd recommend that it would be more effective to discuss such defaults with the author and their partner.

[stoppiello]

1C-p-1D-2C sounds like a club suit absent any agreements. 1C-p-1D-2D sounds like michaels. Unless you have an absolute monster, I'd probably just start with a double of 1D for takeout and see what happens.

[Zelandakh]

 stoppiello, on 2015-November-21, 09:03, said:

1C-p-1D-2C sounds like a club suit absent any agreements. 1C-p-1D-2D sounds like michaels. Unless you have an absolute monster, I'd probably just start with a double of 1D for takeout and see what happens.

It is a regional thing - in England the agreement I gave above (LHO's suit cue, RHO's suit natural) is the most common; in some other parts of the world ignoring the (could be shor) clubs once a second suit has been bid is widely used. This links back to jodepp's point about standard agreements too; whichever scheme you choose it should ideally fit into logical bidding rules. In this case several approaches are logical depending on how the partnership prefer to view the auction.

[Balrog49]

Thanks to everyone who answered!

This partner and I need a simple agreement based on logic that we can work out at the table if one of us has forgotten.

stoppiello's suggestion makes a lot of sense to me: 1♣ (P) 1♦ (2♣) is a club suit and 1♣ (P) 1♦ (2♦) is Michaels, the logic being that an opening 1♣ on xxx is fairly common. A "sandwich" 1NT is strong.

BTW, my hand was ♠Q9732 ♥KQ1062 ♦J ♣53 .
Partner's hand was ♠AJ4 ♥75 ♦A875 ♣K976.
We can make 4♠ if played by South. Yes, partner should have bid something even if unsure what I had.

[Caitlynne]

Standard is that neither 2C nor 2D is a cue bid, but a natural bid. This is especially important if 1C could be short.

A Michaels bid is not even necessary. Many play an unusual 1NT to show both majors lots of distribution. You can also make a takeout Double to show the majors.

[blackshoe]

Double should show more defense than 1NT, IMO. Or 2NT.

[mgoetze]

 blackshoe, on 2015-November-21, 19:16, said:

Double should show more defense than 1NT, IMO.

I think 1NT should show a huge amount of defense and double almost none.

[PhantomSac]

I played for most of my life that all bids were natural after 1x p 1y. I switched a couple of years ago to 2x being michaels and have found that to be better. However, I think on 1c p 1D it makes a lot more sense to play 2D michaels and 2C natural, but I don't have that agreement with anyone

[broze]

 PhantomSac, on 2015-November-22, 04:14, said:

I played for most of my life that all bids were natural after 1x p 1y. I switched a couple of years ago to 2x being michaels and have found that to be better. However, I think on 1c p 1D it makes a lot more sense to play 2D michaels and 2C natural, but I don't have that agreement with anyone

Is this just a memory load thing? Or is it that you simply haven't had this discussion with your partners? It's not the first time I've seen a comment by a pro saying "convention x is probably best but I don't play it with anyone" and it surprises me.

[PhantomSac]

 broze, on 2015-November-22, 05:24, said:

Is this just a memory load thing? Or is it that you simply haven't had this discussion with your partners? It's not the first time I've seen a comment by a pro saying "convention x is probably best but I don't play it with anyone" and it surprises me.

You have to be careful with making exceptions to your general rules for memory load reasons imo. Sometimes they are worthwhile enough that it must be done and you just have to remember, but IMO you want to do it as little as possible. No, it's not that hard to remember that 1C p 1D (natural system base), that you flip the rule of 1x p 1y 2x=cuebid and 2y=nat, but if you have an entire system where you are trying to optimize things with exceptions in tons of auctions, you will end up with 100 exceptions and I guarantee you are going to forget some of them sometimes. Even if you don't forget them your bidding is going to be worse because you will be focused more on "what do my bids mean" than "what bid should I make."

Take this auction for example. In modern bridge already it rarely happens, people bypass diamonds for majors, and many people play transfer walsh or strong club anyways. If it does happen and I really have a 2m overcall, where are the majors? If partner has them he might well have overcalled. I am not saying it is impossible, but I do play a lot of bridge and cannot remember having this auction come up where I had a 2m overcall. Even if it did come up, I am more likely to have a 2C overcall than a 2D overcall but it's not 100 % so playing something arguably "inferior" is not a disaster. I would guess that flipping the rule here will gain me like 0.0001 imps a board or something, so it is not worth it to me to make this one of my exceptions to my rules.

Compare that to this auction. I play over 1x DOUBLE 1Y, that 2X and 2Y are both cuebids showing a good hand with a corresponding other suit. BTW I think this is a good agreement since it allows you to jump with just trumps and not a classical 10 point hand or w/e. But anyways, 2x (the lower bid) should show the major IMO, basic theory is that we should save more room with the major. Ok that's great but on the specific auction 1C X 1H, it makes no sense for 2C to show spades and 2H to show diamonds, because 2C allows us to stop in 2D, and 2H still allows us to stop in 2S. One possible solution is to play that 2x is always the minor and 2y is always the major, but that is terrible on especially the auction 1m X 1S (now we have to force to the 3 level to show a good hand with the major which is not what we want to do, we'd rather be able to show a good hand with the major more aggressively cuz we're trying to get to GAME), the other possible solution is to not worry about it and be suboptimal on 1C X 1H, and stick to 2C spades and 2H diamonds, but to me it is important enough to play 2x=major unless it is the specific auction 1C X 1H. So here I'm willing to make an exception to my rule, but I promise you that every single time it goes 1x X 1y I have to go over it in my head (because I don't think of it as the exception is 1C X 1H, I think of it as "the exception is when we can stop at the 2 level in both suits"). And my partner messed this up when we first started playing it.

