[goobers]

Just a quick question about this:

If you play it as a solid 7 card minor with nothing outside, aren't you worried about wrong siding the contract for when it's actually on?

I guess the argument is that it is rarely on, and the preemptive value is greater?

Any insights would be great, thanks.

[pclayton]

Sure; this is one of the reasons why folks don't like to play it.

[Walddk]

The gambling 3NT is a feature of the Acol system and has been dumped by many partnerships long time ago. I recommend that you use 3NT for something else; broken minor, 6-5 in the majors, whatever. As Fred Gitelman once put it during a live vugraph broadcast:

"Only open 3NT if you do *NOT* want to play there."

And you are right; once in a blue moon when you hold a solid minor and 3NT is the spot, you have probably wrong-sided the contract by opening 3NT.

Roland

[jvage]

There are pros and cons, since the first 2 posters focused on the negative aspects of using 3NT as a solid minor I'll try to be a bit more positive

One advantage is that you describe a very useful aspect of your hand (a 7 card running minor) in one bid. Partner with a suitable hand can pass when expecting to make or preempt or bid a making game or slam in the minor. If you use 3NT to describe a broken minor (a possibility mentioned by Roland) it is more difficult for partner to evaluate, also because he more often will be unsure which minor you got.

At the same time 3NT preempts opponents, who often will have the highest contract. They are forced to start investigating their right strain at the four-level.

Some people use 3♠ as the bid showing the solid minor, this avoids the problem of wrongsiding. The drawback is that you then have to give up the very useful natural 3♠ pre-empt, or alternatively change your whole 3-level structure.

One reason the "gambling" 3NT got a bad reputation is that most inexperienced players pass to often as partners. I think it helps thinking of it as a 4-level preempt that may be passed in 3NT. In particular if you have tried playing 3NT when partner got a void in your running suit you would not like to try that again

John

[Gerben42]

There is one thing you can do to mess up the convention. If you allow opener to have a side value, you are now increasing the frequency and increasing the gambling. Partner please pass if you have the two suits stopped I haven't, but I won't tell you which

Although 3NT as gambling preempts the opponents and shows your hand in great detail, other weak meanings that are more frequent and useful do so too, so this is a non-argument.

[awm]

I think the argument is something like this...

Suppose we have a running 7-card minor and out. What can we open? There are basically four options:

(1) Open 4m. This works well when the opponents have most of the outstanding points, because it forces them to guess at a high level. If our best contract is 5m partner will usually get this right, because he expects about seven tricks in suit for the 4m preempt (okay the normal hand is a broken 8-bagger and not a solid seven). The main problem is that our best contract could easily be 3NT and now we've missed it.

(2) Open 3m. This allows partner to bid 3NT with certain hands. However there will be many hands when 3NT is right and partner doesn't figure it out, because partner will play us for a weaker suit (say AQxxxxx) and will not expect us to produce many tricks in notrump if he has only 1-2 in our suit. The 3m bid also puts less pressure on opponents than opening 4m in case it is their hand.

(3) Open 1m. This more or less describes our hand in strength (surely AKQJxxx in clubs and out is better than most 12-14 balanced hands anyway) and there's a pretty good chance we get to 3NT from partner's side when it's correct after 1m-bid-2m. However this bid doesn't pressure opponents much at all, and they can easily get into the auction when they have the majority of the values.

(4) Open 3NT gambling. This has to be better than option (1); it puts basically just as much pressure on opponents (okay it's one level lower, but there's also the issue that they don't know our suit right off). It enables us to play 3NT on some of the hands where 3NT is right, but of course there will be some hands where 3NT only makes from partner's side and we end up in essentially the same boat we were in after opening 4m. The main loss in constructive auctions to 4m is hands where 4NT or 6NT is best. Is 4NT over a 4m preempt even "to play" in most of our methods? And most of the "wrong sided" 6NT contracts can be played in a "right-sided" 6m for only a small loss.

So the theory is that the 3NT gambling opening is essentially equal in preemptive value to opening 4m while being superior in constructive value. Clearly it is not as good at constructively reaching 3NT as option (3), but option (3) didn't put any pressure on the opponents at all.

[Fluffy]

The only temes I've seen it working, a natural 1 level opening would had worked as well.

to Adam: 3NT allows more flexible double and cuebid to show both majors, difference as a preempt to 4m is bigger IMO

[cherdano]

I am always a little surprised how strong feelings this discussion seems to generate. It seems to me a question like "Does 1S-2H-3m show extras?" is much more important to discuss, and I could understand strong feelings on that one...

I know how terrible gambling 3N is, but I can only remember good results from it. Of course, I don't remember many results involving it at all But then again, I don't understand Namyats, and so can't benefit from 3N= 4m preempt that much

[kenrexford]

I have no affinity to or dislike of Gambling 3NT. Whatever partner wants is fine.

