[csarmi]

JohnnyH7, on Mar 20 2006, 12:04 PM, said:

There are too many balanced ranges to cover if 2N is not played as natural. In direct seat the weak NT hand type can just pass, but in balancing seat it bids 1N. An extra bid is needed to distinguish between all the ranges intelligently, and this is still hard to do specifically over a 1S opener.

Possibly. I did not say it was a bad interpretaion, it's just something that wouldn't have oocured to me.

However, I do not think that a weak NT hand should balance 4ht seat. What for?

[pclayton]

csarmi, on Mar 21 2006, 05:44 AM, said:

(snip)
However, I do not think that a weak NT hand should balance 4ht seat. What for?

Because frequently the balancer's partner also has a good hand but cannot find a call over the opening bid.

The balancer's partner may have a semi-balanced 13-14 count, but has the wrong shape for a TOx.

Or, the balancer's partner may have a 11-13 count (or so) with a 5 card suit, but the suit quality doesn't justify an overcall.

If you overcall on garbage suits or make offshape doubles, protecting is less of a problem.

And sometimes, getting to 1N (especially at MP's) with 13 opposite 8 is better than defending their one bid.

I would say however, that most players overbalance in 4th chair, especially at MPs, when passing rates to get the best result.

[JohnnyH7]

csarmi, on Mar 21 2006, 08:44 AM, said:

However, I do not think that a weak NT hand should balance 4ht seat. What for?

Well, the main problem is that if neither player is willing to bid with a weak NT, you will miss game when you both have the weak NT hand type. You will also lose partscore swings when you have a majority of the points and perhaps a fit and sell out at the 1 level.

[Al_U_Card]

Yep, a favorite auction is 1x -p-p- 1NT (11-14)-p-2NT (10-11)-p-3NT-p-p-p making when you know the location of the high cards just like 1x-1NT-p etc.....;-))

[inquiry]

kenberg, on Mar 21 2006, 08:29 AM, said:

In the first list we see for hcp and number of 2NT bids:
hcp- #
15- 63
16- 61
17- 81

Bbr could check to see if by some fluke there actually were sharply more 17 point hands than 15 or 16 point hands in the bank. That is, forget what was bid just check on the hcps. If no such fluke occurred, the explanation has to be bidding judgment. I am guessing there is a sizable flock who think that 15 or 16 should be handled by X then NT, or perhaps just by 1NT, but 17 by a jump to 2NT.

A similar sharp increase in the number of 2NT bids occurs between 19 and 20 hcps. This would suggest another flock sees 19 as too little (or maybe 19 as a borderline hand that requires some judgment) but 20 as a clear 2NT call.

My point is that the significant jumps in number might be a fluke of the data or might show a real pattern, and that some further work could indicate which.

Forgetting data for a moment, it has long been my opinion that exactly what agreements you have is not crucial. The important thing is to have agreements and to know what they are. It could be a real service if BBO drew up a list of defaults for situations like this. I suppose it might be rather long. Players could agree to play things any way they choose, but there would be a BBO default list to resolve quarrels if no discussion has taken place. I for one would be happy to just agree "BBO default list", whatever it might be, and be done with it.

Using the same database, I looked at 1x-p-p-? auctions where the fourth seat held 15, 16, or 17 hcp. For this study, I stopped the search when 10,000 matching hands were found (this took up just a bit less than 1/3 of the 1x-p-p-? auctions - 2) suggesting just over 30,000 hands would have been found if I continued.

Of these 10,000, 2NT was bid a total of 61 times, specifically by:
15 hcp - 21 times
16 hcp - 13 tines
17 hcp - 27 times

This is also roughly 1/3 the earlier found hands.

For what it is worth, DOUBLE was by far and away the most common bid in fourth seat with 4300 bids. The hcp were nearly equally divided between the three options (guessing numbers from bar chart rather than calculating them 1400 for 15 hcp, 1450 for 16 hcp, and 1250 for 17)...

The next most common bid was 1NT with 2272 hands, again 16 hcp being teh most popular, followed by 15 then 17, each with over 700 bids.

For the suit bids, at the one level, 15 was by far and away the most common hcp holding, and 17 was the fewest by far and away. When the first suit was bid at the three level, 17 was sliightly more common than the others.

There were less 17 hcp hands total than 15 or 16 hcp.... ones...

[rbforster]

inquiry, on Mar 20 2006, 09:40 AM, said:

remember you are not seeing the dozens and dozens of people who did not BID 2NT with these inappropriate hands. So this doesn't mean the average player bids it wrong.. in fact, the average players maybe getting it right, they just lack the hand to make the right call.

A very good point. Thanks for the stats.

[Kalvan14]

With all the honors located in opener's hand, 3NT should be likely make even with a bit less than usual strength.
Strange to be surprised by a treatment (4th hand NT 11-14) which is really standard, and has been around for ages.

2NT showing a bal 19-21 is also quite standard (though not as much as 1N 11-14). It has also the advantage of right-siding the contract.