[luis]

A friend of mine developed a nice convention to handle overcalls in the sandwich position. I want to present his ideas here so you can comment and use them if you like it.

After

1x-pass-1y-?

A new suit shows 3+ cards in the suit and 5+ in the remaining suit.
Example 1d-p-1s-2c = 3+ clubs and 5+ hearts.

1NT shows a one-suited hand in one of the unbid suits without tolerance for the other suit (2- cards)

Opener's cuebid shows a 5-5 hand in the two remaining suits with a defensive hand.
Responder's cuebid shows a 5-5 hand in the two remaining suits with an offensive hand.

DBl is used to show a powe hand (17+ HCP) any distribution so all the previous bids are limited to 16.

Luis

[inquiry]

This looks interesting, but it will be a frequency thing. What do you do when you want to overcall a suit for lead directing purposes but don't have the required two suiter? What do you do when your too good to preempt but have a nice one suiter? I am always one for trying out new ideas, and I will play with this toy to see how it works in competition. Do you have any expereience with it?

Ben

[luis]

Quote

This looks interesting, but it will be a frequency thing. What do you do when you want to overcall a suit for lead directing purposes but don't have the required two suiter? What do you do when your too good to preempt but have a nice one suiter? I am always one for trying out new ideas, and I will play with this toy to see how it works in competition. Do you have any expereience with it?

Ben

I've played this for about 2 years with one pd. It works great.
If you don't have a two suiter you just bid 1NT showing one suit. Pd always can figure out what suit it is.
The ability to show 3 cards in a suit and 5+ in another one is fantastic to let pd find the best fit at the right level in his next bid.

[the hog]

I used to play something similar as a direct overcall over 1C/1D and it worked great as well, Luis.
(1C) 1D/H/S , and also 2C over (1D), shows a 3+ suit and a longer outside suit. The major benefit of this was that the opps lost their negative X.

I think your sandwich idea has a LOT of merit in allowing you to find 2 suits to play.

[DrTodd13]

In expert standard bidding, in your scenario, we are able
to show single suited in any suit, even the opponents suits.
A couple days ago the bididng went, (1D)-P-(1H)-2D by me
and my partner didn't trust my bid and pulled it when 2D
was the optimal spot for us. You also want to be able to
overcall 1H in that sequence naturally when you have a 6
or 7 card suit. You can also use X for the other two suits
with a stronger hand or 1N with the other two suits but
a weaker hand. You can again roll all of the really strong
hands into the X regardless of shape. So, what is this
new scheme buying us?

Moreover, we need to pay particular attention to WHY we
are bidding here. Partner is a passed hand. Either we
are looking for a spot to sac or we want to seriously
compete for a part score. My hand is devalued by its
position and partner can't have anything much of interest
or he would have bid. I'm not sure that average balanced hands
should be entering this auction so I wonder if bids showing
3-5 are just giving away information to the opps.

On a side note, my regular lunchtime partner and I played
canape overcalls for a while. They didn't come up all that
much because we play forcing pass and only get once chance
at the apple instead of two for normal systems. Even when it
did come up we never realized any benefits from them. I think
Bocchi-Duboin play them so there must be something to them
but I haven't found it.

[Free]

I like the idea, but I also like the idea to show both suits without opening strength. Normally I use the 1NT bid to show such a hand, and Dbl to show a similar hand with opening value.

Its very interesting to show 5-3 in the remaining suits, so partner can pass with a 5 card, or bid the other suit whenever its better.

I'd like to combine these hands and your system. Any suggestions??

Free

[luis]

Quote

I like the idea, but I also like the idea to show both suits without opening strength. Normally I use the 1NT bid to show such a hand, and Dbl to show a similar hand with opening value.

Its very interesting to show 5-3 in the remaining suits, so partner can pass with a 5 card, or bid the other suit whenever its better.

I'd like to combine these hands and your system. Any suggestions??

Free

Hi Free,

One option is to use 2NT (if 1NT and 2N are available) to show a weak one suited hand without tolerance in the other suit.
Jumps are reserved to show 4-6 hands with 4 in the bid suit and six in the remaining suit.
I really like to reserve dbl to show 16+ hands in the sandwich position so pd can have a better understanding of what's going on when everybody is bidding and he has some values himself. The distintction between dbl and others as 11-15 is very good, you can use 2N if you want for your less than 11 one suited hands if you want whenever 1N and 2N are available.

Free's modification:
New suit = 3+ cards, 5+ in the remaining suit
Opener's cue = defensive 5-5 hand in the remaining suits
Responder's cue = offensive 5-5 hand in the remaining suits
Dbl = 16+
1N = 11-15 one suited hand without tolerance for the other suit
2N = Weakish one suited hand
Jump in a new suit = 4 cards, 6+ in the remaining suit