[FrancesHinden]

What is partner looking for when he jumps to five of a suit?
[short answer: our partnership agreement is that it is only asking for control of the unbid suit in long or specific auctions].

1.

Scoring: IMP

4♥ P P 5♠
P ?

---

What is partner looking for? What do you bid?

2.

Scoring: IMP

4♥ P P 5♠
P ?

---

OK, on this hand you are going to pass 5H whatever it meant because you have a pile of rubbish. But what do you think partner has, and what would you need to accept?

3.

Scoring: IMP

4♥ P P 5♠
P ?

---

Your agreement over partner's cue is that step 1 is an artificial negative and everything else is natural; so your 4D bid showed extra values, no other suit to bid, only 4 spades and no diamond stop.

What is partner looking for? What do you bid?

[hrothgar]

Hand 1:

I would expect that partner is looking for a Heart control. I'm going to pass...

Hand 2:

I'm a little confused about this one... Based on your agreements, partner should be asking about control of the unbid suit (in this case, Spades). He doesn't seem worried about the quality of your trump, nor is he asking about Diamonds or Clubs... You're correct that you don't have a great hand, however, the one thing you're definitely bring to the table is a Spade control.

Am I misunderstanding the methods?

Hand 3:

Once again, a bit confused about the methods...
Does the 4♦ cue bid deny a club control?

[inquiry]

1. Despite my spade card, I play this 5♠ bid ask for heart control. Hard to believe it is not asking for good spades, but there you go. I pass.

2. Two unbid suits, jump ask for good hearts. I don't have them. Pass

3. If all partner needed was spade qiueen and an ace, he could have blackwood. With two unbid suits, this is probalby asking for good spades. He probably has Kxxx or Axxx. The ten is a great card, but bad splits will abound. I pass.

[FrancesHinden]

The methods are that we _don't_ generally play a jump to the 5 level as asking for control of the unbid suit. It is just used as a general slam try.

You can take whatever inference you like about lack of use of blackwood or cue-bidding however.

[FrancesHinden]

hrothgar, on Aug 29 2006, 02:37 PM, said:

Hand 3:

Once again, a bit confused about the methods...
Does the 4♦ cue bid deny a club control?

The methods are much simpler than you seem to think
By not bidding 4♣ you have said you don't have a club suit.

[whereagles]

1. I'd like to know if pard..

A. Is an overbidder;
B. Is the sort of person who could classify this as a 'long or specific auction'.

If one of the answers is 'yes', then pass.

If both are 'no', then I think pard is telling me "I can make 11 tricks on my own". In that case I bid 6♠ because I cannot believe pard would bid 5♠ looking for heart controls with

AQJTxxx
xx
A
AKQ


2. I take it pard would have bid 4NT if he was worried about the trump suit. If you have agreements as to what 5♦ now would have been, then I would take 5♥ as general hcp-based invitation, in which case I'll probably pass. But if the meaning of 5♦ would be unclear, tt might just be that pard has

xxx
AKQxx
Axx
xx

and was afraid 5♦ would be misunderstood. In that case, I bid 6♥.


3. Doesn't this fall under one of that 'long or specific auction' thing? Anyway, I'm absolutely NOT sure pard is playing you for what you said you had. I think I just pass and take my sure plus.


Finally, I'd like to say 2 things:

1. I find your methods are quite intricated, especially those in use on 3rd hand.

2. You should spank partner on grounds of making reckless undiscussed bids in delicate situations. I positively hate that attitude of spreading confusion when you're already under pressure. And if he's the kind of person you'd argue in the post-mortem along lines of "Of course 5♠ is XXX. What else could it be?", I'd seriously consider sueing him for offenses to my integrity

[mycroft]

I don't know about the first two, but assuming you can ferret out the SQ - does he have a "keycard for spades" bid after double-and-cue? - on the third, he's looking for short diamonds. He didn't cue, he didn't blackwood, he's making a slam try. Of course, if he can double, cue and then bid *his* suit naturally, he only has 5D available...

If the cue sets spades, then he's looking for short diamonds. I don't have 'em. Pass.

