[hotShot]

whereagles, on Mar 28 2006, 12:17 PM, said:

I can't believe people are haggling about the 4♠ bid. It's an absolutely standard textbook example of a 4♠ opening bid!

Sure, you can try 3♠ as well, but that's pretty wimpy.

This 4♠ is close to the lower limit of possible 4 level openings. Remember that opener is in red.
If you define:

Quote

A 4-level bid in a suit promises 8 cards in that suit and fewer than 10 high card points.

The hand perfectly fits the description, but what about ....

- key is suit strength, not points
- suit quality is important when vulnerable
- avoid preempting with too many outside honors

This
here might be a little to solid:

Quote

Non-vulnerable Four-Bids can be made with hands where you have little hope of making the contract unless partner has a very good hand. A good guideline is to have about 7-8 playing tricks.

If you're vulnerable, be cautious. A Four-Bid may still be made to preempt the opponents, but you should have more playing strength -- about 8 or 9 tricks in your own hand.

[whereagles]

hotShot, on Mar 28 2006, 12:14 PM, said:

- suit quality is important when vulnerable

Are you telling me that 8 cards to the QJT isn't solid??

[hotShot]

whereagles, on Mar 28 2006, 03:01 PM, said:

hotShot, on Mar 28 2006, 12:14 PM, said:

- suit quality is important when vulnerable

Are you telling me that 8 cards to the QJT isn't solid??

No!

I'm telling you that if partners shows a strong 4 level opening and i see the trump K in my hand, that I would have more than the strongest hope, that he will hold the Ace.

With a weak 4 level opening i'd expect him to cooperate with cuebids.
After the 5♦ cuebid in partners void, it is clear that he can't have the A♠ because he would have been to strong to preempt than.

If opener would not hold the A♦, i would praise the 4♠ bid, because than for his point of view, he has actually reason to preempt. He would than have more than half of his points in his suit. And we would end in 5♠ making.

[whereagles]

Oh well.. I guess we have to agree to disagree as to what a 4♠ bid might look like.

[Codo]

Fluffy, on Mar 28 2006, 07:49 PM, said:

mmm if the bidding starts:

4♠-5♥*
6♠-.....

5♥ asks for control

You are already in 7.

My statement about CABs was in general, because I believe, that opener is not able to show too many side suit values, he normally has zero or one side suit controlled.

With this particular North hand, Josephine is the tool I would prefer. I do have all side suits stopped, ruffing values and a source of tricks if needed. What do I need more?

You need AQxxxxxx, x,xx,xx
to make the grand very promissing. And with the worst possible hands with 8 spades to the AQ the grand is just on a hook.

Of course, in a perfect world, it would be nice to get all messages across: The shortness or the King of Heart and the AQ of spade. But I doubt, that you will find out everything.

[Fluffy]

inquiry, on Mar 27 2006, 05:21 PM, said:

North gets almost all the blame. Why?

North does see his diamond void right? I see it. His partner bid slam so must have a control in diamonds and in hearts. The one in hearts is likely to be a singelton or void, but do we think south can be void in diamonds? I think not. So south has a sure diamond stopper (ACE or possibly king). What ever it is, it is wasted opposite our void. So if partner has a high diamond honor, what does his spades look like. Can he have"

♠AQxxxxx ♥x ♦Axx ♣xx or ♠AQxxxxx ♥x ♦Kxx ♣xx. Not the way I preempt. The diamond honor partner has is a clear warning to stop.

If north FELT in the gambling mood, he could have bid 5NT over 4♠,, this way, he is gambling that the hearts come home (hook or ruffing setup) and gets to grand if partner holds (as expected) AQ long in spades.

I think south's bidding is adequately justified.

I fully agree with you here Ben, 6♠ is almost for sure with a ♦ honnor. Althou I might be biased because I was south on this one .

[inquiry]

Fluffy, on Mar 28 2006, 09:50 AM, said:

inquiry, on Mar 27 2006, 05:21 PM, said:

North gets almost all the blame. Why?

