[FrancesHinden]

hanp, on Feb 18 2009, 01:34 PM, said:

Codo, on Feb 18 2009, 04:16 AM, said:

I think that using 3 ♠ as a heart raise is a dumb idea.

I would use 4 ♥ as a heart raise and 3 ♠ as a COG and think that this is obviously better then having 4 ways of raising hearts but no way to ask for a stopper.

bingo

How many posts do I need to get up to before I change user id?

[slap on wrist] off-topic comment [\slap on wrist]

[FrancesHinden]

jdonn, on Feb 18 2009, 02:20 AM, said:

He meant fit non-jump. That has been the most discussed bridge-related topic (perhaps other than regulations) in the forums over the years. There are clearly people who think when a passed hand bids a new suit at various levels opposite an overcall that it promises a fit with the overcaller. And there are people who do not think that. And neither side seems to want to budge.

and there are wishy-washy liberals who think it depends on the auction.

P P 1H 3S
4D
is a fit non-jump

P 2S 3H P
4C
isn't

[jdonn]

I'm curious who the expert was and what he or she recommended.

[maggieb]

Good question Josh, let's have a poll!

I think that 3S, 4C and 4H are awm's top three choices. 3S because I like it best myself, 4H because there is a decent chance that it is the best contract (and some people actually like it!) and 4C because it is less weird than 4D, 3NT and pass.

Pass is impossible, right? No expert would suggest 4D since 4C is so much better, and 3NT? I think that awm is pulling our legs, there is no fourth choice.

Frances Hinden is of course right that 3NT is not the right spot if partner has

AQx
AKxxx
x
QJxx

But at least we'll be in a game that looks quite solid, and likely outscores any other game which may be good (we still don't know the form of scoring do we?).

If we bid 4C then partner will often raise to 5C with a common 2♠6♥2♦3♣ shape, where I'm afraid that 4H is more likely to make. I think that 3S gets us to a making game most often.

[kenrexford]

I have no idea what mainstream would be, and obviously there is no consensus anyway.

That said, two things seem obvious.

1. 3♠ should be a punt bid.
2. 3NT is to play.

The question, then, is whether 4C and 4D should be fit-bids. I think they should.

The objection is that you then have no way to handle minor two-suiters. Sure you do. Bid 3♠. If partner bids 3NT, then bid 4♣. If partner opts against 3NT, he bids whatever he would bid if you had bid 4♣ to show both minors, with the advantage that his "pass" is now 4♣, which keeps the auction open, in caser you care.

A second objection is that you might just have clubs. If you have clubs, no heart tolerance, not diamonds, and a reason to bid, bid 3NT and pray.

3♠ as a power heart raise is not worthy.

[awm]

jdonn, on Feb 18 2009, 11:39 AM, said:

I'm curious who the expert was and what he or she recommended.

This came up at the Caltech bridge club. My feeling was that 3♠ should be choice of games and that it would be a strong favorite opposite a partner who would understand it. However, partner and I had not played much and I had no idea how he would take 3♠, so I guessed to bid 3NT. This ended up getting me a good board as it turned out (3NT made, field was not in game).

After the hand I commented that I thought this was a somewhat interesting bidding problem. John Jones, who was one of my opponents at the table, said he thought it was clear to bid 4♥. This surprised me since a 4♥ call was pretty far down my list of alternatives (after all of 3♠, 3NT, 4♣).

Talking to some other Los Angeles area experts (such as Leo Bell and Jeff Goldsmith), it seems that 4♥ is the universal action among that crowd, although the others did not seem to feel it was quite as much as "what's the problem" call as John Jones.

It's interesting that bridge runs in cliques as much as it does -- all the people I talked to in Los Angeles are reasonably regarded as expert players (several had national or world championship titles)... but these forums have a number of people reasonably regarded as experts as well, and here it seems like 3♠ has a very strong following. It might also be an age-related thing.

[Apollo81]

I wouldn't automatically assume that partner will understand 3♠. Mightn't we want to bid something other than 4♥ on say, a 1444 11-count or 0436 9-10 count? I think 3♠ is pretty clear if partner takes it as choice of games.

3NT would have been my 4th choice -- after 4♣, 3♠, and 4♥

[sathyab]

awm, on Feb 18 2009, 03:07 PM, said:

jdonn, on Feb 18 2009, 11:39 AM, said:

I'm curious who the expert was and what he or she recommended.

