Jlall, on Jun 2 2010, 11:03 PM, said:
Interesting Adam I have always felt that feature has helped me a lot in the 3N vs 4M decision, and ogust leaves me guessing where partners side value is.
It does seem that way...
But in practice, I've found that I'm not usually looking to bid 3NT on hands where partner's side value is my only stopper in some suit. One issue is that the 3NT is wrong-sided, so partner's king fairly often ends up not being a control after all.
What happens to me more often, is that I want to be in 3NT if partner's suit is really good, like say I have four aces and out in a flat hand. If partner holds KQJxxx of his suit and nothing else then 3NT is cold but making 4M will be a huge struggle. If partner holds QJTxxx of the suit and a smattering of side values, then making 3NT will be difficult (there is probably some suit where my ace is the only stopper and we will often have to lose a trick to establish partner's major) but it's not unlikely that we can establish ten tricks for 4M some way or another.
All these methods based around shortness ask seem good on paper, but in the partnerships where I play a shortness ask I have never used it, and in the partnerships where I don't I've never missed it. I think that slam hands opposite a weak two bid are awfully infrequent at the table, and many of those that do come up can be resolved by creating a cuebidding auction without the complexity of shortness asks and DCB.
I do play somewhat more structured responses to Ogust than many people do. My rules are:
(1) A good suit can be played for one loser opposite a small doubleton. At NV a roughly 50/50 shot at this is okay (i.e. I would rate KQTxxx or KJTxxx as a good suit) whereas at V it should be higher percentage (KQJxxx is a good suit as is AJT9xx, but the holdings above are not). This might seem opposite to people's ideas of "pushing for the Vul game" but the idea is that my minimum suit quality requirements for a vulnerable preempt are not far off the "good suit" requirements at NV so it doesn't make sense to use the same criteria.
(2) A good hand has maximum values. This is normally 9-10 hcp in my style of weak twos. It should include something outside the suit (since 9 hcp all in the suit AKQxxx would rebid 3NT). Of course, standard hand evaluation stuff comes into play, like KQJxxx of a suit and three stray jacks is a "bad hand" with a good suit, whereas KQJxxx of a suit and a side king is a "good hand" with a good suit.
Adam W. Meyerson
a.k.a. Appeal Without Merit