North does see his diamond void right? I see it. His partner bid slam so must have a control in diamonds and in hearts. The one in hearts is likely to be a singelton or void, but do we think south can be void in diamonds? I think not. So south has a sure diamond stopper (ACE or possibly king). What ever it is, it is wasted opposite our void. So if partner has a high diamond honor, what does his spades look like. Can he have"

♠AQxxxxx ♥x ♦Axx ♣xx  or ♠AQxxxxx ♥x ♦Kxx ♣xx. Not the way I preempt. The diamond honor partner has is a clear warning to stop.

If north FELT in the gambling mood, he could have bid 5NT over 4♠,, this way, he is gambling that the hearts come  home (hook or ruffing setup) and gets to grand if partner holds (as expected) AQ long in spades.

I think south's bidding is adequately justified.

I fully agree with you here Ben, 6♠ is almost for sure with a ♦ honnor. Althou I might be biased because I was south on this one .

Well all of this is perfect world thinking of course.

1) 4♠ is clearly fine bid with eight card suit QJT and side AQ.

I play naymats too, so this is almost the perfect 4S bid. Yes some people don't preempt with side aces, don't you just love playing against them? If preempts are very precise it helps BOTH sides.. issue for another day, however.

2) 5♣ can be many things. One meaning is bid slam with a club control one is cue-bid, bid your controls. Some one suggest this could be CLUBS as alternative place to play. Let's deal with that first. If I open 4♠ vulnerable, trumps have been set. Period.

If 5♣ asked for slam with club control what should you bid? Arguably 5♦ then 6♠. If 5♣ was control showing, what should you bid. I argue (perhaps unsuccessfully) that the correct bid is 6♠. If you cue-bid either red suit, you leave teh second red suit control undisclosed. Here you have first or second round control in all side suits. The best way to show controls in both red suits, imho is to bid 6♠ opposite a cue-bid 5♣.

Given this scenario, it is north who went wildly ovrerboard. Even if partner has spade AK that doesn't mean hearts run, you could very much need a heart hook or even a club hook. Take a simple 7-1-4-1 hand with AQJxxxx x xxxx x on a trump lead and they withhold the spade TEN. Win in hand, heart ace, heart ruff, spade to king (ten still withheld. Txx), heart ruff. If the king didn't fall. You are toasted.

I for one see nothing wrong with ACCEPTING partners slam invite with the correct hand. If partner was interested in top two spades for slam, he would have bid 5S or blackwood. If partenr was interested in diamond ACE or trump ACE, he would have bid blackwood. His 5C bid was looking (presumably) for a red suit control. We have BOTH. Tell him about it.

As for north, what the hell was he looking for? The magic bid here is 5♥ over 4♠ as a control asking bid. IF partner shows ♥ king, then 6♥ as josephine. Yes, yes, who plays josephine anymore?

[whereagles]

Ben, while your reasoning makes sense, it is still true that 6♠ is a bid that is likely to create confusion in pard. First of all, as we have seen, it was undiscussed. Second, pard might draw the wrong inference and/or draw no inference and bid 7 just because he's afraid of missing a grand.

You won't miss out on a slam if you bid your diamond control with 5♦. Even if pard bids 5♠ (no heart control), you can still bid 6♠ because you have that control as well.

What I say is that unless you have your follow-ups to a 4x opening completely sorted out (which no one does, except perhaps professionals), you should just bid your hand and not make undiscussed masterminding bids like 6♠.

Masterminding works better with strong hands because pard is weak and thus too scared to bid on. Pay heed to what I say, for I am a reputed masterminder

[pclayton]

6♠ is all wet. To me it shows no 1st round controls (OK, well, trumps don't count), and a real good suit. 5♣ did something to wake your hand up.

AKQxxxx, x, x, Kxxx seems right to me.

The relevant feature in the actual South hand is the ♦AQx.

