[rogerwf]

Example:



What is the significance of '4-card ♦'?

And a related question: How can I search these forums for something like '4-card' and get meaningful results? I tried that first, before posting, and got three pages of 'matches', at least some of which did not contain my search argument. (I didn't waste time checking them all.)

Thanks...

[rogerwf]

So I couldn't even get my Dropbox image to post. Also tried to just 'delete' the post but couldn't see how to do that either. Duh...Sorry!

[jillybean]

Is this an opening bid of 1♦? usually it will be 4 cards.

[smerriman]

See "Descriptions containing related features" here: https://www.bridgeba...escriptions.php

But expect plenty of bugs in GIB too, so it won't necessarily actually make sense.

rogerwf, on 2025-February-16, 14:20, said:

And a related question: How can I search these forums for something like '4-card' and get meaningful results? I tried that first, before posting, and got three pages of 'matches', at least some of which did not contain my search argument. (I didn't waste time checking them all.)

Never use a site's own search Google your search term with site:bridgebase.com/forums/ appended.

[jillybean]

Are we talking GIB bids here?

[pescetom]

Inaccuracy and contradictions of the GiB descriptions aside ("5+ ♦... 4-card ♦ ) this is a sore point in bridge nomenclature in general.

A hyphen and a minus sign coincide, and not everyne is comfortable with <=.
It has become common to write "4-card" to mean "exactly 4 cards" rather than a simple "4 card" or some conventional equivalent. This might seem a non-issue, but it is also frequent and intuitive to write "4+ card" to mean "4 or more cards", so how does one now write "4 or less cards"?
My own choice is "4=card", "4+card", "4-card".

[smerriman]

pescetom, on 2025-February-16, 15:24, said:

This might seem a non-issue, but it is also frequent and intuitive to write "4+ card" to mean "4 or more cards"

Interesting - I haven't seen this much myself. 4+ diamonds, yes; that reads out loud as "four or more diamonds" (or four plus diamonds, or at least four diamonds), and "a 4-card diamond suit" reads out loud clearly, but I don't often hear someone talking about a "4+ card diamond suit"; seems too much of a mouthful.

[mycroft]

I have the same problem with minus versus hyphen, so for me it's "4-card", "4+card", and "<4 card".

[pescetom]

 smerriman, on 2025-February-16, 16:24, said:

Interesting - I haven't seen this much myself. 4+ diamonds, yes; that reads out loud as "four or more diamonds" (or four plus diamonds, or at least four diamonds), and "a 4-card diamond suit" reads out loud clearly, but I don't often hear someone talking about a "4+ card diamond suit"; seems too much of a mouthful.

I see both "4+card ◇" (hardly a mouthful) and "4+ ◇" in frequent use, even in the same Gibberish (see example quoted by OP).
And that raises another issue in bridge nomenclature as a number followed by a strain usually denotes a contract (although the context usually disambiguates and contracts are usually written with no space between the odd trick number and the suit symbol).

[mycroft]

...and [suit symbol][number] is a card. Thanks, Pavlicek, for codifying that and being almost obnoxious about it.

[pescetom]

 mycroft, on 2025-February-17, 10:56, said:

...and [suit symbol][number] is a card. Thanks, Pavlicek, for codifying that and being almost obnoxious about it.

Exactly.
I had to leave for an appointment or would have written the same thing myself.

And now if we can all agree on T

[smerriman]

pescetom, on 2025-February-17, 07:09, said:

I see both "4+card ◇" (hardly a mouthful) and "4+ ◇" in frequent use, even in the same Gibberish (see example quoted by OP).

As far as I'm aware, 4+card ♦ does not occur in GIB descriptions. Unless you somehow have the characters in the URL misencoded when exporting, which never happens to me but I've seen it replace spaces by plus symbols for others. The only time it uses the word "card" is when it is referring to quality adjectives, not length of the suit, when 3-card and 4-card are the two unfortunate choices (and 5-card does not exist).

If it occurs elsewhere, 4 plus card diamonds doesn't even sound like valid English to me; I would always choose to say something else. The closest would be 4+ cards in ♦, if you want something longer than 4+ ♦ for some reason.

[pescetom]

smerriman, on 2025-February-17, 12:16, said:

As far as I'm aware, 4+card ♦ does not occur in GIB descriptions. Unless you somehow have the characters in the URL misencoded when exporting, which never happens to me but I've seen it replace spaces by plus symbols for others. The only time it uses the word "card" is when it is referring to quality adjectives, not length of the suit, when 3-card and 4-card are the two unfortunate choices (and 5-card does not exist).

The GiB description quoted by OP above contains "4-card ♦" and is clearly using the word card referring to length in the suit.

[smerriman]

You said 4+card ♦ was frequent; that is the part I was disagreeing with; I've never seen that before.

See the link I sent through above about why 4-card is a quality adjective, not length to GIB; some suits of length 4 aren't "4-card" quality. Yes, they're related and a poor choice (and definitely confusing when combined), but putting that aside, since 4+card ♦ or (4-)card ♦ don't read well in English anyway, I would find it more confusing if they were started to be used.

[mycroft]

My standard explanation of (1NT)-2♥: "5-card ♥ and 4+card m". Shortening it is possible (5♥ and 4+m), but confusing.

[smerriman]

Fair enough - I find the latter easier to understand / read "out loud" (in my head), but everyone is different. Perhaps the key is outside of GIB, minus is rarely needed, so if you're not using the shortest possible version like it does anyway, you can just use 'at most' where that were important to alert.

A space after 4+ helps with clarity too.