However, I do have a fond memory. A lady friend of mine from years ago wanted to know what Gambling 3NT was. I explained it, and she wanted to try it. I reminded her that she passes if she has the other three suits stopped, and that she can often figure out which minor I have by her lack of an honor there or by shortness. We agreed that 3NT showed nothing on the outside.

So, I opened 3NT. She passed with something like AKxxx-Axxx-Axxx-void.







Anyway, after a few moment, I ducked the heart lead. RHO won this, saw the glaring hole in dummy, and immediately went to work on setting up his partner's clubs.

[pclayton]

kenrexford, on Feb 20 2007, 02:45 PM, said:

I have no affinity to or dislike of Gambling 3NT. Whatever partner wants is fine.

However, I do have a fond memory. A lady friend of mine from years ago wanted to know what Gambling 3NT was. I explained it, and she wanted to try it. I reminded her that she passes if she has the other three suits stopped, and that she can often figure out which minor I have by her lack of an honor there or by shortness. We agreed that 3NT showed nothing on the outside.

So, I opened 3NT. She passed with something like AKxxx-Axxx-Axxx-void.







Anyway, after a few moment, I ducked the heart lead. RHO won this, saw the glaring hole in dummy, and immediately went to work on setting up his partner's clubs.

This reminds me of a certain "inverted" version of the Gambling 3N. (name your favorite country to pick on").

Open 3N with some stoppers and hope your pard puts down a running suit.

[Double !]

IMO, one could write a dissertation or present a lengthy point-counterpoint discussion including plenty of documentation to support various potential benefits and liabilities of this type of Gambling 3NT opening. For example, while the bid could potentially wrong-side the contract, the opening leader won't always find the killing opening lead (that might be found by opening leader's partner). A draw-back to a transfer opening is the potential for the opps to make a lead-directing double. Personally, I think that one significant potential liability is going minus in 4m when partner has enough defense to stop the opps from making their contract but not enough quick winners win the race and permit 3NT to make.

It's not clear to me that opening such a hand that has such a skewed ODR with a 1m bid solves much, especially if the opps become active. I guess that strong club players could assert that such hands could be opened with 2C with rebids adjusted to accommodate such hands. I am neither slamming the bid nor advocating it. Just suggesting that there are many points and counterpoints, theoretical and otherwise. I will admit to liking highly descriptive bids for hands that are otherwsie difficult to bid.
Cool topic. Gee, I need to figure out how many zar points a 3NT bid has (between 26 and 29?).

DHL

[zasanya]

Power precision 3♣ shows any 7 carder suit headed by AKQ and no other honor.It seems to have all the advantages of a gambling 3NT and none of the drawbacks.
However I have never been dealt such a hand in last 20 years.

[Echognome]

Gerben42, on Feb 20 2007, 12:07 PM, said:

There is one thing you can do to mess up the convention. If you allow opener to have a side value, you are now increasing the frequency and increasing the gambling. Partner please pass if you have the two suits stopped I haven't, but I won't tell you which

Although 3NT as gambling preempts the opponents and shows your hand in great detail, other weak meanings that are more frequent and useful do so too, so this is a non-argument.

Funnily enough I prefer 3NT to be with at least TWO outside stoppers. It's a "come and get me" bid. I'd bid it with Kx JTx A AKQxxxx.

That being said, I don't feel strongly enough about it to worry if partner likes to play it.

[kgr]

Another advantage of gambling 3NT compared to having the same meaning for eg 3S is that 3NT is allowed most of the time and 3S not.

[Gerben42]

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This reminds me of a certain "inverted" version of the Gambling 3N. (name your favorite country to pick on").

Open 3N with some stoppers and hope your pard puts down a running suit. 

I know that one, in fact I once had ♦AKQxxxx and out when partner opened a gambling 3NT (favourable) and just for the fun of the argument I passed.

Pd went a comfy 7 off for 350 but unfortunately both minors cashed 2 times around the table so 4M was not as cold as I expected.

Quote

Funnily enough I prefer 3NT to be with at least TWO outside stoppers. It's a "come and get me" bid. I'd bid it with Kx JTx A AKQxxxx.

That's a good thing opposite a passed hand.

Quote

I don't understand Namyats, and so can't benefit from 3N= 4m preempt that much

There are several ways of playing this, my preferred version is "I would have opened 5♥/♠ according to my losers and vulnerability but such an opening bid looks silly".

[helene_t]

I like gambling 3NT a lot. It has given me a lot of good results. I don't believe wrong-siding is a strong argument against it - any auction leading to 3NT in partner's hand is likely to give opps much more clues about what to lead.

But of course, if I didn't play it I would use 3NT for something else (say 6-5 majors) which would probably have about the same frequency and also give good results when the hand comes up. As Gerben once said: "All conventions work well for the hands they have been designed for, except for mini-Roman". (I would add Capp to the list but that's off-topic).

[blackshoe]

Sometimes you have to consider conventions in the light of the rest of what you play. For example, I play Namyats with some partners. When I do that I prefer 3NT to be any four level preempt in either minor, since otherwise I have no way to show that hand. I really like Namyats, so ...