I don’t agree with a lot of this. After a 2D response, opener’s hand has not improved and 2H is the proper bid not 3H. If partner can’t make a second response, we don’t likely have game.
Here’s a hand I just held.
AKT2
32
-
AQJ9752
All vulnerable at IMPs and playing 5-card majors, partner deals and opens 1 Club.
RHO overcalls 2 Hearts. What call do you make?
I’m not even sure how to bid if RHO had passed, and now I’m really stumped!
Suppose you bid 2 Spades and partner bids 2 NT. Now what?
How many Clubs is this showing? 2H is a Weak Jump Overcall, right? Bid 3H over 2H as a one round force.
2NT showing 15-17 points and 3+ clubs? I’d take a punt at 6C.
1C shows three clubs or more. (If balanced it is probably NOT 15-17 – he would have opened 1NT)
2H might be weakish or foolish. (We’re playing at PlayOK. :eek: )
Over 2S, 2NT shows heart stopper but no extra values, IMO.
If you bid 3H over 2H, I think(*) partner bids 3NT.
(* - partner’s hand is also difficult to bid. Maybe I should start two threads!)
So 12-14 then.
That heart stopper is likely to only be a stopper if played from partner’s side.
So how about cue-bidding 4D after 3NT? If partner bids 4H (showing AH) you can bid 6C. Otherwise partner will sign off in 5C.
What about a negative double showing 4 spades. If partner can bid 2 spades showing 4, you know you have at least 18 cards in the black suits. Then it depends on your methods. If 3 hearts is a general force, you could bid that. If it specifically asks for or shows a heart stopper for NT then don’t bid that. Partner would need both red suits stopped. If you play splinters bid 4D (I want to be in game and I have a singleton or void in D, partner. You’d like to hear partner cue bid 4H in which case a slam is highly likely.
I’m with OldGuy and start with a negative double, showing four spades. I think bidding 2S immediately shows 5+ spades.
I (tried to) think long and hard about my call over 2H … so long that the “play clock” almost ran out. (At PlayOK that would mean the hand is voided, counts as nothing for the other three players, while I lose 12 imps.)
What cards the other players held and what actually would have happened at the table may be completely irrelevant to this theoretical problem. And my bidding skill today is only a pale shadow of what it was when I played the game seriously 45 years ago. :eek: Nevertheless I’ll venture some general comments.
This hand is absolutely huge when partner opens 1 Club. He might have only three clubs, but he might have more! If partner has Ace or King of Hearts I want to be in Six. If RHO had overcalled in diamonds instead of hearts, I think I’d have jumped directly to Six Clubs.
Negative double strikes me as wrong — it describes a very different type of hand. And do you want to risk partner passing? (BTW, first thing that partner said after the hand is that he would have passed a negative double. Against 2HX I think we take 8 tricks with perfect defense, 7 tricks more typically. Figure it out; RHO has Qxx - KJTxxx - Kxxx - (void).)
I was tempted to cue-bid 3H. But, although it doesn’t promise a Heart control in this context I worried about subsequent inferences. I have no idea how to ask partner if he controls hearts(), but an initial Heart Q might just muddy the waters. ( - A Five Spade bid might ask that question if Spades were the agreed suit, but any special meaning of a Five-raise is lost when trumps are a minor suit.)
If you do bid 3H and partner bids 3NT, it is far from clear to me that 4D would be recognized as a cue-bid. No suit has been agreed. I think partner would raise diamonds with his actual hand, which was
-
AQ74
AT83
K8643
Partner’s Ace of Diamonds isn’t wasted — it’s the 13th trick: Seven Clubs is cold! I strongly disapprove of partner’s NT bid over 2S with a spade void (though 3NT might be reasonable if I’d bid 3H instead of 2S.) If he had rebid clubs, I could Keycard-Blackwood into seven. (One pair did bid almost like this, though I’ll guess their 4NT - 5S wasn’t Keycard, but rather treating Spade void as Ace! :smack: The other auctions to Seven were much worse.)
We stopped in six and would have won 2.3 Imps … except that LHO, possibly annoyed by my long hesitation in the bidding, quit the hand after a few tricks. He lost 12 imps, the deal was washed out for the rest of us.
Any Dopers want to play at PlayOK ? In some ways, the interface is much better than BBase’s. Send me a PM with your PlayOK login name!
Under no circumstances would I bid 3N on your partner’s hand after a 3H force or 2N after a bid of 2S. I’d bid a reverse into 4D or 3D.
There’s a convention called Voidwood which might be useful in this case. So the bidding would have gone 1C - 2H - 5D - 5S - 6C - 7C (partner corrects to 7C as he has DA and CK)
I agree that 2NT over 2S was bad. But 3NT over 3H seems plausible — the double heart stopper might be the most important feature of his hand. And “reversing” into diamonds seems questionable with a poor suit and minimal hand.
Would many experts have opened with 1 of a red-suit rather than 1 Club in order to avoid rebid problem?
You need to consider the distributional strength of the hand. You are also telling partner that you are at least 5-4 in clubs and diamonds. Plus it’s a safe bid as a one-round force.
You can play Key Card Exclusion/Voidwood, in which case the response is 5NT. However, the problem with bidding 5D on this hand is that you are forcing to slam no matter what partner has. xxx KJx KQx Kxxx for example.
True, but it illustrates the technique.
[Nitpicking and Didaction] Considering examples or counterexamples is a good way to evaluate a bidding plan. But the example hand for partner should be somewhere near the middle of his range (or bottom range when unlimited). For example, to prove that a slam try is justified you might look for a perfect-fitting minimum, not a perfect-fitting maximum.