Still, I can't help but feel Josh had a lot to do with the result, so the poll is flawed.

[inquiry]

whereagles, on Mar 28 2006, 11:41 AM, said:

What I say is that unless you have your follow-ups to a 4x opening completely sorted out (which no one does, except perhaps professionals), you should just bid your hand and not make undiscussed masterminding bids like 6♠.

Well, I don't consider 6♠ here masterminding at all....

Partner bid 5♣ showing a control and expressing concern over two quick losers in one or more of the red suits (imho), and inviting slam. I have control in BOTH red suits, so I accept his invite. In fact, I accept his invite in the weakest way possible (PFA). Your bid 5♦ then over 5♥ bid 6♠ should be stronger, in fact. Add to that, if partner were to bid 6♠ over 5♦ I would have left my heart control un-shown.

To me the masterminding bid is to do anything other than 6♠ when partner issues a 5♣ cue-bid looking for a slam. He asked, I answered. I would bid this hand exaclty as fluffy did (and to be honest, and he will tell you, we rarely agree). There is no "masterminding" here. Partner asked me to show my red suit controls with 5♣ for possible slam (if I have the correct one), and I have both. So I tell him. HE is captain, I am mate.. I answer his question with the proper response.

[jdonn]

inquiry, on Mar 28 2006, 12:06 PM, said:

Partner bid 5♣ showing a control and expressing concern over two quick losers in one or more of the red suits (imho), and inviting slam. I have control in BOTH red suits, so I accept his invite. In fact, I accept his invite in the weakest way possible (PFA). Your bid 5♦ then over 5♥ bid 6♠ should be stronger, in fact. Add to that, if partner were to bid 6♠ over 5♦ I would have left my heart control un-shown.

I wouldn't take that sequence as stronger, I would take it as first round diamond control and second round heart control. Jumping to 6♠ (as I thinks someone else mentioned) should be second round control of each. I admit all this ignores trump quality but perhaps south should bid 5NT over 5♥ with AJT9xxxx x Ax xx or something. What would you be saying if north had AKx A xxxx AKQJx? How is he to know if south has first or second round diamond control? Maybe south just opened 4♠ with QJT9xxxxx Kx - xx or something, or maybe the same hand with 1-1 in the red suits. Or perhaps north has Kxx AKQJxx xx Ax and not only doesn't know if south's diamond control is first or second round, but he lost his room to find out the trump situation. Or A AKQ xx AKxxxxx, the example are endless. North often wants more information than the vague 'do you have some sort of control in one or both red suits', and south should start transmitting specific information, not guessing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think north had a 7♠ bid. I just think south brought the result upon himself by needlessly forcing north to guess instead of describing his hand precisely.

[hrothgar]

whereagles, on Mar 28 2006, 01:17 PM, said:

I can't believe people are haggling about the 4♠ bid. It's an absolutely standard textbook example of a 4♠ opening bid!

Which textbook would that be?

I'd be very interested to see any text that claimed that this a "standard" vilnerable 4♠ preempt. As I noted earlier, I consulted "Preempts from A to Z" (one of those "standard" textbooks) which clearly considers the spade suit too weak for a vulnerable preempt.

For what its worth, I not saying that a 4♠ is a bad bid with the hand in question, rather I think that its important that partnership's recognize that there is a lot debate regarding the requirements for these openings.

Claiming that there is a "standard textbook" approach seems overly simplisitic.

[jdeegan]

inquiry, on Mar 28 2006, 11:19 AM, said:

1) 4♠ is clearly fine bid with eight card suit QJT and side AQ.

I play naymats too, so this is almost the perfect 4S bid. Yes some people don't preempt with side aces, don't you just love playing against them? If preempts are very precise it helps BOTH sides.. issue for another day, however.

2) 5♣ can be many things. One meaning is bid slam with a club control one is cue-bid, bid your controls. Some one suggest this could be CLUBS as alternative place to play. Let's deal with that first. If I open 4♠ vulnerable, trumps have been set. Period.

