[P_Marlowe]

Vampyr, on 2012-December-13, 13:29, said:

I am not quite sure what you are getting at here. Whether partner expects (borrows?) a king in my hand for my free bid, I have an ace, which is hugely better.

Yes, you have an Ace, take away the King, you have a half trick left, you made a free bid, which
shoudl show exactly that (the 5th spades is justification enough), but you dont have more besides,
what you already have shown.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[rhm]

The first question to ask is whether the sequence is forcing.
I'd say yes. Partner showed a hand too strong to overcall immediately and you showed values by bidding when you could have passed instead.
If it is forcing it does not matter whether I have anything left to show or not and whether I feel comfortable keeping the bidding open.
I would bid 2♠

Rainer Herrmann

[Vampyr]

rhm, on 2012-December-14, 06:16, said:

The first question to ask is whether the sequence is forcing.
I'd say yes. Partner showed a hand too strong to overcall immediately and you showed values by bidding when you could have passed instead.
If it is forcing it does not matter whether I have anything left to show or not and whether I feel comfortable keeping the bidding open.
I would bid 2♠

Rainer Herrmann

It is very interesting that you believe that 2♥ is forcing, while other posters do not believe that 3♥ is forcing. The one thing that is certain is that we must form agreements about these sequences.

All we had was a default agreement that 3♥ was forcing and 2♥ was not, with no considerations about whether partner had made a free bid.

Anyway, this was the hand opposite: ♠9 ♥AKJ943 ♦AT5 ♣AQ5. I contented myself with 2♥, correctly believing it to be non-forcing according to the agreements we had in place, and there we played .

[JLOGIC]

Classically a double and bid is forcing opposite a free bid for the reason rainer said so you cannot pass without a specific agreement like vampyr had. However I treat bidding 1h or 1s freely as not creating a force as it should be bid pretty light IMO and also it leaves a lot of room for partners forcing hands anyways.

[JLOGIC]

3h being forcing over 2h is extremely strange to me. Why can't you just invite game? If you had a game bid you could bid game or bid 3d if you had no clear direction.

[PhilKing]

JLOGIC, on 2012-December-14, 11:00, said:

3h being forcing over 2h is extremely strange to me. Why can't you just invite game? If you had a game bid you could bid game or bid 3d if you had no clear direction.

I think Vampyr means a jump to 3♥ over 1♠.

[JLOGIC]

Ah OK that makes sense lol

[Vampyr]

P_Marlowe, on 2012-December-13, 10:37, said:

The state of the match has no relevance.

In this case it does, because the match is in a league and the result will be converted to VPs. A few IMPs clawed back may enable you to avoid relegation.

You won't claw back very many in reality, since teammates opened 1NT, and the strong hand applied the axe, resulting in teammates' 2nd -1100 in the match.

[lycier]

Obviously 2♥ was forcing ,I rebid 2♠ to alert pd to my weak hand with 5 card ♠.

[Vampyr]

lycier, on 2012-December-15, 18:31, said:

Obviously 2♥ was forcing ,I rebid 2♠ to alert pd to my weak hand with 5 card ♠.

I like the idea that 2♥ is forcing after a free bid by partner; I certainly don't think that it is "obvious".

[Zelandakh]

I do not think 2♥ is forcing here. Back in the days when it was expected to hold some decent values for a free response this made sense; but for a long time now many pairs have been showing spades on next to nothing here. If 2♥ is non-forcing then 3♥ should be forcing and show something along the lines of a one suited Strong 2 in hearts. The other strong hands can be handled by starting with 2♣ or bidding some number of NT.