[Flame]

inquiry, on Jul 15 2004, 07:45 AM, said:

I think this is very harsh judgement of "poor hand evalaution."  Leave opener with the same hand stregnth and distribution, but change the ♥A to the ♠A and 6♦ is golden. In fact,

Losing heart and diamond how do you make this slam ?
Usually its not a good idea to go above 3nt just because there is a possible hand that you will make a slam with.
imo this hand isnt even close to think about slam, give me another A and ill start thinking.
Ben i was curios for a while and this hand make me think i was right, i thought about players from the forum, and my guess was that you are a very talented player who play only about 4 years, how close am i ? (if i already giving my guesses, so Richard is a long timer, Mike also play for long time,misho around ten yearts, luke 3 years, the_hog ten years, and luis also ten years, free 4-5 years)

[Fluffy]

HI Flame!
Ben already told you how: Devil´s coup, but I am not sure it is an option on the given deal. (what to do with 5th ♣?)


Thinking more closelly to the bidding I started to think the real blame is gone to the 4♥ bid, wich looks like showing a ♥ void.

With an old logic rule: after:

1♦-1♥
2♣-2♠
3♠-4♦
4♥

Look at that 'poor' hand evaluated hand, use mathematics: if partner is not minimum for his 3♠ response, you have at least combined 26 HCP of the 30 that are playing: expecting to lose more than 1 trick whin 4 HCP missing is a real underbid. So I get back my 6♦ blame and put it on 4♥.

[Flame]

Fluffy, on Jul 15 2004, 09:22 AM, said:

HI Flame!
Ben already told you how: Devil´s coup, but I am not sure it is an option on the given deal. (what to do with 5th ♣?)


Thinking more closelly to the bidding I started to think the real blame is gone to the 4♥ bid, wich looks like showing a ♥ void.

With an old logic rule: after:

1♦-1♥
2♣-2♠
3♠-4♦
4♥

Look at that 'poor' hand evaluated hand, use mathematics: if partner is not minimum for his 3♠ response, you have at least combined 26 HCP of the 30 that are playing: expecting to lose more than 1 trick whin 4 HCP missing is a real underbid. So I get back my 6♦ blame and put it on 4♥.

No this isnt what Ben said, he said with the A of spade we have 6, and even with the given hands we can make with that devil coup.

Now you said 6 of the 30 hcp ? did i miss something, i thought there are 40 hcp , now seriously you cant just ignonore some of the hcp.
And to sum it up, there are many hand which i can build a slam against a very specific partner hand but i will still just sign up for a game, this will give me more then i will lose for it, and i think this approach is the one used but most expirence players while less expirence (but probebly more talented) sometime look for slams when the chances are rare.

[Fluffy]

No, I said 4 of 30 (I have 12, and my partner should have at least 14), and there are only 30 HCP that matter when the base hand is void in a suit. That is an old rule, think it became popular when splinter came, you had to have 28 HCP on the other 3 suits of the splinter to have good chances to get all the tricks outside the losing singleton.

[Flame]

Well ok, nice rule i guess.
The way i bid i wouldnt know about the heart shortness because this didnt look even close to slam. its a balanced hcp, some might even consider this invitation to game (like luis who bid invitational nt) sure after learning about the spade support its getting better but my expirence (and not only mine) tell me that when slam is rare just bid the game, u will gain alot by a. making it simple, b. not telling your opponents how to diffend, c. not going down in 5 level and/or bad break, d. when you do show interest in slam, you partner will take you seriously.
and yes on the other hand once in a while there is a slam you didnt even invastigate for.

[jdulmage]

3♠ was where the bidding took a bump. He should take 2♠ has the Fourth Suit Forcing saying nothing about spades, a 2NT bid should follow by your partner indicating that he has spade stoppers.

[jtfanclub]

jdulmage, on Jul 16 2004, 12:50 PM, said:

3♠ was where the bidding took a bump. He should take 2♠ has the Fourth Suit Forcing saying nothing about spades, a 2NT bid should follow by your partner indicating that he has spade stoppers.

Wow. I really understand Standard even less than I thought.

Does everybody who plays SA respond 1S over 1D with 5 of each major AND 5 spades and 4 hearts? Why can it be assumed that the 2S bidder doesn't have spades?

If the 2S bid is completely artificial, I still don't understand the point of it. Why do you care about whether your partner has a spade stop or not? If the bidding goes:

1D 1H
2C 2S!
2N 3N

You've now told the opponents not to lead spades, which probably cost you a trick. In fact, it's entirely possible that your partner has a singleton small heart and they'll take the first 5 tricks in hearts now, whereas if you'd just jumped to 3NT they'd never have found that lead.

I feel the 2C bid showed a hand with 11-14 hcp and the minors. Therefore, 3NT should show 13-16 hcp, a balanced hand, and at least a half stop in spades. That's exactly what you have.

Let me ask the question in the reverse way: how would a 3NT bid over 2C be incorrect or inferior? What hand would it show that you don't have, or not show that you do have?

[Antoine Fourrière]

I think 3♠ is wrong.
With 3=1=4=5 and less than 16HCP. opener should always rebid 2N. With 1=3=4=5 and less than 16HCP, he should raise hearts directly. With 2=2=4=5 and less than 16HCP, he should either rebid 1N before or rebid 2N or 3♣ now.
Responder nearly has his bids opposite 3=1=5=4, if that is what opener has shown. (Maybe it shows 16+ with 2=2=5=4 with all the points in the minors, but it cannot show 16+ with four diamonds and five clubs with all the values in the minors, because with that hand type, opener would have opened 1♣ and reversed into diamonds.)

[cherdano]

As pretty much always in "assign the blame" questions, I would put most of the blame on missing parthnership understanding about style questions:

1. I guess responder was not aware that openers sequence could be bid with longer clubs than diamonds. If opener has a 5th diamond, slam isn't great, but ok.

2. Does 3♠ promise extra values, or is it just bidding out the shape?

If it does show extra values, and a 3=1=5=4 shape, then I think both 4♦ and 6♦ are ok.

[cherdano]

Fluffy, on Jul 15 2004, 02:22 PM, said:

Thinking more closelly to the bidding I started to think the real blame is gone to the 4♥ bid, wich looks like showing a ♥ void.

Funny. my thinking about 4♥ is exactly the opposite:

1. I don't cuebid shortness in partners suit.
2. Since responder has raised diamonds in the strongest possible sequence, I would assume the cuebid by opener to be mandatory.
3. Knowing it shows a heart honor, it should rather slow responder down.

[1eyedjack]

cherdano, on Jul 26 2004, 04:36 PM, said:

1. I don't cuebid shortness in partners suit.

I think that this raises an interesting point.

If it is a general cue bid, that could be a shortage or a high card control, then I agree. But if responder is entitled to make a 1-level response of 1H on 96xx then a shortage opposite that holding is something worth knowing about.

I have been thinking about this in a different context - splintering in partner's suit. Provided there is no ambiguity about the nature of the control (or what is the trump suit!), in some cases there is room (and merit) in getting this across. Even if the natural bid is based on Axxx(x..) the shortage is good news, but bad opposite KQxx(x..) Few pairs that I encounter have any mechanism for showing shortage in a suit bid naturally by partner. Relay methods get the message across, given a free reign and a natural bid to start.

[Trpltrbl]

I think 3♠ is where it got out of hand, expecting a better hand.
I think 2NT is a better bid with that hand.

Mike