The_Hog, on Oct 4 2008, 02:21 PM, said:
dburn, on Oct 4 2008, 04:12 AM, said:
Oh, well. It turned out that partner had long bad spades, a few diamonds, and a death wish. That's the trouble with reading just the first post, writing an answer, and then finding that the original poster has already spilled the beans. If you're wrong you look a complete idiot; if you're right no one will believe that you didn't read all the other posts before posting your own.
Still, at least I would have pulled on pclayton's actual hand facing pclayton's actual partner. And at least someone for whose opinion I have much respect thinks that fit non-jumps are as stupid as I think they are, which is very stupid indeed.
I would be interested in knowing why you think this, David. Why is a fnj more stupid than suddenly discovering a long suit in your hand that you should have mentioned earlier or that perhaps you should not have mentioned at all?
I think that Ron has touched on a critical issue:
We are all (pretty much) in agreement that this auction is a bit weird. Partner had multiple opportunities to bid earlier. For some reason, he didn't.
If we're going to try to assign a reasonable meaning for a bid like 4
♠, we need to determine the relative frequency for a number of hand types that partner might have: From what I can tell, folks have identified three main hand types:
1. Partner could have a long spade suit that he didn't think he could mention earlier in the auction. Partner should almost certainly pass 4
♠
2. Partner could have some number of Spades and Diamond support. This bid should let partner reach an informed decision between 4
♠ and 5
♦
3. Partner has primary Diamond support but wants a Spade lead. Partner is expected to bid 5
♦
If I think about my own bidding style, I expect that hand type 2 and 3 are (likely) to be most frequent. I normally prefer to bash into contracts as quickly as possible. However, there are times when I prefer to walk the dog. I recall one match against a top seed where Kevin opened a MOSCITO type 1
♠ opening (promising and unbalanced hand with 4+ Diamonds). RHO overcalled 2
♥. I passed with seven card Diamond support. The opponents found a game, but the act of suppressing the fit made it much more difficult for them to evaluate their hands.
On this occasion, I didn't back into the auction at a late stage. I suspect that there are other hands where I would do so...