[jillybean]

I think this is the first time 1m:2m has come up since we started playing weak nt.

1m:2m How much discussion have you had on follow ups?

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[helene_t]

4sp now, p can ask for keycards if they have a heart control. In which case I won't count clK, diamonds is trump and besides, p can probably see that my 3cl bid was the king.

I would not have bid 3cl, whatever our methods 3cl can't be right. I should either have shown the spade stopper or that i have a balanced hand.

[mycroft]

Standard in NA is "show stoppers", especially if 2♦ is GF (which it isn't here, okay).

So partner probably expects that the spades are open in 3NT, so looking for best minor game/slam.

You don't have a heart control shortness either, so whatever you choose to do is fine (except show the heart control, I guess).

Hope 3NT wasn't the best/only making contract.

[bluenikki]

mycroft, on 2025-March-31, 19:42, said:

Standard in NA is "show stoppers", especially if 2♦ is GF (which it isn't here, okay).

Any documentation of that?

[mycroft]

https://en.wikipedia..._a_strong_raise ?

[Cyberyeti]

We play inv+ inverted minors, and rebid 2N on all strong NT hands without 4M, GF with an artificial 3♣ ask over it, can yours contain 4M ?

[DavidKok]

I hate the stopper showing over inverted minor. It is both complicated and ineffective. I understand that it's standard, but please please just let me bid my shape.
2NT balanced. If you play a 12-14 1NT this is forcing to game, if not you need to split weaker from stronger.
Other bids are unbalanced and show two-suiters (and the re-raises are unbalanced single suiters, which you'll 'never' have on this auction).

This scheme is inefficient in multiple ways, and you can gain a lot by allowing for some artificial rebids here. In particular, eliminating jumps on strong hands is good. However, this is simple and more effective than the stopper approach, so it'll do for a start.

[bluenikki]

mycroft, on 2025-March-31, 20:15, said:

https://en.wikipedia..._a_strong_raise ?

That set of rebids is introduced as an example of possible agreements.

[helene_t]

DavidKok, on 2025-April-01, 00:48, said:

I hate the stopper showing over inverted minor.

I recall from my childhood, my dad had just taught me to play bridge so I obviously started to develop my own bidding system, it was all about showing stoppers so we were sure we wouldn't end in 3nt with a suit wide open. My dad told me not to do that, it just helps opps decide what to lead.

After a forcing minor suit raise, I think it may be a good idea if one of the partners (probably opener?) first shows if (and where) they have a singleton. That is useful for choice of game as well as for slam. A small doubleton, otoh, may be more useful information for opps than for partner.

[jillybean]

We don't use the traditional stopper showing follow ups after 1m 2m. We modified our 2m response to allow hands with 4 card majors so after 1m:2m, 2M are 4 card suits.
I do like setting the gf immediately but we haven't taken it any further, it's a bit of a mess.

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[helene_t]

Yes this is a bit awkward. I like to allow a 4-card major but it probably requires some artificiality.

But if you want to keep everything natural, agreeing to rebid 2nt with all balanced hands is a simple improvement.

[helene_t]

Partner appears to be 2245, there's nothing to discard on the fifth club in 5d, so I pass now.

[mycroft]

So, the first set on the first hit for continuations is "just an example", and "Some players prefer to show aspects of opener's hand other than stops, when bidding a new suit"(*) isn't a clue either. Sure. DYOG next time, you can move the goalposts however you want that way.

(*) Yes, it's Justin Lall. Not just "some player". Yes, I would listen to Justin any time he talked bridge theory. But many of the reasons to have done so is that he was "bucking the standard trend, because experts had convinced him" (I'm trying to convince my partner to play "no 3NT response" to 1NT-3♣ Puppet, because of Justin's article, for instance).

[bluenikki]

mycroft, on 2025-April-01, 10:20, said:

So, the first set on the first hit for continuations is "just an example", and "Some players prefer to show aspects of opener's hand other than stops, when bidding a new suit"(*) isn't a clue either. Sure. DYOG next time, you can move the goalposts however you want that way.

(*) Yes, it's Justin Lall. Not just "some player". Yes, I would listen to Justin any time he talked bridge theory. But many of the reasons to have done so is that he was "bucking the standard trend, because experts had convinced him" (I'm trying to convince my partner to play "no 3NT response" to 1NT-3♣ Puppet, because of Justin's article, for instance).

Maybe we have a different definition of standard. Mine is what you can expect a stranger to play when you think they're experienced.

I strongly suspect there are regional variations in opener's rebid to forcing single raise.

But I can't be sure.

[mycroft]

Yep, that's my take too.

I would expect an A partner in North America, without discussion, to think 1♦-2♦; 2♠ was "spade stop, no (full) heart stop." Note: not Experts; not "50 MPs/year for 30 years" players either.

Frankly if I had one question to ask when looking at partner's suggested card saying "invm", it would be "limit+ or GF?"

Whether it's *best* is another story. Whether it's what I play with all my partners (which it is - sort of, at least); whether it's better to do something else; I would absolutely expect random flight A partner without discussion to think it's stopper-showing (at least at first).

Do I have evidence of that? No, except never being shown wrong in 20+ years of playing "director is the last spare"...

[DavidKok]

jillybean, on 2025-March-31, 17:30, said:

1m:2m How much discussion have you had on follow ups?

Going into more detail compared to what I wrote above:

• For me the auctions 1♣-2♣ and 1♦-2♦ are completely different, for two reasons.
  • On 1♣, I had Dutch Doubleton (or the less detailed set of Walsh) agreements available to show a lot of hand types. Consequently, the 2♣ response shows 5(+)♣ for me, and responder's hand type is more constrained compared to 1♦ where responder sometimes has to raise on 4, and in my system may even raise on 3. In particular, the 2♣ bid is also unbalanced unless it's 5♣332.
    
