[MattieShoe]

Scoring: IMP

1♥ (P) 2NT* (P)
3♣ (P) 4♣ (P)
4♥** (X) 4NT (P)
5♦*** (P) 5NT (P)
6♣ (X) P P
P

* Not Jacoby 2NT. I assumed SAYC, 13-15 and flat hand.

** I figured if we're going to play 4♣, we might as well play 5. But just in case partner actually has heart support and used 2NT to show points, I bid 4♥ to offer the choice of which to play. In hindsight, that was probably a terrible bid.

*** Partner asked WTF I was doing. I didn't respond but opps kindly told her she asked for aces and I have one. When she bid 5NT, I assumed that was to play based on table talk but that felt like cheating, so I responded as I normally would without the table talk.

---

My partner was a beginner and wasn't sure how to respond to 1♥, and asked me after the hand. I said 2♣ was probably right here but what do you think? Also, were my assumptions/responses to her bids reasonable? How would a pair of good players have bid that hand?

Opponent led A♥, which I trumped. I pulled trump, transferred to board and sluffed all spades on KQJ♥, making +1 doubled on a small slam for a top. I've never felt so guilty for making slam before :-P

[TylerE]

The 2NT bid is so incredibly terrible that the rest of the auction doesn't really matter.

[neilkaz]

TylerE, on Oct 1 2009, 05:58 PM, said:

The 2NT bid is so incredibly terrible that the rest of the auction doesn't really matter.

Agreed and advice to Mattieshoe from reading several of his fine posts here that are contributing nicely to activity in B/I is to NOT PLAY WITH BEGINNERS. You're too good and trying to hard to learn this game to play with someone who responds 2NT with a hand that the cat sitting next to me would respond 2♣ with. To add insult to injury your pard (for me pard for just that one hand if in MBC) then has the nerve to ask WTF you are doing when you show 1 ace after what looks like Blackwood to me.

Play with intermediates and advanced and perferably ones that play the same general methods you play and wish to improve.

You might luck into a good game with someone rated a beginner but more likely to see actions as above and when you do see such a clueless bid as 2NT here, move on to another table.

.. neilkaz ..

[MattieShoe]

In fairness to my partner, she wasn't rude about it, just mystified by my response to 4NT. She was very nice, just inexperienced. She didn't literally say WTF, that was my own interpretation of her confusion

Should the bidding have gone 1♥ 2♣ 3♣ 5♣?
or perhaps 1♥ 2♣ 3♣ 3NT?

As to my own skill level, I think I'm fairly competent with the play, but pretty new to the non-beginner type conventions like Michaels, Unusual 2NT, Splinters, Jacoby 2NT, Cappelletti, Smolen, DONT, and various slam-searching cue bids and asking bids. Alas, it seems tough to find situations to use these bids, especially when your partners are often beginners... And when partner uses them, they get upset if I screw up the responses. I should practice with a program I suppose so I'd be more comfortable when advanced players use these bids.

[Mbodell]

The 2nt bid is horrible beyond words... but if you really think it means 13-15 balanced why are you bidding 3♣? You have a minimum hand and are balanced (5422 should be often/usually treated as a balanced pattern). So if you think partner is saying 13-15 balanced and you have 12 and balanced then 3nt is where you want to be.

Obviously, partner should have bid 2♣ over 1♥ no matter if you were playing SA or 2/1. And then you could raise to 3♣ and partner's hand becomes a monster and partner should drive to slam however is convenient for your partnership (cue bidding first or second round controls the auction might go something like 1♥-2♣-3♣-3♦-3♥-3♠-(3nt?-4♣?)-4♦-4♥-5♣-6♣). But really as partner over your 3♣ bid I'd be thinking 6♣ is the most likely place to be and if I had to pick the final contract that's what I'd bid.

[MattieShoe]

Ah, that makes perfect sense when you say it. :-) For some reason 3NT never occurred to me when I had a 5 and 4 card suit. That's what I should have done (assuming partner was bidding an honest 2NT at least). Thanks :-)

[kgr]

I would never bid 2NT without agreements (maybe in SAYC it is GF, but some will think it is inviting)...that makes the 2NT bid even worse. Why torture your partner (..or your partner you) if there is a perfect other bid?

