[Hilver]

I just like to know what you regard as the best meaning of the openingbids of 4♣ or 4♦ ? Should it be a preemptive in ♣ or ♦ ? Or is it better to play it as a 7+ card ♥ /♠ headed by AKQ(J) and no HCP's in the other suits?

[gwnn]

Pre-emptive in ♣/♦. In fact, these are probably my favourite pre-empts. Partner should raise "often".

[Codo]

I very strongly agree with Czsaba. There are many bids I would change to show a namyts kind hand, preferably the 3 NT gambling, but I would not like to give away ths highly preemptive bids of 4 Club an d 4 Diamond.

It is a matter of frequency and gains: I have a namyats kind of hand nearly never, but I have these preempts quite frequently.

[655321]

Add me to the group that strongly prefers 4m as a natural preempt.

[ArtK78]

4 of a minor preempts are likely to preempt your partner. I play Namyats, but that is not the point. I use 3NT as a 4 of a minor preempt in a minor. At least you can play 3NT when it is right.

You don't have to play Namyats, but opening 4 of a minor as a natural weak preempt opposite an unpassed hand is foolish.

[wclass___]

4m Natural?? No thanks...
for me it shows "good" major hand, that could easily have opened 1H...

[jdonn]

ArtK78, on Nov 12 2008, 08:49 AM, said:

4 of a minor preempts are likely to preempt your partner. I play Namyats, but that is not the point. I use 3NT as a 4 of a minor preempt in a minor. At least you can play 3NT when it is right.

You don't have to play Namyats, but opening 4 of a minor as a natural weak preempt opposite an unpassed hand is foolish.

100% opposite. Opening 3NT to show a weak preempt in a minor is quite possibly the worst convention in existance. You let them double and pass, pass and double, double and double, pass and bid, even (if they are smart) overcall 4♣ showing the majors. However time has proven opening 4m preemptively is hugely effective. The opponents frequently have to guess to overcall 4M or not and pay a huge price if they guess wrongly. It's not even that infrequent, and when it happens it's a huge winner.

[FrancesHinden]

Agree with all of this.

NV, I promise you that my 4m openings run very little risk of missing a making 3NT.

And with a vul pre-empt, it's rare that 3NT is making exactly 9 tricks, and they don't have a good save in a major, so I don't think missing out on 3NT contracts is much of a problem - I can still play in 4NT after opening 4m.

If I felt I needed to be able to show a good 4M opener, I would use 3NT to show that hand type, not waste two 4m openers.

[keylime]

After reading this thread, I think I'm going to change our 4m preempts to be natural. Larry, read this...change course buddy!

[Gerben42]

Point #1: Having a Namyats-bid is useful as opening 5M with these hands is silly, yet when I have a preemptive 5M-bid, I want to bid it as a preempt.

Point #2: Gambling 3N is not very useful as it seldom occurs and wrongsides 3N.

Point #3: JDown is right here... Using 3NT as bad minor preempt gives them 2 shots.

So I guess the "solution" is 3NT = Namyats, 4m = natural.

I don't like the classical Namyats that promises a solid suit. For me it shows a hand that wants to open 5M, so it's just a preempt with 1 fewer loser. No one vuln in first seat I would open a Namyats bid with:

♠x
♥KQJxxxxx
♦Axx
♣x

[keylime]

Gerben,

That's roughly what I emailed Larry about. Being able to preempt to 4 helps a lot more than an artificial 3NT.

[jdonn]

Yeah I love the 3NT opening to show strong 4 bid in a major, the fact it's lower gives plenty of room to work it out. It SHOULD be GCC legal but it's not (we have been through this a thousand times before, ACBL conventions committee seems to ignore all requests pertaining to this convention, which is similar to legal conventions and easy to defend against).

[pclayton]

jdonn, on Nov 12 2008, 07:27 AM, said:

Yeah I love the 3NT opening to show strong 4 bid in a major, the fact it's lower gives plenty of room to work it out. It SHOULD be GCC legal but it's not (we have been through this a thousand times before, ACBL conventions committee seems to ignore all requests pertaining to this convention, which is similar to legal conventions and easy to defend against).

The wheels of progress turn slowly at times.

If anyone has any contacts on C and C, please pass them along to me.

[joker_gib]

jdonn, on Nov 12 2008, 04:27 PM, said:

Yeah I love the 3NT opening to show strong 4 bid in a major...

Hi Josh,

What kind of developments do you play on this ?

and I also prefer 4m as minor !

[ArtK78]

Despite the consensus of opinion about how theoretically defective the 3NT bid showing a weak preempt of 4 of a minor may be, the fact remains that I have not had any bad results playing this method. So, while you may argue that you give your opponents more options by using the 3NT bid in this manner, in real life it does not seem to work out badly.

[jdonn]

ArtK78, on Nov 12 2008, 10:55 AM, said:

Despite the consensus of opinion about how theoretically defective the 3NT bid showing a weak preempt of 4 of a minor may be, the fact remains that I have not had any bad results playing this method. So, while you may argue that you give your opponents more options by using the 3NT bid in this manner, in real life it does not seem to work out badly.

- You probably don't play against very prepared opponents, in which case of course it matters less (much like a weak notrump).
- I bet you have never had it passed and made exactly 9 tricks.

[ArtK78]

jdonn, on Nov 12 2008, 11:10 AM, said:

- I bet you have never had it passed and made exactly 9 tricks.

You lose.

[jdonn]

ArtK78, on Nov 12 2008, 11:13 AM, said:

jdonn, on Nov 12 2008, 11:10 AM, said:

- I bet you have never had it passed and made exactly 9 tricks.

You lose.

Then you need a refresher on what a 4 minor opening looks like

[FrancesHinden]

jdonn, on Nov 12 2008, 04:56 PM, said:

ArtK78, on Nov 12 2008, 11:13 AM, said:

jdonn, on Nov 12 2008, 11:10 AM, said:

- I bet you have never had it passed and made exactly 9 tricks.

You lose.

Then you need a refresher on what a 4 minor opening looks like

Well, if it ever happened, I'd expect it to be something like

Ax
QJ10
AKQJxxxx
-

opposite

xx
-
xxxx
QJ109xxx

where the pre-empt does nothing much more than stop the preemptive suit

[jdonn]

Yes I was being (mildly) facetious. It could be something like QJTx QJx AJx AJx as well. Of course such hands will be quite uncommon. If you are catering your system to where you make exactly 9 tricks in notrump when declared by a weak long minor hand but not 10 tricks by his strong parter, then you have some seriously misplaced priorities.

BTW in your example you should switch opener's red suits. Would hate to miss an easy slam!