If 5♣ asked for slam with club control what should you bid? Arguably 5♦ then 6♠. If 5♣ was control showing, what should you bid. I argue (perhaps unsuccessfully) that the correct bid is 6♠. If you cue-bid either red suit, you leave teh second red suit control undisclosed. Here you have first or second round control in all side suits. The best way to show controls in both red suits, imho is to bid 6♠  opposite a cue-bid 5♣. 

Given this scenario, it is north who went wildly ovrerboard. Even if partner has spade AK that doesn't mean hearts run, you could very much need a heart hook or even a club hook. Take a simple 7-1-4-1 hand with AQJxxxx x xxxx x on a trump lead and they withhold the spade TEN. Win in hand, heart ace, heart ruff, spade to king (ten still withheld. Txx), heart ruff. If the king didn't fall. You are toasted.

I for one see nothing wrong with ACCEPTING partners slam invite with the correct hand. If partner was interested in top two spades for slam, he would have bid 5S or blackwood. If partenr was interested in diamond ACE or trump ACE, he would have bid blackwood. His 5C bid was looking (presumably) for a red suit control. We have BOTH. Tell him about it.

As for north, what the hell was he looking for? The magic bid here is 5♥ over 4♠ as a control asking bid. IF partner shows ♥ king, then 6♥ as josephine. Yes, yes, who plays josephine anymore?

For any of you who wish to learn the finer points of the game, I strongly recommend that you read Inquiry's post (reproduced above) and take it to heart. I can only add the philosophical observation that good slam bidding is CONVERSATIONAL, and bidding 'vocabulary' is limited in the extreme.

North's 5♣ bid says club control and an interest in at least six. He should have bid Josephine, but that's another story.

South's 6♠ bid answers that he has at least second round control of both of the unbid side suits and thinks six is fine, but he has no interest in seven

North's 7♠ bid is absurd.

My only quibble, a small one at that, is with the analysis if South has
AQJxxxx
x
xxxx
x
(a seven trick hand, by the way)
If opps don't lead a trump, you can win seven spades, three diamond ruffs, and two aces. The thirteener is better than 50% (w/o a club opening lead, a club hook if the heart fails to drop). With a trump lead, you are probably slightly better off to go for dropping the heart king. If it falls in two or three rounds, that's all you need. The alternative is the 25% chance of two finesses.

If this 7-4 hand represents my worse case, I'm willing to shoot it out after making my Josephine bid, since any extra trick makes seven a near laydown. Pard's preempt (vul vs vul at IMPS) shows 7.5 tricks. I have, at worst, five more - two ruffs, the trump king and two aces.

[hrothgar]

jdeegan, on Mar 28 2006, 10:25 PM, said:

For any of you who wish to learn the finer points of the game, I strongly recommend that you read Inquiry's post (reproduced above) and take it to heart. I can only add the philosophical observation that good slam bidding is CONVERSATIONAL, and bidding 'vocabulary' is limited in the extreme.

So, apparantly the only time you get to use all this "vocabularly" is when you have Spade honor opposite partner's vulnerable 4 level preempt?

[Fluffy]

I also though I might had jumped to 6♦ over 5♣, would it show my hand?

[inquiry]

hrothgar, on Mar 28 2006, 02:42 PM, said:

jdeegan, on Mar 28 2006, 10:25 PM, said:

For any of you who wish to learn the finer points of the game, I strongly recommend that you read Inquiry's post (reproduced above) and take it to heart.  I can only add the philosophical observation that good slam bidding is CONVERSATIONAL, and bidding 'vocabulary' is limited in the extreme.

So, apparantly the only time you get to use all this "vocabularly" is when you have Spade honor opposite partner's vulnerable 4 level preempt?

Hmm.. you need good spades from partner, what do YOU bid? I bid 5♠.....

