[lamford]

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IMPs. Your go. The options appear to be 3NT, 4NT and 6NT, all natural.

[Cyberyeti]

lamford, on 2017-February-09, 12:41, said:

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IMPs. Your go. The options appear to be 3NT, 4NT and 6NT, all natural.

Clearly if we're going to play NT I want to play it on the off chance that W has ♥KJ and there's another loser.

Is your strategy to rarely invite and often accept or the reverse ? If it's that I bid 4N. Also do you bid 2N with a stiff honour often ? and what are your responses to 4N ?

[ggwhiz]

Ugly (the 20-22 balanced range especially)

5♥, can you stop two fast losers? Followed by the cheapest notrump bid and yes, I'm making this up.

[Jinksy]

4N. If P has any substance in hearts, I expect him to err towards optimism. If not, our hand isn't worth 12 points.

[sfi]

How about double? Partner will bid NT with a stopper and then I can invite or bid slam as I see fit. If partner bids something else, maybe it's best to stop in 3NT.

I thought about 3H but it's harder to convince partner to let us play NT when they don't have a stopper.

[MrAce]

What would X be by partner? I mean I hope he did not show 20-22 balanced with 4144 (I expect this to double)

Anyway, I bid 3♥

[Cyberyeti]

MrAce, on 2017-February-09, 16:26, said:

What would X be by partner? I mean I hope he did not show 20-22 balanced with 4144 (I expect this to double)

Anyway, I bid 3♥

He might have to, pass = 20-22 bal anything else is bigger would not be silly

[Kaitlyn S]

Assuming double isn't penalty, I bid 4NT. If partner has the HA and no HJ, I want to declare.

[rmnka447]

I'm bidding 3 ♥ also. I think that only says "Partner I've got a really good hand" at this point.

If partner has a distributional hand, there's no reason not to start bidding it over 2 ♥. Yet the hand in question has decent support for any suit partner has and is enough to show a positive holding no matter what. It's robust enough to feel like the two hands are at least on the fringe of slam. But slam could well depend on the ♥ situation and that needs to be determined.

[Vampyr]

rmnka447, on 2017-February-09, 20:56, said:

I'm bidding 3 ♥ also. I think that only says "Partner I've got a really good hand" at this point.

If partner has a distributional hand, there's no reason not to start bidding it over 2 ♥. Yet the hand in question has decent support for any suit partner has and is enough to show a positive holding no matter what. It's robust enough to feel like the two hands are at least on the fringe of slam. But slam could well depend on the ♥ situation and that needs to be determined.

20-22 balanced is probably not overly distributional. 3♥ seems like it could wrongside NT. Tough problem.

[ahydra]

4NT seems like the best description.

ahydra

[lamford]

MrAce, on 2017-February-09, 16:26, said:

What would X be by partner? I mean I hope he did not show 20-22 balanced with 4144 (I expect this to double)

Anyway, I bid 3♥

X by partner would be take-out, but not 20-22 balanced. So all other big hands. 3H was a transfer to spades in our methods.

[lamford]

Cyberyeti, on 2017-February-09, 17:27, said:

He might have to, pass = 20-22 bal anything else is bigger would not be silly

That is how we play. Double is takeout and 2NT is 25-28. I doubled (takeout) to find out more about his hand and partner bid 2S (corrected typo, sorry) and I now bid a conservative 3NT which was roundly condemned by all and sundry, including my partner. However, I share Jinksy's view that this is not a 12-count on the bidding. My SIM showed slam making 67% of the time, opposite 21-22, suggesting 4NT is the right bid. However, when I looked at the first 24 hands, there was a massive bias in favour of declarer.
https://www.dropbox....67z/H1.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox....1ex/H2.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox....7j6/H3.png?dl=0

were 3 of the hands where DF makes 6NT. I gave partner the AH for the purposes of the SIM and always played it by South. The first is pretty where you have to extract West's pointed suit cards and play ace and a club endplaying him. He cannot afford to unblock the J as you then finesse the 9! In the second you need to take an intra-finesse in diamonds. In the third one you need to get the diamonds right and pin the doubleton 109 of spades. My impression from the SIM was that slam was probably around 40% in practice, even opposite 21-22 and generally good 21s. The other theme of my SIM was that DF always guessed a pointed-suit queen even when it was with the long hearts.

[gnasher]

I'd just bid 3NT. Give partner AQ10x Ax KQ10x AKx and I don't want to be in slam, given the bidding. For slam to be good we need him to have a five-card minor, or some magic holding that makes my ♣9 useful.

