[Double !]

This little pain in the butt (for me) came up a few nights ago. I held the following hand:
♠ Axx
♥ AK4
♦ Kx
♣ AKJ9x


Not bad. I liked it until the following occurred.

I opened 2C and P (cho) responded 2NT. (We had agreed to play 2C - 2H as dbl neg). Suddenly, I realized that I really didn't know what people play as rebids after P's 2NT.
Assuming that partner has made a positive response in hearts, what is the correct rebid with this hand?

There is an incredibly amusing follow-up to this. I will share in a few days (I hope).
fwiw, being older than dirt but still having much of my hair, I play opening 2C forces to 2NT or 3M (or 4m-rare).

I look forward to anyone's/ everyone's recommendations. tyvm

DHL

[jjbrr]

3♥ seems like a good start

[spotlight7]

Hi:

Try playing 2D waits and a cheaper 'double negative after partner bids again.

Regards,
Robert

[pooltuna]

Double !, on Mar 18 2010, 01:20 PM, said:

This little pain in the butt (for me) came up a few nights ago. I held the following hand:
♠ Axx
♥ AK4
♦ Kx
♣ AKJ9x


Not bad. I liked it until the following occurred.

I opened 2C and P (cho) responded 2NT. (We had agreed to play 2C - 2H as dbl neg). Suddenly, I realized that I really didn't know what people play as rebids after P's 2NT.
Assuming that partner has made a positive response in hearts, what is the correct rebid with this hand?

There is an incredibly amusing follow-up to this. I will share in a few days (I hope).
fwiw, being older than dirt but still having much of my hair, I play opening 2C forces to 2NT or 3M (or 4m-rare).

I look forward to anyone's/ everyone's recommendations. tyvm

DHL

with this contol rich hand just raise his positive ♥ response to 3♥ and let the qbidding begin

[Phil]

What would you bid if partner bid a natural 2♥? 3♥ of course.

The awkward sequence is when opener has spades - then 3♠ gets kind of cramped (although you can construct some sensible switches at the 3 level - maybe 3♣ = ♦ / 3♦ = ♠ / 3♠ = ♣).

[mikeh]

Interesting: many pairs would require 2/3 top honours for a positive suit response, and we have a clue that suggests he doesn't.

Anyway, surely 3♥ is a wtp answer?

Of course, if he forget the system, we are likely to have either an embarrassing result and/or a director/committee ruling, especially after we alerted (assuming no screens).

BTW, I recently began playing something I saw Fred playing (I think): 2N shows either major and opener bids 3♣ to ask responder to transfer to the major. Makes some club hands awkward, but usually only when holding no 3 card major, and then 3N will often work out. This allows 2♠ to be a balanced 8-11: a range often difficult to get off one's chest after a 2♦ waiting response.

[peachy]

This hand has no problem, just raise hearts, 3H.
However, playing same system as you, we don't show a positive suit response with a suit that is missing both A and K of the suit; also, a direct positive response in a suit is 5+ cards long and if in minor, 6+ cards long.

[matmat]

3♥

[Double !]

I did, indeed, rebid 3♥ only to hear my P now bid 4♦. Well, I thought having ♦ Kx was a good holding, so I Q'd 4♠. Partner now jumped to 6NT, asked for and received an "undo", and bid 5NT!!! (argh. what is 5NT? must be GSF?) Having 2 of the top 3 honors in hearts and 14,000 controls, it seemed like a 7♥ bid by me was now in order. (Wrong!!! or, maybe, right. You decide lol)
Partner passed 7♥, and then tabled the following dummy:

♠ KJ9x
♥ QJ8 uh, where did the other 2 hearts go?
♦ ATxx
♣ xx

Well done, mikeh. Yes, partner either forgot or didn't know the meaning of his initial 2NT response, so I had the pleasure of playing a grand slam in a 3-3 trump fit. (Granted, a very nice 3-3 fit, indeed....grrrrr.)

lho led the ♣ Ten, and rho very nicely played the queen. Finesse for spade queen worked, was able to cash 2 more clubs and 2 more spades without opps ruffing, two rounds of diamonds and a diamond ruff in hand lived. First time I ever made grand in a 3-3 trump fit. (Note that I am not representing that this was the only time I ever bid a grand in a 3-3 fit although I don't recall ever having done so in the past). Seems that the odds of this hand making were less that the approx. 9% odds for making 7NT.

got a "vwp" from partner. was ready to shoot him but the drive is over an hour to get to him, not worth the gas (petrol).
The hand seemed like something right out of a Victor Mollo book, and I was RR.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting hand. I also was genuinely wondering whether or not some rebid other than 3H was appropriate: so I asked. I wish to thank everyone who responded, and mikeh for the info on Fred's rebid structure.\

DHL

[kenrexford]

Great deal and story!