This came up at the Caltech bridge club. My feeling was that 3♠ should be choice of games and that it would be a strong favorite opposite a partner who would understand it. However, partner and I had not played much and I had no idea how he would take 3♠, so I guessed to bid 3NT. This ended up getting me a good board as it turned out (3NT made, field was not in game).

After the hand I commented that I thought this was a somewhat interesting bidding problem. John Jones, who was one of my opponents at the table, said he thought it was clear to bid 4♥. This surprised me since a 4♥ call was pretty far down my list of alternatives (after all of 3♠, 3NT, 4♣).

Talking to some other Los Angeles area experts (such as Leo Bell and Jeff Goldsmith), it seems that 4♥ is the universal action among that crowd, although the others did not seem to feel it was quite as much as "what's the problem" call as John Jones.

It's interesting that bridge runs in cliques as much as it does -- all the people I talked to in Los Angeles are reasonably regarded as expert players (several had national or world championship titles)... but these forums have a number of people reasonably regarded as experts as well, and here it seems like 3♠ has a very strong following. It might also be an age-related thing.

The only thing I mind more than a "wtp" answer to a non-wtp problem is "it depends on your agreements" If you haven't discussed this with your partner, chances are there're a lot of others who wouldn't have and probably never will. If we need an agreement in only half the bidding situations discussed in the forum in six months, your systems notes would begin to look like the Yellow Pages of a major metropolitan area.

Any system needs certain axioms, and bidding theory can't be an exception. But the way bridge theory has developed over time is so full of proof-by-construction and actual examples that very soon it becomes unrealistic to hope to derive logical answers to situations that you haven't encountered before. Too late to wish that Pure Mathematicians and language theorists could have been the ones that contributed to the development of bridge systems.

[awm]

sathyab, on Feb 18 2009, 03:45 PM, said:

The only thing I mind more than a "wtp" answer to a non-wtp problem is "it depends on your agreements" If you haven't discussed this with your partner, chances are there're a lot of others who wouldn't have and probably never will. If we need an agreement in only half the bidding situations discussed in the forum in six months, your systems notes would begin to look like the Yellow Pages of a major metropolitan area.

Obviously it's infeasible to have agreements for every situation mentioned in the forums (unless maybe you're Meckwell and play every day of the year with the same partner).

But this general situation actually comes up quite frequently. The description is something like:

(1) Opponents open, partner overcalls.

(2) You have a hand with enough values that you are not eager to pass, but where you don't have any of: a real fit for partner, a stopper in the enemy suit for notrump, or a good enough suit that you want to bid it at whatever level you could do so.

Most typically these are hands where you have something like three small in the enemy suit, two small in partner's suit, and 4-4 with a bunch of values in the unbids. As the level gets higher the description gets more nebulous and the problem hands become more common.

I'd say that I've had these hands come up about a half dozen times in the last year. I play more bridge than some, but less bridge than a lot of the posters on these forums. It's not unreasonable to have some agreement that allows you to deal with this type of hand, as it does come up and is invariably annoying. Two easy agreements would be either: (1) cuebid is initially choice-of-games in these auctions, although it can be converted to a strong raise later (2) the cheapest suit call is potentially a nebulous force. In this particular auction those two agreements would be identical (3♠ is both the cue and the cheapest call). Obviously without any such agreement we forced to guess -- I would have said that 3NT or 4♣ is a more "flexible" guess (i.e. partner might correct to the right contract some of the times that we guess wrong) whereas 4♥ is very committal, but evidently some very good players feel that the odds of 4♥ being right are so overwhelming that it is a better call regardless. Of course this will depend a bit on how often one overcalls 3♥ on a five-bagger and similar things.

[rbforster]

FWIW, I went for 3N here as I don't have any agreements on 3♠ promising/denying heart support and figured it was a practical bid (esp at MPs where 5m scores poorly). Partner can always bid 4♥ with a good 6-7 card suit over this, so the real problem is only when he doesn't have a stopper. Sometimes preempters get psyched into not leading their AQJxxx suit to their partner's Kx(x) since they don't want to give away the setting trick too .

[matmat]

I am pretty sure partner wouldn't understand anything.

[hanp]

sathyab, on Feb 18 2009, 03:45 PM, said:

Any system needs certain axioms, and bidding theory can't be an exception. But the way bridge theory has developed over time is so full of proof-by-construction and actual examples that very soon it becomes unrealistic to hope to derive logical answers to situations that you haven't encountered before. Too late to wish that Pure Mathematicians and language theorists could have been the ones that contributed to the development of bridge systems.

Where's dburn when you need him.