[lamford]

gnasher, on 2017-February-10, 06:51, said:

I'd just bid 3NT. Give partner AQ10x Ax KQ10x AKx and I don't want to be in slam, given the bidding. For slam to be good we need him to have a five-card minor, or some magic holding that makes my ♣9 useful.

I did too! We should have a game some time as I was mocked for doing so, with people suggesting I needed JTx of diamonds and a five-count to make a move ...

[MrAce]

gnasher, on 2017-February-10, 06:51, said:

I'd just bid 3NT. Give partner AQ10x Ax KQ10x AKx and I don't want to be in slam, given the bidding. For slam to be good we need him to have a five-card minor, or some magic holding that makes my ♣9 useful.

Having pd hold Kx♥ may increase the chances of slam.

AQxx Kx KQJx AKx would be more than enough for a claim.

AQxx Kx KQJx AJx would be cold on a finesse (and squeeze/endplay)

AQxx Kx KQx AKJx would be more than enough for claim

You can add the HJ ♥ combinations and 5 card minor hands.
Still you have a valid point for bidding 3 NT. I have no idea how to possibly learn which one of them pd has.

[Cyberyeti]

lamford, on 2017-February-10, 06:39, said:

That is how we play. Double is takeout and 2NT is 25-28. I doubled (takeout) to find out more about his hand and partner bid 3S and I now bid a conservative 3NT which was roundly condemned by all and sundry, including my partner. However, I share Jinksy's view that this is not a 12-count on the bidding. My SIM showed slam making 67% of the time, opposite 21-22, suggesting 4NT is the right bid. However, when I looked at the first 24 hands, there was a massive bias in favour of declarer.
https://www.dropbox....67z/H1.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox....1ex/H2.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox....7j6/H3.png?dl=0

were 3 of the hands where DF makes 6NT. I gave partner the AH for the purposes of the SIM and always played it by South. The first is pretty where you have to extract West's pointed suit cards and play ace and a club endplaying him. He cannot afford to unblock the J as you then finesse the 9! In the second you need to take an intra-finesse in diamonds. In the third one you need to get the diamonds right and pin the doubleton 109 of spades. My impression from the SIM was that slam was probably around 40% in practice, even opposite 21-22 and generally good 21s. The other theme of my SIM was that DF always guessed a pointed-suit queen even when it was with the long hearts.

Yes but W doesn't always find the right lead either, a heart is almost always fatal, so he may have to pick between a number of suits consisting of only small cards/Js and can easily pick up a 2-way for you or worse.

[Zelandakh]

What is your follow-up structure to the pass though? One idea that is often used in this kind of auction is for 2♠ to be a puppet to 2NT and take us back into the standard structure. That provides a huge amount of flexibility in all of the other actions, for example then using 2NT and 3♣ as minor suit transfers or 2NT as MSS and 3m naturally. Either way we also need some meanings for a direct 3♥ and 3♠ that are not covered elsewhere. In any case, I do feel that if you are relying only on general natural rules here, you are missing a trick that could vastly improve your bidding accuracy.

[lamford]

Zelandakh, on 2017-February-10, 10:02, said:

What is your follow-up structure to the pass though? One idea that is often used in this kind of auction is for 2♠ to be a puppet to 2NT and take us back into the standard structure. That provides a huge amount of flexibility in all of the other actions, for example then using 2NT and 3♣ as minor suit transfers or 2NT as MSS and 3m naturally. Either way we also need some meanings for a direct 3♥ and 3♠ that are not covered elsewhere. In any case, I do feel that if you are relying only on general natural rules here, you are missing a trick that could vastly improve your bidding accuracy.

Our structure, and we welcome suggested improvements particularly from you, Zel, is Pass = 20-22, then 2S = invitational (as we play 2C-2S as NF opposite 20-22), 2NT to play, the rest as though we have opened 2NT. Double is takeout, and any raise of partner is then FG. 4NT before or after double is natural, INV>

[lamford]

Cyberyeti, on 2017-February-10, 08:06, said:

Yes but W doesn't always find the right lead either, a heart is almost always fatal, so he may have to pick between a number of suits consisting of only small cards/Js and can easily pick up a 2-way for you or worse.

Indeeed, but West was, I am told, Forrester's new partner, and he won't be under-leading a king, something Forrester deplores. I agree that sometimes a lead will pick up a two-way queen guess, but even so, I think 40% is about right. There are three other suits to lead, and usually only one guess.