A friend of mine once played in 6H with Axx opposite Qxx (the pips should not have come into play but did) and managed to pull off 12 tricks along similar lines (and some help). When they compared (teams), +980 received scoffing against the -1010 for the laydown 9-card-fit spade slam.

"How on earth did you lose a trick?"

"I PLAYED IN HEARTS."

"Oh. OH!"

[aguahombre]

spotlight, this string aint for us. Getting out of the 2C bidder's way with a waiting 2D is out of vogue. We get to just watch the rest unscrew their auction.

[hanp]

I think that mikeh got it right. 2NT looked suspicious without the heart AK, but the weak hand jumping to 5NT, grand slam force, how likely is that? I may be biased sine I've never bid grand slam force in my life.

I think that 3H was the right bid, but when partner makes another call that suggests something is wrong, it is good to be more flexible.

mikeh, on Mar 18 2010, 01:39 PM, said:

BTW, I recently began playing something I saw Fred playing (I think): 2N shows either major and opener bids 3♣ to ask responder to transfer to the major. Makes some club hands awkward, but usually only when holding no 3 card major, and then 3N will often work out. This allows 2♠ to be a balanced 8-11: a range often difficult to get off one's chest after a 2♦ waiting response.

With Arend I played the same, and although I don't recall it coming up in serious competition I thought it was a very sound method. I don't remember what Fred recommended, but we found the 8-11 range a little to large and made it 8-10. The 2NT rebid by opener asked for 4-card majors and 5-card minors.

Our 2NT response showed a 6-card major, and opener can bid 3C with clubs as well. Responder transfers into his major, and if opener doesn't complete the transfer it shows clubs.

[mikeh]

hanp, on Mar 19 2010, 01:03 PM, said:

I think that mikeh got it right. 2NT looked suspicious without the heart AK, but the weak hand jumping to 5NT, grand slam force, how likely is that? I may be biased sine I've never bid grand slam force in my life.

I think that 3H was the right bid, but when partner makes another call that suggests something is wrong, it is good to be more flexible.

mikeh, on Mar 18 2010, 01:39 PM, said:

BTW, I recently began playing something I saw Fred playing (I think): 2N shows either major and opener bids 3♣ to ask responder to transfer to the major. Makes some club hands awkward, but usually only when holding no 3 card major, and then 3N will often work out. This allows 2♠ to be a balanced 8-11: a range often difficult to get off one's chest after a 2♦ waiting response.

With Arend I played the same, and although I don't recall it coming up in serious competition I thought it was a very sound method. I don't remember what Fred recommended, but we found the 8-11 range a little to large and made it 8-10. The 2NT rebid by opener asked for 4-card majors and 5-card minors.

Our 2NT response showed a 6-card major, and opener can bid 3C with clubs as well. Responder transfers into his major, and if opener doesn't complete the transfer it shows clubs.

han: how do you show a 5 card major? If 2n shows 6, and 2♠ shows balanced 8-10, with opener's 2N then asking for 5 card minor or 4 card major, it seems to me you have significant gaps. I suspect I am missing something, since I know you are a thoughtful player (as is Arend).

[hanp]

We had to bid 2D with a 5-card major. This is of course a loss compared to standard bidding. Bidding 2NT with a 5-card major seems to take up too much room, especially if you are 2- or 3-suited. Bidding a low 2D with a balanced hand and a 5-card major doesn't seem like much of a loss.

As I said, as far as I remember it didn't come up at the nationals. We bid a lot of practice hands on BBO with this system though, and having 2NT promise a 6-card suit seemed right.

We tried bidding 2S with a 5-card major sometimes but that didn't seem like a good idea either. By the way, we also found out the hard way not to bid 2S with 2425 shape.

[shaztaz]

That is an excellent grand slam story.

In the February 2009 issue of The Bridge World, there was a fascinating article by Danny Kleinman about powerhouse openings and the omnibus 2C. A similar article, albeit with much less detail and discussion of alternatives and continuations can be found here.
The author suggests that really any response other than 2D preempts opener and should likely be either avoided or reserved to very rare hand types. The only exception to this is a natural positive 2H response which hardly hinders opener at all while saving space whenever opener has primary spades (where the auction would normally go 2C 2D 2S 3H, wasting a lot of space).

