Help
awm, on Mar 3 2008, 03:22 PM, said:
There are definite advantages to a 2♦ bid, as Justin has pointed out. But there are also problems, for example partner may try to take a sacrifice in 5♦ that doesn't work out well because our hand is so flat, or partner may try to penalize a game bid by opponents that doesn't work out well because our hand has so little defense. These possibilities seem more likely to me than partner having enough for 3NT but being unable to bid, if potentially a bit less costly.
I would bet highly on the number of successful saves partner taking being higher than the number of bad saves partner takes after a 2D bid. I mean we don't have very much defense at all so I can't see partner ever taking a phantom save, maybe he takes a save that goes down 1 too many but thats not a huge disaster. I feel like I have enough trick taking potential that we won't go for 1100 if partner saves (or that this would be a freak occurance). Perhaps this depends on who your partner is/what they expect from a 2D bid.
Add to this the advantages you gain when you are able to take up room from their auction/put them to a test at the 5 level ie 1S 2D 3D 5D ?, I am very happy overall when partner jumps to some number of diamonds and consider that a huge plus of overcalling (enabling partner to do that)
As far as partner Xing them, I can see this happening on an auction like 1S 2D 4S(made heavy) or something where he's forced into showing cards, but I think it is unlikely partner will double them unsuccessfully if he was able to get a bid in first and the opps still bid game (like 1S 2D 3D 3H 4S p p). Usually partner can figure out they are not going to go down 2. Again maybe this depends on who partner is. This is a real downside but I don't think it happens very often (especially since people don't jump to 4M very much with decent hands; see a recent thread where people disliked doing so).
