[daveharty]

1.

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2NT showed a limit raise with 4+ hearts. FWIW, your opponents this round are the best NS pair in the room.

2.

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Agree/disagree with 3NT? Now what?

[billw55]

1. Pass and defend. I have two aces after all.

2. Not sure what partner is up to .. but following the ASBAF principle, I guess I try 5♣.

[pooltuna]

1) Unless I know partner makes worthless TOXs they are not playing this at the 5 level undoubled

2)Why didn't you pass 2♦X?

[daveharty]

pooltuna, on 2011-July-15, 10:54, said:

2)Why didn't you pass 2♦X?

With only one likely trump trick? Didn't occur to me, to be honest. Maybe it should have.

[ggwhiz]

1. double going out on my shield?

2a. Pass 2♦ doubled. Pard has some values. With my stiff ♠ and a likely shortage of dummy entries, I'm closer to 3 trump tricks than 1.

2b. I'm guessing pard should have bid 2♠ over 2♦instead of double and bid 4nt to play.

[whereagles]

1. I dunno who's making what so I'll just pass.

2. Is pard feeling well? Anyway, 4NT (to play).

[VM1973]

1. Someone's lying and it's probably the opener. He must have a shapely 10 count, unless your partner is known to double and bid as a preemptive tactic. It should be a forcing pass situation so you are required to double with two fast losers in hearts. Since you don't have that, you should pass and let your partner make the decision.
2. Unless you're playing negative free bids, your partner must be very shapely. Perhaps he's 6-4-0-3 and can't stand 3NT. I'll try 5♣

[xxhong]

1, pass. you have shown your hand and nothing more to show. It's not a forcing pass situation though.

2, pass, partner shows at least 6 spades you don't mind playing 4S usually, especially for MP.

[daveharty]

Maybe I should have given pass some consideration, but in my experience partner will often lead a trump when you convert a negative double to penalty, so that's one fewer dummy entry declarer would need to pick up the suit. Also I figured that LHO, in order to make a vulnerable overcall on an obviously not-so-hot suit would likely have exceptional distribution (seventh diamond, club void, etc.). It turns out that she made a fairly bizarre bid; 2DX would have probably gone off one for a below average score (for us).

For those that suggest 4NT now, are you 100% certain that is to play? I thought so, so that's what I bid, but my partner was on a different wavelength.

[ggwhiz]

In my experience it is much better to lead from length or partners bid suit than to lead a trump against this type of auction. If you can shorten declarers trumps early it's often worth an extra trick later.

The rule of thumb is that after 3nt was bid to play, 4nt is to play as well when you have not agreed on a trump suit.



That is the case here and if partner had a decent hand it was especially important to bid a forcing 2♠ instead of a negative double. That was where the trouble started and just snowballed from there.

[whereagles]

Dave, 4NT is 100% to play, and it should be 100% clear.

If pard doesn't understand this, then he doesn't fully understand bidding. Why? Because 4♠ can be passed, so our side's contract is at the game level. Going for a slam when responder said a game is tops is a breach in discipline and therefore 4NT cannot logically be a slammish bid.

Compare it with this auction:

1NT 4♦ (5-5 majors, pick-a-suit)
4NT

4NT as RKCB doesn't make sense because responder just wants to play game. Thus, it shows a 2245 with minors well stopped and probably some fillers in the majors and is TO PLAY.

[Zelandakh]

I think your second example is flawed eagle - it is not uncommon to play 1NT - 4D in this way in the same way as Texas, thus responder can have slam interest if they only wanted to find out keycards in Opener's better major. Nonetheless, I agree that 4NT would be to play in this sequence, just for different reasons. The main reason here being that opener is defined (even when responder is not). On the original hand, the only possibility that makes sense is for responder to have a weak hand with long spades. A stronger hand would have started with 2S assuming no NFBs. A 4NT call here would have to be natural too since opener is again well defined and responder has denied the values for slam.

[daveharty]

whereagles, on 2011-July-16, 16:27, said:

Dave, 4NT is 100% to play, and it should be 100% clear.

I agree with this, but when partner pulled I started second-guessing myself and wondering if this auction was somehow an exception to the normal rule I play (similar to ggwhiz) that when 3NT has been bid to play, then 4NT is also. The two hands were:

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I should have passed 4S, figuring partner for something like this, as xxhong and Zelandakh have suggested. Just hadn't seen this auction before. Unfortunately, once we got past 3NT or 4S, anything was probably going to end badly.

[whereagles]

Well, pard didn't make it easy. He can simply bid a direct 4♠ bid. No need to care about hearts when you can play spades opposite a void. Especially with such an entry-less and weak hand.

The reason to pull to 4NT is pard might have thought from the 3NT bid that you have 2 spades. If he thought so, he could have had a much weaker suit, in which case 4NT is probably a better spot.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

#1 Pass.
#2 Not sure I like 3NT, but an alternative did come by very fast ..., now pass.
I assume you play 2S in the seq. as F? If this is the case p showed a single
suiter in spade, too weak to make a 2S F bid.
Maybe 4NT is too play, ..., what do I know, I think pass is normal, and unless
you give me a really strange hand, I will pass in this seq., still assuming, that
a direct 2S would have been F.
Make the long suit of the weak hand trumps, p told you, he is weak, and that he
has a long suit, so Pass.

With kind regards
Marlowe