The author suggests that partnerships could in fact restrict their agreements in response to a strong 2C opening to a neutral 2D (denying only a heart suit) and a natural 2H. This has the advantage of being simple and effective; higher responses could be defined to show very rare and specific hand types if the partnership so desires.

I haven't had a chance to try his structure, but it seems theoretically sound. If anyone has used it, I would like to hear about how it works out.

[dburn]

Looks like hogwash to me. You hold:

♠32 ♥QJ10876 ♦32 ♣Q65

Partner opens 2♣, you bid 2♦ and partner bids 3♦. You bid 3♥, but this is a "second negative", so you go through life never being able to show the one redeeming feature of your hand.

Nobody actually knows how to respond to 2♣, but if you want to use one of the bids that Kleinman prohibits you from making at all, you might consider playing one of them (say 2♠) as a hand with which you would (or might) have opened a weak two bid in some suit or other. Continuations left as an exercise for the reader.

[Double !]

FWIW: I have not been an advocate of playing the 2H response to 2C as showing a dbl negative but most of the people whom I play with on BBO seem to prefer it. (n.b.: I have played very little actual live bridge in the past 10+ years, so I don't really have regular partnerships except for sometimes playing with my brother, an excellent player, and with my wife. Some of you met her in Nashville.) So, other than via the forums, i have little contact with some of the more recent innovations. Hence, I asked about opener's rebids after 2C - 2N.

I was one of the earlier people in the northeast (USA) to play the original Precision system and I still remember most of it. This leads me to the following question or survey:

Has anyone ever tried or considered using the same structure of responses to a strong 2C opener that one might use in response to a Precision, or Ultra, or Echo, or even some for of WJ strong 1 Club openers? As a 2C opener likely is at least a trick or trick and a half stronger than a strong 1C opener, I don't see (yet) how this could be any worse and, imo, would seem to be a better set of responses than the current, more common set of responses to strong 2C openers. It just raises the bidding one level higher, but the extra trick- trick and a half stronger hand that a 2C opener implies should be sufficient to cover the difference.

Just curious.

DHL

[aguahombre]

dburn, on Mar 19 2010, 08:12 PM, said:

Looks like hogwash to me. You hold:

♠32 ♥QJ10876 ♦32 ♣Q65

Partner opens 2♣, you bid 2♦ and partner bids 3♦. You bid 3♥, but this is a "second negative", so you go through life never being able to show the one redeeming feature of your hand.

Nobody actually knows how to respond to 2♣, but if you want to use one of the bids that Kleinman prohibits you from making at all, you might consider playing one of them (say 2♠) as a hand with which you would (or might) have opened a weak two bid in some suit or other. Continuations left as an exercise for the reader.

u are right, of course --if 2C followed by 3d is the garden variety. If it shows a hand where diamonds is trump, with 10 tricks, asking for cues (etc), then this hand is still not a real problem. I guess there are a few situations where 4H will make while we languish in 4D....but I will live with that.

[jjbrr]

paging jdonn: reason # 1371 to play strong club.

[nigel_k]

aguahombre, on Mar 20 2010, 06:08 PM, said:

dburn, on Mar 19 2010, 08:12 PM, said:

Looks like hogwash to me. You hold:

♠32  ♥QJ10876  ♦32  ♣Q65

Partner opens 2♣, you bid 2♦ and partner bids 3♦. You bid 3♥, but this is a "second negative", so you go through life never being able to show the one redeeming feature of your hand.

Nobody actually knows how to respond to 2♣, but if you want to use one of the bids that Kleinman prohibits you from making at all, you might consider playing one of them (say 2♠) as a hand with which you would (or might) have opened a weak two bid in some suit or other. Continuations left as an exercise for the reader.

u are right, of course --if 2C followed by 3d is the garden variety. If it shows a hand where diamonds is trump, with 10 tricks, asking for cues (etc), then this hand is still not a real problem. I guess there are a few situations where 4H will make while we languish in 4D....but I will live with that.

I am with the 2♦ waiting people right up until they say responder cannot even bid 2♥. Why not? It doesn't shut out anything opener might have wanted to bid. Also, allowing a 2♥ response on any decent hand with some hearts means you can use a 3♥ negative if opener bids 3♣ or 3♦ and avoid the above problem.