So yeah I'm not against exceptions to rules, but I like them to be in auctions that come up somewhat frequently, and that solve a legitimate problem. I do think there is only so much memory space to remember exceptions to rules, everyone is different but tbh for me those are actually harder to remember than my basic structures/relays/agreements whatever.

Another one that I have seen like 5 pairs (including myself lol) mess up is playing 2C over a 1C opener is natural, with 2D being michaels. Interestingly enough it seems like it's the 2D bid that people forget, I find it easy to remember 2C is natural over 1C, but with a weak jump overcall I have seen so many people overcall 2D without thinking about it lol. It's a mistake you only make once though so if you think it's a good agreement just roll with it and expect a forget one time and never again!



tl;dr: I don't think it's practical to optimize every auction for memory reasons so I think you should only pick important ones to do so. YMMV.

[PhantomSac]

And keep in mind even an auction as innocent as 1C p 1D already has a lot of exceptions. For instance, let's say 1C could be short, does that change what you play? Does it matter if it's "could be short" as in only 4432, or "could be short" as in all balanced hands not in range of a NT opener open 1C, and a 1D opener is 5+ or 4441. Ofc all professional pairs will have agreements on this, I am of the opinion that if it's just 4432 it is effectively the same as a natural 1C, but if it's all balanced hands it will much more frequently have 2 clubs so you can change your agreements. So it is totally reasonable to play 1x p 1y where x is nebulous that 2x is natural, but now you give up having a michaels bid. But you need to remember if you change it there, and if you change it on all could be shorts. Some people also play 1D precision is 0+ instead of 2+, does that change anything? Does it change anything if they open 1C with 4441 and play other suits are 5+ (some people play this). Lets say you play 1C p 1D where 1C is nebulous that 2C is nat and 2D is michaels, does that supercede another rule like "overcalls of suits the bid artificially are natural" eg polish club 1C is nebulous but 1D is 0-7 any or nat, so which rule takes priority? Do you always have a michaels or do you sometimes give it up in situations like that.

And speaking of exceptions and 4432, I play rusinow but not in situations where I'm leading a suit that dummy has shown 4+ of. However, one exception to that is even if they open 1D with 4432, and I lead a diamond, it is NOT rusinow. They haven't guaranteed 4+ but we treat it as such, it's an exception. I also don't play rusinow in suits partner has shown 4+ in, but you need an agreement about if partner has like made a takeout X of 1M, and you lead the other M, is this rusinow (I play yes). But if I have shown the suit also, eg I overcalled 1H and partner jump raised to 3H preemptively, I do play rusinow (even though partner showed 4...the :I always lead rusinow in the suit I have shown rule" supercedes the 4+ rule).

Also back to 1C p 1D, a lot of people play 1C p 1N is 8-10 in which case I assume with 3334 and 6-7 they bid 1D over 1C. I have never seen anyone alert this, so does this make 1D an artificial bid for purposes of what 2C and 2D means (I play no, similar to 4432 opening 1C or 1D and that still showing 3+ or 4+ for the purposes of my agreements, if there is only one shape with a narrow range it is really the same thing as a 1D bid that guarantees 4+...but you need agreements).

Anyways sorry for rambling but hopefully you see why even professional pairs sometimes have to be practical with exceptions in order to remember everything, especially when it comes to competitive bidding agreements where you are going to face a wide variety of systems/situations and you need agreements and meta agreements that cover all of them that are effective and something you can remember.

[miamijd]

As there are a myriad of ways one could agree to play 4th seat bids of the opponents' suit(s), let's assume you have no agreement and want to play "standard expert."

Let's start with the direct bid of 2 of responder's suit. Here in the USA, that is played as natural (no matter what the suit is). The overcaller will generally have at least a good 6-card suit and an opening hand.

Now for the direct bid of 2 of the opener's suit. If the suit is a major, then the bid is two-suited, with the other major and a minor. Thus:

1H pass 1NT 2H

2H shows spades and a minor.

A bid of 2 of opener's minor is a bit more complicated. It depends on (a) what responder bid and (b) whether you play sandwich NT.

If responder bid 1NT or 2c, a bid of 2c or 2d will typically show majors. In the former case, a 1c-1nt or 1d-1NT auction often suggests that the opponents have a fair the suit, as partner is apt to be quite short). In the latter case, the opponents have a game-forcing (or almost) auction, so if you want to step in, better to have a distributional hand (and 2D, as opposed to 2NT, gives partner the chance to pick a major at the 2-level).

If responder bid 1d, 1h, or 1s, however, then it depends on whether you play sandwich NT. If you do, then you have an easy, low-level way to show the other two suits, so a bid of opener's minor should be natural. If you don't, however, then without prior discussion, a bid of opener's minor is generally played as Michaels.

I hope that helps.

Mike