[Flame]

kenrexford, on Jul 17 2006, 09:22 PM, said:

Why not bid Serious 3NT here?

when one player already showed 25-26 hcp, a balance hand, and superaccept, he is limited and the need for serious 3NT isnt good enough to use this bid for it.
In general serious 3NT only applay when both players are unlimited. like 1S-2H-3H.
when atleast one player is limited there are better uses for 3NT, like turbo, ,RKB, cue bid in one of the suit or natural.

[kenrexford]

If HCP's is King, then this "no need for Serious 3NT" is accurate.

25 HCP's, however, can be the hand provided (seven assured covers, first-round control everywhere, and only one missing second-round control), or, opposite the actual Responder's hand, something like Kxx-AKxx-AKQJx-KQJ, a point greater but with a much weaker control offering.

Further, if Serious 3NT has well-defined parameters, then it is useful for Responder to distinguish hand types, as I mention. Perhaps power controls instead of shortness controls.

[kenberg]

A very minor comment about the possibility of a squeeze. If somehow you were totally convinced that W held both the Jack of diamonds and the King of spades, a squeeze is possible. Take your tricks so that after trick 10 you are in the S hand holding the Ace of spades and the 10x of diamonds, and in the N hand you have the QJ of spades and a trump. W holds either the bare King of spades and Jx of Diamonds, or the Kx of spades and the bare Jack of diamonds. If you can figure out which he has done, you either play ruff a diamond-- back to the spade--ten of diamonds, or you play Ace oc spades-- ruff a diamond- -Q of spades. Since this requires both that you have correctly located the King of Spades and that you have read the end position, no one would try this unless they had a peek at West's cards, but it could be done.


As for the bidding, if I held the N cards and partner showed 25-26 hcps and a super acceptance of hearts, I would like to have some inquiries available to me to know more details but lacking the tools to do so I would say a prayer and bid 6. Partner has a big hand, I have a great source of tricks, I suppose we can take twelve tricks unless we are unlucky.


If I held the S hand and partner bid 4D I would move towards 6 in some way. Whatever 4D means, it has to be stronger than 4H and suggest slam. I have no regrets about my hand, so that's enough for me.

Fundamentally I think the problem is a familiar one. NS have agreed to play a good gadget, but one whose true strength depends on having adequate follow-up agreements, and they don't have them. This affects the psycholgy. They are expecting their gadget to eliminate any guesswork, and when it doesn't they get overly cautious. Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.