  • I play a style of 'balanced club, unbalanced diamond'. On the 1♦-2♦ start my 2NT rebid has no natural meaning, and I prefer for 2♦ to be forcing to 3♦. Conversely, on 1♣-2♣ we are on crucial step lower, but also opener will very frequently be balanced (it's not too common to have a (9)10(+) card club fit on an uncontested auction) and we may want to stop in 2NT.
• I like shape bidding, but 'natural' isn't best. However, I think it is a useful first step for improving the structure on this start. I very recently developed and shared a relatively simple system for students to learn if they wanted to take bridge more seriously, and the inverted minor section simply reads 'find a structure online and copy it, there are lots of options here but my personal preference is too complicated', with a few links. In my opinion the same applies here - it's a rare auction, shape bidding gets you most of the way there, but if you really want to squeeze every last factional IMP or fractional matchpoint out of there I recommend artificial bids showing shape and/or hand type.
  
• In particular, it is somewhat popular here at the higher level for 1♣-2♣; 2♦ to show a(ny) balanced hand. This way we can get the balanced hand type out of the way cheaply. It is the most common hand on this start anyway, and using 2♦ to show diamonds is not efficient at all. This equivalent artificial first step is not available on 1♦-2♦, but, not so coincidentally, I also don't need to be able to show balanced hands here.
  
• I once read Ted Brashler's 'Sweep Q-Bids'. There are a lot of creative bidding ideas in there, most of them not that great, but the section on inverted minor bidding (and particularly 1♣-2♣) was, in my opinion, unmatched. The structure allows for getting out in the Moysian in 2M for those matchpoint victories, enables sophisticated 2NT-versus-3♣ decisions after a short club, has far better slam bidding and 3NT-versus-5♣ support than I've had the luxury of playing on this auction and even permits 1♣ (2+)-2♣ (4+) without ever ending up in a misfit. The downside: it's highly artificial, complicated and multiple pages of notes.

[mycroft]

So, the first set on the first hit for continuations is "just an example", and "Some players prefer to show aspects of opener's hand other than stops, when bidding a new suit"(*) isn't a clue either. Sure. DYOG next time, you can move the goalposts however you want that way.

(*) Yes, it's Justin Lall. Not just "some player". Yes, I would listen to Justin any time he talked bridge theory. But many of the reasons to have done so is that he was "bucking the standard trend, because experts had convinced him" (I'm trying to convince my partner to play "no 3NT response" to 1NT-3♣ Puppet, because of Justin's article, for instance).

[mikeh]

I’ve played several versions of inverted minors. Originally we played stopper showing, focused on the majors. We tended to assume that the other minor was not an issue.

I never liked it. We’d miss some decent notrump games where our stopper was xxx v xxx, with 9 winners on the side. We’d leak info to the opps. And the method was horrible for bidding slams, since opener was supposed to bid stoppers, not shape or controls…we’d sometimes survive when one player has a huge hand but when both players had extras but not huge extras we’d rarely be able to get off of the notrump train.

I dislike those versions so much that I won’t play inverted minors with a casual partner, no matter how good a player he or she might be.

In my main partnership we have a very complex method….actually two different complex methods depending on which minor we opened. We don’t need inverted minors.

In my secondary partnership we use a variant of a method invented by Kokish. It’s similar in concept to one I played for a few years in my main partnership’s first incarnation around 2000.

The main feature is for both players to describe their strength first, shape later. Stoppers can be shown on later rounds, depending on how the auction has developed, but stopper showing is not a main aspect.

1m 2m….limit raise or better.

Opener:

2H is almost hands that would accept a limit raise…it’s artificial, forcing to game. The exception is a jump to 3N, natural, balanced, bigger than a strong 1N, so 17+ or 18+ depending on notrump range

The cheapest non 2H bid (2D if we’re in clubs, 2S if in diamonds) shows an unbalanced hand worth a game try, but less than a gf.

Over that, responder can reject the try via 3m or ask for shortness via the next cheapest step, with artificial responses using the acronym NLMH….none, lowest of the 3 other suits, middle, highest.

3m by opener shows a minimum with no game interest and unwilling to bid 2N, which would show a balanced minimum.

If you played a 12-14 1N, then your 2N would be 15+, so gf.

Over 2H, gf, responder can limit his hand by bidding 2S. So 1D 2D 2H 2S announces that responder has only a limit raise. We’re still going to game but this serves to warn opener not to expect an opening hand opposite, which can inform decisions about trying for slam. Opener can bid naturally over that with new suits showing shortness….3m allows responder to show major values.

If responder has a gf of his own, then over 2H:

2N asks for shortness, NLMH

3x, where x is not our minor, shows shortness, with opening values or better

3m shows no shortness. Here’s where we can show major suit values since both 3N and 6N are possible.

There’s more to it than this, but this covers 98% of the sequences. It a tad complicated but, imo, it’s by far the best structure I’ve ever played.

It helped us win a national (Canadian) title when, ironically, I had a forget

1C 2C 2H….I held something like AKxx QJxx A10x Ax and partner Qx AK KJx K10xxxx

1C showed 2+ I was supposed to jump to 3N over 2C, showing 4432 18-19. My later auction showed my strength and implied 3+ clubs so partner bid 7N


The lead was a slow club Jack. Plan the play.

[jillybean]

mikeh, on 2025-April-01, 15:07, said:

The lead was a slow club Jack. Plan the play.

I need the hand diagram

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[jillybean]

3 spades, 4 hearts, 2 diamonds, 2 clubs

♣J top of nothing?

Win ♣K
Play low club to 9 ?

oops