[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Mar 29 2006, 01:15 AM, said:

hrothgar, on Mar 28 2006, 02:42 PM, said:

jdeegan, on Mar 28 2006, 10:25 PM, said:

For any of you who wish to learn the finer points of the game, I strongly recommend that you read Inquiry's post (reproduced above) and take it to heart.  I can only add the philosophical observation that good slam bidding is CONVERSATIONAL, and bidding 'vocabulary' is limited in the extreme.

So, apparantly the only time you get to use all this "vocabularly" is when you have Spade honor opposite partner's vulnerable 4 level preempt?

Hmm.. you need good spades from partner, what do YOU bid? I bid 5♠.....

The use of a 5♠ to ask about trump quality is completely irrelevant to my original point:

You went and traced out an exiting little chain of logic about the meaning the 5♣ response and the 6♠ rebid yada, yada, yada. This is all fine and dandy... However, the only reason that you don't have two trump losers is that partner... the person making the 5♣ advance happens to have Kxx in Spades. If opener is able to make an extremely aggressive advance to 6♠ holding such a weak trump suit then responder is going to run into trouble advancing on a variety of strong hands that lack "good" trump support. The less discliplined that 4♠ opening, the more complicated your constructive responses are going to get

A month or so ago there was some discussion about 5M openings and surrounding requirements. Personally, I'm not overly enamoured of the idea that 5M should ask for trump honors in the suited opened. With this said and done, I suspect that a case could be made to split high level spade preempts across 4♦/4♠/5♠ ios order to get more bidding accuracy. It might even make sense to use 4♠ as a realtively discliplined opening (you have room to explore intelligently) and 5♠ as a crapshoot opening which denies a hand suitable for 4♦ or 4♠

[inquiry]

hrothgar, on Mar 28 2006, 05:42 PM, said:

inquiry, on Mar 29 2006, 01:15 AM, said:

hrothgar, on Mar 28 2006, 02:42 PM, said:

jdeegan, on Mar 28 2006, 10:25 PM, said:

For any of you who wish to learn the finer points of the game, I strongly recommend that you read Inquiry's post (reproduced above) and take it to heart.  I can only add the philosophical observation that good slam bidding is CONVERSATIONAL, and bidding 'vocabulary' is limited in the extreme.

So, apparantly the only time you get to use all this "vocabularly" is when you have Spade honor opposite partner's vulnerable 4 level preempt?

Hmm.. you need good spades from partner, what do YOU bid? I bid 5♠.....

The use of a 5♠ to ask about trump quality is completely irrelevant to my original point:

You went and traced out an exiting little chain of logic about the meaning the 5♣ response and the 6♠ rebid yada, yada, yada. This is all fine and dandy... However, the only reason that you don't have two trump losers is that partner... the person making the 5♣ advance happens to have Kxx in Spades. If opener is able to make an extremely aggressive advance to 6♠ holding such a weak trump suit then responder is going to run into trouble advancing on a variety of strong hands that lack "good" trump support. The less discliplined that 4♠ opening, the more complicated your constructive responses are going to get

Wrong. When you preempt vul you promise some number of tricks. Pickem, did you promise 7? 8? 9? Partner looks in hand and starts counting, there isn't a lot of room for exploration.

What can partner do? IF he just needs top spades, blackwood does it. If he needs two top spades and a side ace? Well, that isn't a prempt for me unless the two top spades are KQ, and blackwood still works.

As a matter of fact, responder who needs solid spades and a sided ace had best stop now as that is not happening.

Then, as you correctly pointed out, there are the new suit bids as CAB or as control showing. This is looking for slam based upon "I can count the tricks" if we are not off two in this suit. Or there is cue-bidding up the line that is "I can count the tricks if we are not off two quick tricks in some suit, not this one", So imagine you held S-KQJTxxxx H-Ax D-void C-xxx and the bidding goes 4S-p-5D-p-? What do you bid? Do you show your heart ace? your heart ace and diamond void? Your good spades? Of course not, you lack a club control, your partner lacks one too. You will be a good boy and bid 5S.

