[cjames]

I kibbed a hand on BBO today where a proffesional player played with an expert partner.
The pro opened 1♣ in south, west bid 1♠ and north doubled. East-West ended in 4♠sx-1, but more interesting South critized his partners negative double afterwards.

North held:

8
J952
AQ8743
Q3

North said they might lose a ♥ fit, but South told him "spades higher ranking, in those cases bid your real suit better"

Is this the general view in the expert community? Does it change if Norths diamond holding is AQ874 or a weaker six card suit like QJxxxx or KJxxxx?

[helene_t]

I find this a little weird (especially if NS play a style in which 1♣ tends to deny a 4-card diamonds). S may be more likely to have three diamonds than four hearts, but if opps are going to bid 3♠ the are going to outbid us anyway, and if not, N can still bid 3♦ over 2♠.

Besides North is on lead against a spade contract and EW don't have the power to bid 3NT so 2♦ for lead-directing purposes doesn't make much sense.

[rogerclee]

Automatic double. 2♦ is awful.

[Codo]

With no bid like 1 NT or 2 ♣ avaiable to show 5+ Diamonds and 4 Hearts, I would like to bid Diamonds first and double later to show the shape.
But this hand is not rich enough for this, so the double is automatic.

[gwnn]

S is a result merchant...

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

I think the neg. double is fine.

I think the hand is slightly to weak for a forcing 2D bid,
but I wont be surprised, if other would say the hand is
strong enough.

As it is, the neg. X allows you to introduce both suits, your
plan is to bid 3D, if partner does not show up with hearts.
The arguements for the neg. X only get stronger, if you
weaken the hand and / or the suit.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[Hanoi5]

What gwnn said.

[ulven]

X is the 'theory' bid and mainstream choice. My experience is that 2D works better in practise and that's how we do it. This was brought to my attention by Johan Bennet (Cavendish winner and Bermuda Bowl semifinalist) about 15 years ago.

For most, the double is so obvious that noone reflects of the alternative outcome.

So, I agree with S...

[Apollo81]

I don't understand the pro's comment. What if he had Axx KQ10x Jx AKJx and his RHO bid 3♠ over your 2♦? Wouldn't he either double or bid 3NT? Either way you are risking a worse score than your cold 4♥.

[han]

With a gameforcing hand and this shape I would certainly bid 2D. Here it is too likely that the heart suit gets lost so I would start with a negative double, especially since 2D is already a bit of a stretch.

Good topic for more discussion.

[andy_h]

I would X but would be interested to see how 2D will pan out in general even though I wouldn't consider it at the table because the hearts might get lost. So what if spades are higher ranking? That's like telling me to not dbl with xx QTxx AQ Jxxxx.
If North's diamonds were weaker, defo X

[neilkaz]

Great thread here..I don't mind the ♦ bid with a decent 6 carder and 4 ♥ to only the Jack, but won't criticize either action and do feel that the fact that ♥ is often outbid by ♠ is a factor.

[Codo]

Apollo81, on Apr 23 2008, 06:00 AM, said:

I don't understand the pro's comment. What if he had Axx KQ10x Jx AKJx and his RHO bid 3♠ over your 2♦? Wouldn't he either double or bid 3NT? Either way you are risking a worse score than your cold 4♥.

1. Ulven surely knows that there are hands where his approach will fail.
2. You know that you can construct hands where 2 Diamond would be the winning auction and hands where double would be.

So what was the bottom line of your comment?

[whereagles]

People sometimes have views on the game that are not mainstream. Like me, for instance.. lol. The difference is I'm usually right

[ulven]

There are hands where showing your longest suit immediately, identifying a 5+suit, are going you give you the best results in the long run.
And, there are of course hands where showing possesion of 4-cards hearts are going to serve you best. You have to choose approach. The bridge world at large always puts a premium on the unnamed major, for good reasons, because it's important to find a fit here after an overcall.

The question here is: is this really going to give us the highest expected value? How often do we have a fit? Will we be able to find that fit after naming our longest suit instead? For bidding our long suit to be wrong, two things need to occur:
a/ we have a 4-4 fit in unbid major
b/ we will not find it or play at incorrect level because the next hand raises to some level making the auction awkward or go 'downright out the window'

If the next hand raises, jumping or not, and we don't have a 4-4 fit, you can be sure that showing a 5+suit will serve you much better. So it comes down to this:
How do you estimate the percentages for [a+b] compared to not [a+b] ?
Can you handle the post-mortem, partner/teammates/psychologically, if you don't X and the fit gets lost?

If you can't, you should keep X-ing regardless of percentages...

[mcphee]

I prefer bidding 2D to the neg dble. So hang me.

[helene_t]

ulven, on Apr 23 2008, 01:22 PM, said:

If the next hand raises, jumping or not, and we don't have a 4-4 fit, you can be sure that showing a 5+suit will serve you much better.

It might serve us better but it might not matter.

For what purposes will 2♦ help us? P will bid 3♦ over 2♠ if he has three of them, but will he bid over 3♠? And if p has less than three diamonds, it won't matter.