[ArcLight]

Playing 2/1

If you open 1M (♥ or ♠), and pard responds 2♣
what does 3♦ mean in expert partnerships?

Is it a splinter in support of clubs
or
an excellent 5 card ♦ suit?
or
Other (for Ken Rexford

Which is more common in expert partnerships?

[helene_t]

Lat time we had this discussion there was a majority for the splinter.

[Dwingo]

Splinter

[SoTired]

I think without discussion, it is a splinter.

But there will be a significant expert minority that play it as a good 2-suited hand. 5-5 or better with little outside the two suits.

[jdonn]

Everywhere I play and with everyone with whom I play, splinter has become completely standard.

[FrancesHinden]

I play it as a splinter as well. Coming from a light 2/1 background (so 1M-2C-3C is NF) you need the splinter to show your hand and get a game force set.

I still play it as a splinter in 2/1, but I do vaguely wonder if in fact the 2-suiter is more useful. With club support you can bid 3C in a forcing manner (and if you want, introduce shape relays or some other system over that) but it can be difficult to get over a pure, concentrated 5-5.

(Idle jetlagged speculation)

[cherdano]

FrancesHinden, on Nov 10 2007, 11:46 AM, said:

I play it as a splinter as well. Coming from a light 2/1 background (so 1M-2C-3C is NF) you need the splinter to show your hand and get a game force set.

I still play it as a splinter in 2/1, but I do vaguely wonder if in fact the 2-suiter is more useful. With club support you can bid 3C in a forcing manner (and if you want, introduce shape relays or some other system over that) but it can be difficult to get over a pure, concentrated 5-5.

(Idle jetlagged speculation)

Well of course you could make 3D a shortness ask, but you can't very well do both of
(1) get to know partner's shortness, and
(2) bid out values to find stoppers for 3N
below 3N. On other auctions I am not that worried about finding stoppers, but with a fit in a minor and another bid 5-card suit I would like the option to tell partner about my worries in one of the two unbid suits.

[helene_t]

With a regular p playing light 2/1, I play it as a splinter as well. I thought it's normallly a GF 2-suiter in Acol. 2♦ followed by 3♦ would not necesarily be forcing (in really old style even 2♦ is NF) so it's convenient to have 3♦ as a GF 5-5. In Biedermeier that is so but there 3♣ is forcing.

[han]

I would play it as a splinter.

With Arend I play it as 5-5 with extras and good suits, nice when it comes up. For us the 2C bid is not necessarily natural though, so a splinter isn't as useful.

[jdonn]

I don't understand the purpose of 5-5 good suits. What is wrong with just bidding 2♦ then 3♦ with that, at least in 2/1 which is the system stated in the OP. In fact that is probably superior since partner gets to make another descriptive bid in between. Also this treatment would clearly be less frequent than splinters. The ability to promise good suits does not seem worth the loss.

[mike777]

edit

[dicklont]

At bridgeclues.com Mike Lawrence writes about this issue today.

Quote: "There are two main schools of thought here. Both are in use and both have quite a few followers. When I play with someone who says he wants to play Two Over One, asking about this sequence is one of my first thoughts. It would be embarrassing to bid 3D to show diamonds and have my partner tell the opponents that I have one diamond and some club support.

I used to play exclusively that the 3D bid said I had five good hearts and five good diamonds. This is the treatment that I showed in my book. When I got around to putting the Two Over One system on a CD Rom, I had come under lots of pressure from various partners and my current thoughts are that I am content with either version. The biggest issue is knowing which we are using. Both have merit."

[kenrexford]

Splinter, but...

I use Picture Splinters. So, 3♦ would show club support with two of the top three honors, a stiff diamond, and three of the top four of my major, no 1st/2nd control in the fourth suit.

Classic might be, after 1♠-P-2♣-P-3♦, something like:

♠AQJxx ♥Qxx ♦x ♣KQxx

The stiff could be as high as a Queen, but no higher.
The fourth suit could have the Queen, but not higher.
My suit, or our suit, could be stronger.

Asking bids then kick in, skipping 3NT (to play) and three of my major (sets trumps back to the major), as follows (no "your suit" ask because that's now trumps), step responses:

First non-used step = asks about spades (my suit); 1: Missing the Ace, 2: missing the King, 3: issing the Queen, 4: missing the Jack, 5: solid AKQJ
Second non-used step = asks about the hearts (the unbid suit); 1: no Queen, 2: Queen
Third non-used step = asks about clubs (the agreed minor); answer in steps (1: HH, 2:HHJ, 3: HHH, 4: HHHJ

Responder picks which question he wants to first ask.

Opener, if he has the highest possible answer, also answers the next priority question (priority established by steps) if there is no room to ask two different questions below the next level of the agreed suit (clubs). He might also answer the third question is his second-question answer is also highest and the same result occurs.

If Responder instead sets the major as trumps, you either use normal cuebidding OR have Opener relay (3NT in the example) to allow asking bids by Responder with spades (the now-agreed major) as trumps.

In my thought, however, direct asking bids make more sense, pretending that the minor is agreed, when you as Responder really want to raise spades. To do this, however, you must always skip the major as an asking bid. Further, you may want to consider whether wrap-around answering should be used when the answer is maximal and there is no space for two questions below the next level of the minor OR the next level of the major. That gets trickier, but I think it works best in the long run.

For the timid, set the major.

I'm surprised that not everyone does this.