[thepossum]

Hi all

I'm usually reasonably good at forcing hands (often tending to overpush). However recently I seem to developed a certain unwanted cautiousness as I try to maintain precision of my understanding of 2/1.

In the following hand my first inclination was to bid 4NT immediately but decided I wanted to know more about partners hand and decided on a slower approach. I also wasnt sure about Jacoby 2NT since I thought my hand was more distributional with its excellent spade support. So I decided to go via a 2D forcing bid. North bid 3C then I was a bit unsure how to keep forcing, bid 4S which was passed. So at that stage I believe I needed an alternative bid.

Any thoughts please

Possum

---

[Tramticket]

First - Blackwood is clearly wrong with two fast losers in hearts, so you were right to avoid that.

Since you are in a forcing-to-game situation, why jump to 4♠? What is wrong with 3♠?

[P_Marlowe]

GIB plays Jacoby 2NT, 2NT showes a gf raise with 4+ trumps.
A raise to 3S via a 2/1 tends to show 3+ support and a 5 card side suit.

1S - 2NT (1)
3NT (2) - ... (3)


(1) GF raise with 4+ trumps
(2) 15-17 without shortage
(3) Diamond Cue with a human, but with GIB it may work better in the long run,
either to sign of or go via 4NT, you have a 10 card fit, but neither side has
a real shortage
As it is, the slam is cold, but ...

With kind regards
Marlowe

[Tramticket]

 P_Marlowe, on 2019-January-10, 02:14, said:

A raise to 3S via a 2/1 tends to show 3+ support and a 5 card side suit.

Thanks - 2/1 is not my system.

[pescetom]

 Tramticket, on 2019-January-10, 02:28, said:

Thanks - 2/1 is not my system.

He is talking about 2/1 contaminated by jacoby 2nt, as played by GIB.
Without Jacoby it would be perfectly normal to rebid 3S over which N can control-bid (or serious/ non-serious if agreed).

[P_Marlowe]

 pescetom, on 2019-January-10, 04:01, said:

He is talking about 2/1 contaminated by jacoby 2nt, as played by GIB.
Without Jacoby it would be perfectly normal to rebid 3S over which N can control-bid (or serious/ non-serious if agreed).

I agree, after the given start 3S would be normal, but I would also say, that most 2/1 players, play some kind of jacoby 2NT
(or use a 2C response) and would prefer a 2D bid to show 5+ cards.

[thepossum]

Dear everyone

Thanks for the comments. So having Jacoby 2NT changes the meaning of 3S. That was my planned bid after 2D so is where I went wrong. It can be extremely precise the way bidding options are cut down so much by earlier bids. I will also ignore the balanced description on 2NT which was clearly my correct bid

I trapped myself, tried to find another bid and ended up with the 4S game bid which sadly N wasn't strong enough to push more.

Still learning 5 card majors with all these add ons. I also considered 3H as a force but still wouldn't have shown spade support so didn't like that either.

Thanks all
P

[P_Marlowe]

 thepossum, on 2019-January-10, 05:19, said:

Dear everyone

Thanks for the comments. So having Jacoby 2NT changes the meaning of 3S. That was my planned bid after 2D so is where I went wrong. It can be extremely precise the way bidding options are cut down so much by earlier bids. I will also ignore the balanced description on 2NT which was clearly my correct bid

I trapped myself, tried to find another bid and ended up with the 4S game bid which sadly N wasn't strong enough to push more.

Still learning 5 card majors with all these add ons. I also considered 3H as a force but still wouldn't have shown spade support so didn't like that either.

Thanks all
P

The main difference is, that a Jacoby 2NT bid starts an auction, with the Jacoby 2NT bidder becoming the captain,
the 2D starts a more cooperative auction. If you play with GIB, than being the Captain helps.
Captaincy is a concept that is independe of 5 card major system.

[Stephen Tu]

Thoughts:

1. Just because the sequence you chose missed a slam doesn't necessarily mean you did anything particularly wrong. The problem is that robots are particularly terrible at latter round 2/1 bidding and slam bidding, they don't know how to cue bid properly or evaluate hands sometimes. So you may bid perfectly reasonably and miss slam because robot partner fails to cooperate, or take over captaincy as appropriate. So sometimes when you miss slam with GIB you just have to shrug your shoulders and rage at the programmers for the slow pace of improvements. If you try to overcompensate by overbidding/misbidding your own hand, you'll tend to get to a lot of hopeless slams (some of which might luckily make due to GIB's inept defense), and this will be detrimental to your play in human games in the long run. Good slam bidding requires partnership cooperation and good system agreements, so it's often pretty random and bad when playing with either robots or beginner/int level humans.


