[luckyloser]

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this is your promising hand.

LHO opens 2♠ (this is explained as a 2-suiter with ♠ and a minor, 9-13 HCPs. Partner bids 3♠. you have no special agreement over 2-suited opening bids at the 2-level (you can therefore assume 2NT and all suit bids natural, dbl for takeout, but what does a cuebid mean?). you and your partner have been playing together for the last 20 years, you are no experts but an experienced pair.

what does the bid mean and what do you bid?

[gwnn]

should be a long minor and asking for a stop. Or less likely your partner was trying to bid michaels Either way I think I can get away with bidding 4♣ pass or correct. Of course I'd bid 4♥ if I knew partner had michaels but I think it's much more common to be western cuebid (asking for as top).

[kenberg]

Playing pick-up, I bid 4C. Playing with a familiar partner, where the auction is undiscussed, I make my best guess based on what I know of his general approach. With some partners I would bid 4H. For example, I think (1C)-pass-(1H) -2H should be natural. If partner is known to think that it is Michaels, then he probably plays (2S)-3S as Michaels also. I certainly have had partners who play that way.


I imagine you will now discuss this auction. Usually I play

(2S)-3S asks for a stop, usually expecting to run a minor.

(2S)-4m shows m and hearts, and a very good hand.

So if, as seems possible, partner has hearts, a minor, and good values, he would have bid 4m not 3s on the present hand. Obviously this only applies if discussed.

If this is the worst problem that the two of you have had in 20 years, congratulations!

[pooltuna]

luckyloser, on Oct 31 2009, 09:27 AM, said:

Dealer: ????? Vul: ???? Scoring: Unknown

♠ 98 ♥ J876 ♦ Q987 ♣ 986

this is your promising hand.

LHO opens 2♠ (this is explained as a 2-suiter with ♠ and a minor, 9-13 HCPs. Partner bids 3♠. you have no special agreement over 2-suited opening bids at the 2-level (you can therefore assume 2NT and all suit bids natural, dbl for takeout, but what does a cuebid mean?). you and your partner have been playing together for the last 20 years, you are no experts but an experienced pair.

what does the bid mean and what do you bid?

essentially 2♠ is still preemptive and consequently 3♠ is not a preemptive Michaels but is meant as forcing bid which shows a hand too big to chance a TOX. Consequently just bid 4♥.

[gwnn]

I never quite understood what it means to have a hand 'too big' to chance a t-o x. The more HCP you add to a hand, keeping the same shape, the happier we are to see partner passing it, no?

Anyway if this hand existed what shape could it have? 3!S is asking partner to do what? And then we do what? When will anybody know what anybody else at the table has? We wasted a whole level we're at 3 spades and we don't know anything except 'oh the 3S bidder has some big hand. '

[luckyloser]

thanks for your opinion! i can now give my own and maybe we can all learn from the problem.
what i learned is that 3♠ might be understood as michaels. that never occurred to me. i do not think it should be, because

*) michaels is a convention, not just a treament and should therefore be agreed upon (which was not the case at the 2-level)
*) only very few partnerships play it after a preemptive bid at the 2-level
*) it makes sense only with a gigantic 2-suiter (the contract must be at the 4-level), that hates to dble opps at the 2 or 3-level
*) a TOX serves the same purpose. since opener has a 2-suiter and we are unlikely to play in one of his suits, thus by dbling only ♥ and an unknown minor are offered.
*) in the rare event that we have a 2-suiter and opps get dbled after a TOX it is almosst 100% that partner has the other 2 suits, therefore a total misfit.

can 3♠ be just any very strong hand with short ♠? i think not, because

*) very few play that way after a 1-level opening (it is a treatment from the days of yore).
*) almost any strong hand can be discribed with a TOX and later continuation.
*) 3♠ is very dangerous because bad breaks are likely.

what about a western cuebid?

*) 3♠ may be the only way to arrive at 3NT with a running minor but no ♠ stop.
*) after a 1-level opening almost everybody would understand it that way
*) bad breaks (likely after the opening bid) do not interfere with hands of this sort, therefore the bid is not dangerous with an appropriate hand (♠x ♥AQx ♦XX ♣AKQxxxx)
*) such a hand is quite likely (gigantic 2- or 3-suited hands are not)

[MFA]

Usually 3♠ is a stopper ask. So I would surely bid 4♣ here.

Most play leaping michaels 4m here. It has a lot of merit though to play leaping michaels AND 3♠ as bad michaels. Because even quite weak 2-suiters really want to get into the auction.

[blackshoe]

The "consensus" view about Michaels has always seemed to me to be "everybody plays Michaels so everybody should play Michaels". Or perhaps, in this case "everybody plays Michaels, so every cue bid of an opening bid should be Michaels". Or maybe "everybody plays Michaels because, well, that's just the way it is". Personally, Max Hardy (Competitive Bidding With Two Suited Hands convinced me that Michaels is not the best use of the cue bid over either one or two level openings. His approach: over a one level opening, the cue bid is Top and Bottom. Over a weak two level opening, it's asking for a stopper for 3NT, and two suited hands are shown with Roman Jump Overcalls. Now if I could just get my partners to stop saying "but we can't give up Michaels!"....

[jdonn]

There is absolutely no standard for this bid undiscussed. It is my clear leader for the misunderstanding I have seen occur the most times in live bridge. All I can say is my personal preference which is to have it be Michaels (allowing you to stop in 3NT/4m and not creating a forcing pass) along with playing leaping Michaels (forcing you to game and creating a forcing pass). The hand needing a stopper seems to come up more rarely and can probably start with double anyway.

Hand too big to double lol. I didn't realize we had online bridge forums in the 1950s!

[nigel_k]

I would certainly assume it means the same as whatever we have agreed when they open a weak two in spades and we cuebid. If you have no agreement about that either and have been playing together for 20 years then maybe you are due to make one.

Apart from that, I'd say it is either a stopper ask or a two suiter. I would definitely expect a two suiter, discussed or not, if the cue bid is above 3NT. When it is below 3NT I think stopper ask is a bit more common but two suiter is used by many pairs as well and I personally prefer it.

On the actual hand I would probably bid 4♣ if it was undiscussed. This handles the stopper ask hand or red suits, and if he has hearts and clubs maybe 4♥ is down anyway or he has extra strength and tries 4♥.