[vuroth]

MattieShoe, on Oct 1 2009, 09:39 PM, said:

As to my own skill level, I think I'm fairly competent with the play, but pretty new to the non-beginner type conventions like Michaels, Unusual 2NT, Splinters, Jacoby 2NT, Cappelletti, Smolen, DONT, and various slam-searching cue bids and asking bids.

You can get awfully good not playing any of that stuff. I know most people rush to add conventions, but there are other, often better, ways to improve.

I also strongly disagree with the notion of not playing with beginners. If games came easily for Novice/Beginners, we'd probably have a lot (ok a few) less experts on BBO.

Sorry, I'll get off the soapbox now.

[jdaming]

EDIT: Sorry need to read and yes 2♣ is obv

[Stephen Tu]

Quote

but if you really think it means 13-15 balanced why are you bidding 3♣? You have a minimum hand and are balanced (5422 should be often/usually treated as a balanced pattern). So if you think partner is saying 13-15 balanced and you have 12 and balanced then 3nt is where you want to be

I don't really agree with this. Partner is allowed to have 3 cd heart support. You might well belong in hearts rather than notrump. You may need trumps to provide a stopper to set up the club suit. If partner has something like Qx Axx Kxxx KJxx I want to be in hearts, not notrump, don't you?

By bidding your side suit, partner can get you back to hearts when it's right but still play 3nt with the other suits well-stopped.

[MattieShoe]

Stephen Tu, on Oct 2 2009, 12:43 PM, said:

I don't really agree with this.  Partner is allowed to have 3 cd heart support.  You might well belong in hearts rather than notrump.  You may need trumps to provide a stopper to set up the club suit.  If partner has something like Qx Axx Kxxx KJxx I want to be in hearts, not notrump, don't you?

By bidding your side suit, partner can get you back to hearts when it's right but still play 3nt with the other suits well-stopped.

I was thinking about this last night... I'm not 100% sold on 3NT but not for the reason you say. Partner already knows about 5 hearts -- if he has support, he can correct whenever he wants, so we have to trust him to not be an idiot.

It seems to me that our job is to narrow down our hand description so our partner can place the contract better. Partner knows 13-21 points, 5 hearts after opening bid. No point in reiterating that information....

3♣♦♠ suggests a second suit of 4+ cards
3♥ suggests 6+ hearts
3NT suggests flat distribution

It seems to me like with 5422 distribution, you could bid 3NT or 3♣. Given the doubleton spade without honors and partner likely having 2-3... NT is a bit scary. I'm back to 3♣ response to show a second suit. Then partner knows by inference the weak suits, and can then place it at 3NT or 4♥ or 5♣ or invite with 4♣... That seems the most reasonable course of action to me, assuming partner isn't crazy :-)

Out of curiosity, and assuming SAYC meaning of 2NT... If you opened 1♥ and partner bids 2NT and you have 18-19 points, what do you do? You've a likely small slam but no fit yet....

[MattieShoe]

vuroth, on Oct 2 2009, 12:01 PM, said:

You can get awfully good not playing any of that stuff. I know most people rush to add conventions, but there are other, often better, ways to improve.

I also strongly disagree with the notion of not playing with beginners. If games came easily for Novice/Beginners, we'd probably have a lot (ok a few) less experts on BBO.

Sorry, I'll get off the soapbox now.

I absolutely agree. But I still think it's the biggest difference between "intermediate" and "advanced". Many intermediate players play out the hands every bit as good as most advanced players, but not very many use conventions beyond the standard blackwood/gerber/stayman/jacoby transfer.

Personally, I've been focusing on conventions that add but don't take anything you might actually use naturally away -- Michaels, Unusual 2NT, Splinters, negative doubles...

I'm just good enough to recognize the plethora of mistakes I make about 1/2 second after I make them. I imagine that's true for most people who've made it past "beginner" though... It's just the severity of the mistakes that change :-)

I'll continue to play bridge for fun, with just about anybody who will sit down. It's a lot of fun playing with a great player who knows exactly what you mean with every bid, every discard, but it's fun to play with beginners and try to do the same for them. :-)

[awm]

It may be worth mentioning that Jacoby 2NT is part of SAYC. This is not to say that everyone who claims to play SAYC knows this, or that it is necessarily part of "standard american" (whatever that is). But SAYC is a well-defined system. For a pdf of the SAYC notes click here.