Now change the hand around, you hold KQJTxxx void Ax xxx what do you bid. Maybe 5D and then if partner bids 5S then 6H, trying for 7 anyway. To try for seven this has to be first round control in both reds. But the problem here is if you bid 5D and partner bid 6S he has no idea about the heart void. Do you bid on or pass? You have not come close to describing your hand. I think a jump to 6H shows this exact hand.. void in jump, ace in other, GS try. I think jump to 6S should show first and second round controls in the off two suits. I think 5NT should show stronger hand than jump to 6S (PFA).

The argument that partner is looking to have you prevent two quick losers in some side suit and have solid spades is, well, not sound. PArtner would have somethhing like xxx AKQxx xx AKQ and wants max 1♦ loser and no ♠ loser. Somedays you will catch partner with AKQJxxx xx x xxx but not often enough... to be worth worrying about. Bid 6S and hope for no ♦ lead is probably a better bet if you wanted to gamble

[whereagles]

hrothgar, on Mar 28 2006, 06:25 PM, said:

whereagles, on Mar 28 2006, 01:17 PM, said:

It's an absolutely standard textbook example of a 4♠ opening bid!

Which textbook would that be?

Well.. Robson/Segal for instance. They don't give many examples, but they do something no other book does: they explain the strategy of preemption properly, in terms of ODR. This hand, with an ODR of 6 and solid suit, certainly qualifies for a 4-level preempt.

In any case, any textbook that claims 4♠ is out because "the suit is too weak" clearly isn't making an effort to be precise. I mean.. it's 8 cards to the QJT. EIGHT CARDS

[whereagles]

inquiry, on Mar 28 2006, 05:06 PM, said:

whereagles, on Mar 28 2006, 11:41 AM, said:

What I say is that unless you have your follow-ups to a 4x opening completely sorted out (which no one does, except perhaps professionals), you should just bid your hand and not make undiscussed masterminding bids like 6♠.

Well, I don't consider 6♠ here masterminding at all....

Partner bid 5♣ showing a control and expressing concern over two quick losers in one or more of the red suits (imho), and inviting slam. I have control in BOTH red suits, so I accept his invite. In fact, I accept his invite in the weakest way possible (PFA). Your bid 5♦ then over 5♥ bid 6♠ should be stronger, in fact. Add to that, if partner were to bid 6♠ over 5♦ I would have left my heart control un-shown.

To me the masterminding bid is to do anything other than 6♠ when partner issues a 5♣ cue-bid looking for a slam. He asked, I answered. I would bid this hand exaclty as fluffy did (and to be honest, and he will tell you, we rarely agree). There is no "masterminding" here. Partner asked me to show my red suit controls with 5♣ for possible slam (if I have the correct one), and I have both. So I tell him. HE is captain, I am mate.. I answer his question with the proper response.

I agree with you. But I would be very weary to bid like that unless I had these post-preempt sequences fully sorted out with pard. Especially since I have an alternative in the form of 5♦ followed by 6♠. The straight 6♠ bid is obviously not masterminding if you have the sequence fully locked-up, but otherwise it runs a serious risk of confusing pard.

For the record, I went through a similar experience once. I used to play with a guy who did this sort of things to me, like leaps to 6♠ and similar stuff. That confused the heck out of me, and at table I usually drew the wrong inference and we ended up in silly contracts. But then he would always win the post-mortem with beautiful and thoughtful reasonings like yours, which mathematically showed he was right and I sucked for not having understood his "master bids". Last time this happened we had a serious arguing and I have never played him eversince. (Nor do I intend to, eventhough he's an otherwise excellent bidder.)

All in all what I'm saying is this: eventhough brilliant reasonings like yours look great on paper, in practice they can turn out terribly wrong at table if pard is in another wavelenght. This happened to me before, it happened to Gonzalo and it will happen again and again whenever people take risks with undiscussed bids. They can impress mathematicians at a congress, but it is not winning bridge