2. Immediate blackwood is clearly wrong for a number of reasons. Normally, to bid blackwood, you want minimally both (a) all unbid side suits controlled (because bidding slam then watching your opponents simply cash king and ace of a suit is bad), and (b) know that you have enough overall strength to take 12 tricks (because even if the opponents don't have two aces off the top, or ak off the top in a suit, it does you no good to bid the slam if you don't quite have enough tricks in the end). Here, you have two suits with 2 fast losers initially, and a slightly above minimum GF that requires partner to have substantial extras to get into the slam zone (generally around 32/33 combined points including distributional values, less if one can determine hands mesh together particularly well). So it's best to describe your hand first and find out about partner's.

3. Your choice of 2d then 4s is actually quite good IMO -- if playing with a human good bidder. Normally this describes a min range GF hand with good diamonds and good spades with no control (ace, king, singleton/void) in either clubs or hearts, or basically exactly what you had. A so-called "picture bid", it is more descriptive than 3S, which just shows fit and doesn't describe the concentration in the two suits and lack of control in the others. Partner normally expects more like 4252, one more diamond, one fewer spade, but so what, to me this is by far the closest, most effective description. One bids the non-jump 3s rather than 4S holding hands with hands with spade fit not suitable for picture bid, hands with more scattered values, control in a side suit, and partner will expect often 3 cd support only.

Now opposite any decent human partner, a picture bid should get the job done; partner is looking at substantial extras, controls in both H and clubs, and the DQ which will look like a very useful card. It's clearcut blackwood by NORTH at this point, bid slam if not off 2 keycards. So blame your partner on this one.

4. Jacoby 2nt is another alternative; I like it less on this hand since the "picture bid" sequence of 2/1 is so descriptive. But it is the normal usual choice holding 4+ spade suit and no side shortage if the values were more scattered.


5. If you want to keep forcing in 2/1, after having made the 2/1, anything that isn't game is forcing.

[pescetom]

 P_Marlowe, on 2019-January-10, 05:16, said:

I agree, after the given start 3S would be normal, but I would also say, that most 2/1 players, play some kind of jacoby 2NT
(or use a 2C response) and would prefer a 2D bid to show 5+ cards.

I agree about the prevelant use of semi-artificial 2C and preference for 2D to show 5+ cards, but I doubt that most 2/1 players play some kind of Jacoby 2NT. My experience is that very few European or Asian 2/1 players use 2NT to show game forcing fit, more often it is invitational fit of some kind.

[rmnka447]

If you're playing 2/1, it is important to know which rebids from opener show extras (16+) and which limit opener's hand. Most people will play opener's 2 of a major and 2 NT as defaults to show a minimum hand. The only exception is that 2 NT can also be made with 18-19 balanced hand. With that hand opener will carry on to 4 NT if responder bids 3 NT.

Most 2/1 players will also allow a 2 ♥ rebid by opener over a 1 ♠ opener to possibly be on a minimum in order not to miss a potential major fit. Other non-reverse rebids at the 2 level are subject to partnership agreement. But most play that any rebid at the 3 level definitely show extras. Such a 3 level rebid is known as a high reverse because you have to show a preference at the 3 level.

If opener's hand in this auction had been

♠ AJxxx
♥ xx
♦ xx
♣ AKxx

the right rebid would be 2 ♠ not 3 ♣. Then with the hand you held you could simply sign off in 4 ♠.

Knowing partner has extras and a ♣ suit of some sort should make you think about at least exploring for slam. Your hand has only 13 HCP but is a 6 loser hand with 3 QT. The doubleton in partner's ♣ suit isn't a bad holding especially with the extra trump as you will likely be able to ruff out any losers beyond one in the suit. Adding points for distribution or trump length, you get something like a good 14-15 value. You know the total value of the 2 hands is around 30-31 minimum. So, yes, 3 ♠ is the right rebid with your hand suggesting that you hold a hand better than one you simply sign off on.

"What do we need to know for slam?" The answer is "Most importantly, we need to know there are not 2 quick ♥ losers." So an immediate A asking bid is inappropriate. Control bids are needed to ensure that no 2 quick losers exist anywhere. After two control bids 4 ♣ by opener and 4 ♦by you, opener knows enough to use RKCB.

If you play Jacoby 2 NT as the forcing raise, then opener playing (standard responses to Jacoby) would bid 3 ♠ showing 17+ and presumably no shortness. As others have suggested, it's useful to use 3 NT as waiting bid showing slam interest because it conserves bidding space. After the ♣ and ♦ control bids, opener is again in position to use RKCB.

So both ways can get you to 6 ♠.

[thepossum]

Thanks for the great discussion everyone.

Regards P