Michael.

[mikeh]

1. The analogy I'd draw is to a 5♠ opening bid: needs a top ♠.

Typical (altho uncommon) hand: QJ10987x A AKQx A

So I bid 6♠.

2. An odd auction, in that he could have cue-bid or keycarded...so he has a hand with which neither helps him. Strange tho it may seem, I think this implies a ♠ void....something like void KQxxxxx Kx AJxx...altho weaker ♥ and the ♦A are also entirely consistent.

3. My initial reaction was that it asked for a ♦ control, but that makes no sense: he knows you almost certainly do not have shortness (no raise by rho, and take away 3 ♦s from your hand and rho is raising) and no stopper, hence no high card control. And he did not keycard...I assume that 4N here would have been keycard by him.... if it would not be, then your methods are too subtle for me to guess on this hand So I think it is a general try...non-specific as to the cards he needs... he has extra values but not enough to bid slam all by himself.

AJxx AKxx Ax KQx would be a minimum, I'd think (bearing in mind that in any partnership with this detailed a method, I'd have a much better idea of partner's tendencies that I can have from where I am sitting... it would not have occurred to me that this was a positive response with extras...positive, yes, extras, no ... and the fact that this hand IS extras, means that partner needs a truly big hand to commit to slam unilaterally. Maybe he could even hold AKxx AKxx Ax Kxx etc

[FrancesHinden]

mikeh, on Aug 29 2006, 05:50 PM, said:

... it would not have occurred to me that this was a positive response with extras...positive, yes, extras, no ...

Extras in the context of having bid 2S, promising nothing, last round. Not in any sort of absolute sense. KQxx xx xxxx Axx would be an enormous hand on this auction, as all you did is bid 2S on the first round.

[mikeh]

FrancesHinden, on Aug 29 2006, 12:07 PM, said:

mikeh, on Aug 29 2006, 05:50 PM, said:

... it would not have occurred to me that this was a positive response with extras...positive, yes, extras, no ...

Extras in the context of having bid 2S, promising nothing, last round. Not in any sort of absolute sense. KQxx xx xxxx Axx would be an enormous hand on this auction, as all you did is bid 2S on the first round.

Ok, misread your original post me bad! Now agree with bidding (I'm sure that is a HUGE relief for you ))

[pclayton]

FrancesHinden, on Aug 29 2006, 05:12 AM, said:

What is partner looking for when he jumps to five of a suit?
[short answer: our partnership agreement is that it is only asking for control of the unbid suit in long or specific auctions].

1.

Scoring: IMP

4♥ P P 5♠
P ?

---

What is partner looking for? What do you bid?

2.

Scoring: IMP

4♥ P P 5♠
P ?

---

OK, on this hand you are going to pass 5H whatever it meant because you have a pile of rubbish. But what do you think partner has, and what would you need to accept?

3.

Scoring: IMP

4♥ P P 5♠
P ?

---

Your agreement over partner's cue is that step 1 is an artificial negative and everything else is natural; so your 4D bid showed extra values, no other suit to bid, only 4 spades and no diamond stop.

What is partner looking for? What do you bid?

Frances: If you want really honest answers, I think just posting the sequence without an example hand would get you the 'truth'. Here, we are influenced by partner's possible hands by what he 'can't' hold.

I don't think this is a valueless exercise however, since many situations like this come up at the table and I am looking at 13 cards as I decide what I think my partner's bid 'means'.

1. I think 5♠ is sort of quantitative. If pard only needs one card for 6; pard should bid 6. If pard needs 2 cards for 6, then 5♠ looks right. How about pard holding: ♠AQJTxxx, ♥x, ♦AK, ♣KQJ?

2. This one's easier. Pard has all of the black suit controls or none. Pard has nothing to cue, but has great trump. We don't have room here for Last Train, so pard is stuck with 5♥. I would expect: ♠xx, ♥AKQxxx, ♦xxx, ♣xx. I pass.

3. I have no idea what this means, sorry.

[cherdano]

I agree with Phil on all 3 of them.