[MattieShoe]

awm, on Oct 2 2009, 05:45 PM, said:

It may be worth mentioning that Jacoby 2NT is part of SAYC. This is not to say that everyone who claims to play SAYC knows this, or that it is necessarily part of "standard american" (whatever that is). But SAYC is a well-defined system. For a pdf of the SAYC notes click here.

You're absolutely right, my bad. I was using SAYC to mean the underlying bidding system, stripped of conventions other than blackwood and stayman (which even newbies seem to all use).

In both SAYC and Goren, WITHOUT the Jacoby 2NT convention, 2NT response is 13-15 HCP balanced. However, under SAYC, a 2NT response to 1 of a major opening is supposed to be Jacoby 2NT convention.

I said SAYC because if I said "natural", some people would assume I meant 11-12 invitational and some would assume 13-15 GF'ish.

[Stephen Tu]

Quote

I was thinking about this last night... I'm not 100% sold on 3NT but not for the reason you say. Partner already knows about 5 hearts -- if he has support, he can correct whenever he wants, so we have to trust him to not be an idiot.

It seems to me that our job is to narrow down our hand description so our partner can place the contract better.

Isn't this basically the reason I said?

Quote

Out of curiosity, and assuming SAYC meaning of 2NT... If you opened 1♥ and partner bids 2NT and you have 18-19 points, what do you do?

As Adam said SAYC meaning of 2nt is Jacoby 2nt, so you have a heart fit. If you are assuming *SA* meaning of 2nt, balanced game force, then with 18-19 you would simply invite slam with an invitational 4nt over 2nt.

Quote

But I still think it's the biggest difference between "intermediate" and "advanced". Many intermediate players play out the hands every bit as good as most advanced players, but not very many use conventions beyond the standard blackwood/gerber/stayman/jacoby transfer.

Totally disagree. Intermediate players may think they play out the hands as well as advanced players but really they don't. They are missing all sorts of subtle mistakes that maybe only cost 5-25% of the time but didn't happen to matter on the actual deal. As you get better you just notice more & more subtle stuff. And defense by ints is usually horrific.

Also, the difference in bidding is maybe at most 5% knowing conventional gadgets to fill holes. 95% is bidding *judgment*, whether to bid/pass, how high to bid, when to take control vs. when to defer to partner. It really helps to play with someone at/above your level so you don't acquire bad habits with the last part especially. If you play with good players there are lots of situations where you would describe your hand and let partner make the final decision. If you play with bad players too much there is a bad tendency to make the final decision yourself, since your random guess isn't likely to be worse than theirs when they can't work out the implications of your bidding sequence.

Quote

I said SAYC because if I said "natural"

SAYC without the standard "YC" gadgets is "SA".

[MattieShoe]

I took your post to mean that 3NT is a bad bid because there may be a heart fit. I think a potential heart fit doesn't make 3NT a bad bid because partner already knows about heart fit and can correct. I think 3NT may be the wrong bid because of xx in spades. Partner's 2NT instead of 1♠ strongly suggests to me that partner doesn't have 4 spades, which would make NT a risky proposition. I apologize if I misinterpreted your meaning. I guess we agree for the same reasons, all the better

I wasn't trying to imply that all intermediate players play hands as well as all advanced players... I meant this: Take a specific self-rated "intermediate" player who plays hands equally well as a specific self-rated "advanced" player. I think there's good number of these because we all self-rate differently. I think the most obvious difference between these two players will usually be in the number of conventions they use. I could still be wrong there, but that's been my experience.

For what it's worth, I'm self-rated as intermediate
Declarer: +0.33 IMPs on average
Defense: +0.61 IMPs on average
It's impossible to separate bidding from play, but for me at least, I think my defense is not terrible. The biggest defensive failure of intermediate players I've noticed has been knowing when to play passively on defense. A lot of us fishies tend to take all their winners and make book, thereby setting up 9-10 cold tricks for the opposition. It's so obvious in the post-mortem but impulse control holding on to those aces can be tough! I still lack the self control required to NOT lead an ace against a small slam bid.

Okay okay, "SA" then :-) I didn't know whether people would even know what I meant if I said that. Again, my apologies for any confusion I might have caused.