[joker_gib]

Free, on Oct 17 2007, 07:45 PM, said:

I also wonder why it's not either natural or a constructive raise? 1M-2M is more preemptive, and with a constructive raise opener will be able to bid more after 1M-2(M-1)

Yes !

Is this a problem to reverse it Harald ?

And, as Frederick says, play it 2M-1 as constructive or natural...

1M-2M is more premptive, particularly on 1♠-2♠ because opps can't double 2♥ to show the suit....


Alain

[whereagles]

Actually, let me show you the whole hand:

Scoring: IMP

1♠ (pass) 1NT (pass)
2♠ (pass) pass (dbl)
pass (4♥) ..4♠ (pass)
pass (dbl) end

---

It's funny how things happen. If I had bid 3♠ over 2♠, South would pass and pard may or may not have bid 4♠. In either case, North would surely pass and score +200 to +400 with the heart game on.

If I had made a direct 2♠ raise, South might have found his OBAR double and there's no stopping North from bidding game. Sure, we won't bid 4♠ in this case, but would still score -620 when we could have "preempted" opps out of game.

Who could have guessed this?

[jtfanclub]

whereagles, on Oct 18 2007, 04:22 AM, said:

It's funny how things happen. If I had bid 3♠ over 2♠, South would pass and pard may or may not have bid 4♠. In either case, North would surely pass and score +200 to +400 with the heart game on.

Interesting.

I know that this is for Precision, and not SAYC, but in my version we use 2♠ to show a minimum hand with 5 or a trash hand* with 6 spades, and 3♠ for minimum but non-trash hands with 6 spades. So our auction would go 1♠-1NT-3♠-P. Makes it very difficult for the opponents to interfere, not least because after 1♠-1NT-2♠-P responder could easily have a 10 count with a doubleton spade. No reason to keep looking when partner has shown a minimum.

I doubt you want to use this exact method, but having opener rebid 3♠ with minimum-ish hands with 6 spades, and bidding 2 spades with some hands with only 5 spades, may really help out your system.

*A hand which would not have opened had it been a 5 card suit, eg. AJxxxx KQx xx xx

[skjaeran]

Free, on Oct 17 2007, 08:45 PM, said:

skaeran, on Oct 17 2007, 05:28 PM, said:

whereagles, on Oct 17 2007, 03:02 PM, said:

No strong club. Just regular 2/1 with some home-made tweaks. Which makes it even more important to support with support

I'm playing a 2/1 light (2/1=GF unless rebid) with a NF 1NT response to 1M. We use 2-way bids in the suit below the opening: 1♠-2♥ and 1♥-2♦ is either a natural 2/1 bid or a weak 3c raise 3-7(8-) and a direct raise is constructive (8+)9-11 (a bad 12 possible). So far this has been working well for us.

I've played that a few times, once it came up and wasn't a big success... Of course, one hand doesn't prove anything, but I'm skeptical

I also wonder why it's not either natural or a constructive raise? 1M-2M is more preemptive, and with a constructive raise opener will be able to bid more after 1M-2(M-1)

The main reason is that as we play it the by far most frequent sequence will be 1M - 2(M-1) - 2M, leaving more space to explore when partner's got the natural 2/1 hand.

Playing it as you propose the bidding will frequently be 1M - 2(M-1) - something, making it harder to distinguish the natural 2/1 hand and at the same time steal useful bidding space.

After 1M-2M (constructive) it's also easy for opener to just blast game, invite game or invite slam (which all of them are more frequent than over the weak raise) without having to think about the possible natural strong hand with partner.

[FrancesHinden]

whereagles, on Oct 17 2007, 12:08 PM, said:

2. This wasn't the 1st, but the 3rd time, that I bid a shapely weakish raise via 1NT and got into trouble later. The frequency is high enough for me to be convinced that shapely supp hands must raise directly.

I play in two regular partnerships. One of them plays 2/1, SF 1NT, and constructive raises (and would bid 1NT on your sample hand - I have made a 'constructive raise' on a 5-count, but it was a better hand than this). The other partnership just raises to 2S in the normal way on any hand with support.

Both these partnerships have been playing a fair amount of bridge for at least 15 years, and I can't say that either method has seemed superior, as long as responder with the 'pile raise' (as we call it) remains disciplined, and doesn't change their mind later in the auction.