I would have thought it universal that no.1 is a quantitative invite to 6♠, as it's the only way to invite slam when spade is the only suit you have. (Assuming you are from the scchool that doesn't like double-then-bid-spades with a one-suiter.)

While I don't know what partner is looking for in no. 3, pass is clear IMO - if all partner needed to know about were an Ace and trump queen, he could have rkcbed.

Arend

[mikeh]

I had a blind spot on 2. I agree with Phil's construction, as a more likely candidate than mine: mine was based on responder having both side controls, hence the ♠ void, while it is far more likely that he has none, hence the need for solid trump.... I think he could have either, but the solid trump scenario is probably a higher frequency holding.

[FrancesHinden]

I'm surprised people think our methods our complicated: apart from the small peice of system on the 3rd hand the methods are much, much simpler than most people here seem to play: jumping to the 5-level is a general slam try. The difficulty is in applying the methods....

Thanks for the replies. The second turns out to be the easist and Phil is nearly spot on: partner had xx AKQxxx xxxx x. As he said afterwards: must have equal holdings in non-trumps otherwise he would have cue-bid something. I admit I might have RKCB'd with that hand and bid slam opposite enough aces (partner's got a non-minimum opening bid, he must have some high cards somewhere!); he didn't want to do that in case I had a diamond void and wasn't sure whether to show it or not.

mikeh has the right idea on the third. I actually held partner's hand, and I was just looking for 'stuff' opposite. As my partner said when he passed on the example hand "if all you wanted was the SQ and the CA you could have key-carded". The hand opposite is AKxx AKQx AQx Jx and slam is both dreadful and goes off (the weak 2-er has a 1354 distribution). 5 is poor but it is difficult to stop in 4.... How would you have bid the strong hand?

And now for the first.... I'm surprised at how many people have such specific meanings for this auction "asking for a heart control" or "asking for a top spade honour". You ain't going to get to bid it very often that way... I agree with those who say that 5S is just randomly quantitative... but then how do we know if we have an accpt or not? Anyway, partner has

AQJ10xx A AK KQ10x

clubs are 5-1 so 6S goes off. 6NT makes, however!

[whereagles]

FrancesHinden, on Aug 30 2006, 12:50 PM, said:

1. I'm surprised people think our methods our complicated: apart from the small peice of system on the 3rd hand the methods are much, much simpler than most people here seem to play: jumping to the 5-level is a general slam try. The difficulty is in applying the methods....

2. The second turns out to be the easist and Phil is nearly spot on: partner had xx AKQxxx xxxx x. As he said afterwards: must have equal holdings in non-trumps otherwise he would have cue-bid something. I admit I might have RKCB'd with that hand and bid slam opposite enough aces (partner's got a non-minimum opening bid, he must have some high cards somewhere!); he didn't want to do that in case I had a diamond void and wasn't sure whether to show it or not.

3. mikeh has the right idea on the third. I actually held partner's hand, and I was just looking for 'stuff' opposite. As my partner said when he passed on the example hand "if all you wanted was the SQ and the CA you could have key-carded". The hand opposite is AKxx AKQx AQx Jx and slam is both dreadful and goes off (the weak 2-er has a 1354 distribution). 5 is poor but it is difficult to stop in 4.... How would you have bid the strong hand?

1. Well, it's not 'people', in general, that find it complicated, it was just me It's ok to have a jump to the 5 level as "general quantitative", but the point is to avoid that sort of muddy bid when something else, simpler and similarily effective, is available. Still I was thinking of the 4♦ bid in hand 3, not the 5 level jumps

2. There's a lot to be said for simplifying stuff. It's far more difficult for pard to figure out what the hell "general quantitative" means in this auction, than to simply forget about a rather remote diamond void and just bid blackwood.

3. Hum.. you basically need ♣KQ and ♠Q across. Hard to find out about that. Opposite a random 8 count, slam isn't going to be good unless pard has extra shape (which he denied to have when he bid 4♦). Just stay fixed and bid 4♠.. though this is easier to say in double dummy mode, of course :/