[mike777]

Hannie, on Feb 17 2006, 12:00 PM, said:

I had two accidents yesterday after a superaccept, perhaps this is a good place to discuss these auctions.

2NT-3H
4C-4H

4C showed a doubleton and good support. Should 4H be a cuebid or a re-transfer?

I had Q10xxx J QJxx xxx and I really wanted partner to play 4S. Matt jumped to 6S, ouch! (off two aces)

1NT- 2H
3C - (dbl) - pass

Again 3C showed a doubleton, what is the pass here?

We often play fast arrival in competition, so I thought partner was interested in game with nothing in clubs. My hand (AKQx J109x AJx Jx) looked really good (1NT = 14-16) and I just jumped to 4S. Arend tabled two measly red kings but lady luck was with us, both queens were onside.

Funny enough I had a similiar issue last night, the solution is to not play super accept over strong 2nt opening bids. I got a bit lucky as I super accepted with 3nt...and we played there for a 100% board on misdefense.

[han]

I think you do need to play superaccepts over 2NT. A 2NT hand can become huge when you have 4-card support, and there is virtually no risk in getting too high. I think the solution is to have good agreements.

[pclayton]

I love it when these 'accidents' happen at the club.

You've strengthened your partnership agreements (and had a lousy score in the process). If 3N somehow miraculously outscores 4♠ (its possible), its negligible that this agreement would sink in.

I played at the club yesterday with my favorite pard. We had a 61% game against the weakest field on the planet.

But more importantly, 3 or 4 things came up that gave us flat bottoms that created better understandings.

I'd rather have a 40% game and have something important come up on every hand then win at the club level.

[Echognome]

Hannie, on Feb 17 2006, 05:10 PM, said:

In retrospect I absolutely agree with you Justin, my 4H call without agreement was an unnecessary risk, perhaps similar to Matt's 3NT call in this thread.

Noting Phil's observation that it wasn't really a risk, but rather an exploration to check on p'ship agreements makes these situations a bit different. If we were in a gold cup match and I wasn't sure partner would take 3NT in the correct way, then I wouldn't have made the bid. If we play in our next team match, however, I would make the bid, because now I am sure partner will understand it.

There were plenty of other bids like this I made to test partnership agreement. The vast majority of them went smoothly. Others, like this, did not.

[000002]

3♠ shows a flat feature on side,so 3nt is prossibility to signoff.for example:
Axxx
QJx
QJx
QJx

OFCZ,the agreement of serious 3nt is better than NAT,i agree.

[Codo]

I am witht the 3 NT is not natural bidders.
If I am really interessted in 3 NT, I could have bid it directly.
But no, I first transfered to show my spades. Pd did supperaccept, so he surely has no 4333 with soft values, or he uses the Superacceptance wrong.

So, after I showed my spades and he did, now I should play 3 NT? You can count the number of hands, where this may work on one thumb...


For the two superaccept hands from Hanie: My pd and I, we have the agreement, that after a 2 NT opener, we always play retransfer.
But even without that, I would always bid 4 Spade after 4 Heart.

After 1NT openings, we gave up retransfers some month ago. The opener had shown his HCPS and distribution, so defending had been too easy now.

And a pass after your doubled 3 Club should show: No extra to show, weak hand, bid 3 H please.

[fred]

In my regular partnerships, 3NT after a super-accept of a transfer is a choice of games. If the 1NT opening is 13-15 a typical hand might be:

Kxxxx
Kxx
xxx
Ax

That is, a hand that that has a good chance of producing exactly 9 tricks in either spades or notrump. In my experience hands like these are not rare and it is nice to be able to play in 3NT when that is the only game contract that makes

In my opinion, as long as 3NT is a logically possible contract, any undiscussed 3NT bid should be considered non-forcing. So you deserve a lot of the blame for thinking otherwise and for expecting your partner to be on the same wavelength.

However, your partner should not have passed 3NT even though he apparently thought it was non-forcing (because his hand was much more suitable for playing in 4S).

For me "serious 3NT" only applies if the partnership is already committed to game (among other conditions).

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Echognome]

Hi Fred,

I find this interesting. I am happy to accept any "blame" for the result as we are here to learn and develop sound methods.

I went back and reread your article on 2/1. It says:

Quote

You can never play in 3NT when you have an 8 card major suit fit after a 2/1 auction.  Some players (Irving Litvack for example) would find this to be a big enough problem that they would not consider playing this method.  In my experience, playing in 3NT in these sort of auctions is the least of your problems.  This is especially true when responder is known to have at least a five card 2/1 suit and the odds are high that at least one person has an unbalanced hand or extra values.

Here we are talking about having a 9 card fit as a minimum. However, the last sentence struck me as being crucial. There is no guarantee that responder has an unbalanced hand. So if you had a 5332 opposite a 4333, then it might be better to play in NT. What would be your guidelines then for when to offer up 3NT as a contract? Responder must be 5332 presumably with honours in his short suits? Is it a warning that game might be thin? What types of hands should opener leave in 3NT? Only 4333s or some 4432s?

Thanks for your input in advance.

[cherdano]

The big difference between this auction, and the 2/1 auction, is that opener is known to be balanced, and is limited. The first makes 3N=natural more useful, the latter makes 3N=serious less useful.

When Henri=ritong is commenting, he often makes remarks in the direction that with a balanced hand opposite a 1NT opener, you should always consider 3NT as an option. In a recent vuegraph, he suggested 1N-3N as a possible auction, when responder held ♠AKTxxx but two honor doubletons (I think Qx and Kx, opposite a weak NT). Actual responder gave opener a choice of games instead, and both tables found the superior 3N instead of 4♠.


Arend