This increases the chance that your example will be a useful proxy for partner’s actual hand. Similarly, to prove via counterexample that a slam bid is too aggressive, look for a good-fitting minimum or a poor-fitting maximum.
So here you’ve gone too far! This counterexample is rock-minimum. (I’m in the “Always open with 12 hcp” crowd but I still might pass that aceless 4333 minimum.) And the honors fit poorly. It’s harder to construct many 14-point hands with AH or KH which make 6C a bad bet.
Conclusion: I’d have simply jumped to Six Clubs if RHO overcalled in my void. I’d have jumped to Five Spades if our agreed suit was the major. As is, without any void-showing agreement, I still think my best shot may have been to encourage partner to bid NT, to play him for KH when he does rather than QJxx, and to just bid Six. Seven? Fugged aboutit! 
I agree that considering a perfect minimum is a good technique for evaluating whether to make a slam try. However, my example hand is only one of many where slam is no play yet bidding Blackwood would force you to it. Here is an 18-count on which even 5C will go down: QJ QJTx AKQ Kxxx. Having said that, I think your final paragraph is reasonable.
One possibility that might allow you to find out about the heart control is to start with 3H and when partner bids 3NT, bid 4D. I think someone earlier suggested that this would be natural, but I disagree. Bidding 3D over 2H would be forcing, so you do that with a diamond suit. If partner can now bid 4H to show a heart control, you will feel happier about bidding 6C.
I’m late to the party, but I’ll stick my oar in anyway.
For responder’s first bid, I think you have to force. The hand is so strong - even opposite a minimum with 3 Clubs, 5C should have chances. So 3H, unless 4C is forcing.
Besides, 2S shows the 5th Spade you don’t have (what if partner goes 3S?) and double implies the Diamonds you don’t have and denies the Clubs you do.
(Actually, the hand could be designed as an illustration of the downside of 5-card majors / strong NT. Responder has to decide whether to force at the 3 level without knowing opener’s strength or his best suit, or even whether the Clubs are genuine)
After 1C - 2H - 3H, opener has a nasty problem. 4D effectively gives partner the option of 5D or 5C, which is mildly terrifying since he’s not promised support for either. I suspect the 3NT, horrible though it is, is actually the Monte Carlo winner, in that it’s most likely to turn out right. The double-stop in Hearts is huge, and if partner has the high-card strength to force, Spades are unlikely to be wide open (if partner has a very distributional hand with strength in the minors, he’ll take you out of 3NT, so no harm done).
(I agree that over 2S, 2NT is a no-no. Personally, I’d just sign off in 3C - I have a minimum, with a weak suit, a void in partner’s suit and HAQ under the Heart bidder)
And I’m with septimus that after hearing 3NT from opener, responder may as well punt 6C. Yes, sometimes it will go wrong, but the odds are with you, there’s no real way to find out more about partner’s Hearts and continuing to conceal your 7-card trump support is only going to confuse things.
So 1C - (2H) - 3H - 3NT - 6C for me. 7C is unlikely - you need partner with KC, AH, either AD or KH and a way to handle the 3rd Spade.
I’m not in favour of the bid-6C-straight plan, even over 2D, because the hand is so distributional.
Opposite S Qxx H Axx D Axx C Kxxx, you can put the hand down for 7.
Opposite S QJx H xxx D AKx C Kxxx, you want to stay out of 6.
You may as well force at lower level and give partner the chance to tell you which is more likely - if you get no information, you can always punt 6C later.
Some would, for sure (as would many non-experts). Larry Cohen, for one, is a proponent of opening 1D with a (1/3)-4-5 hand and rebidding 2C. In a recent online vugraph he was discussing this with George Jacobs, who preferred to open 1C and rebid 1NT if partner responded in his singleton. I do not know what George would do with a 0-4-4-5, especially with weak clubs. With strong cubs you can open 1C and rebid 2C even though this would normally show 6 of them.
I have been taking lessons from a national-level player and he will bid NT if he has a singleton honour in partner’s suit.
I’m not familiar with the system, but I don’t see why the 2C rebid should show 6, given that 1C doesn’t even promise 4. It seems like you trap yourself for a rebid for no clear reason.
What do the experts advise if you have 5 Clubs, 4 Hearts and not enough strength to reverse?
I ran into something similar today, playing Acol. I opened 1H on a 1-4-4-4, and the bidding went 1H - 1S - 2C - 3C. I was not amused to see my partner put down a 4 -1 - 5 - 3 distribution (trumps were 5-1, and it was only extreme generosity from opponents that let it get away for 1 down).
With hindsight, I was wondering if it would be better to open that distribution 1D and trust partner to show 4 Hearts if he has them.
You don’t show partner’s hand so it’s difficult to say. If he has 8 points, then he should have passed 2 clubs. If he has enough points to bid again, I’d think 2NT (or 3 depending on point count) is the best call. Even if he doesn’t have a stopper in diamonds, he’s got 5, so opponents are unlikely to have enough to run. It also allows you to rebid 3C if you have a very distributional hand to get out of NT. Surely he has support for one of your two suits after bidding NT. Introducing the fourth suit seems pointless here – wouldn’t even play it as a natural bid.
The trouble with opening 1 D, is that partner with 5S 4H will bid 1S and after you’re 2C call will be in a similar trouble about introducing hearts. If you bid 1NT (which you shouldn’t with the hand you held), he could bid 2H with 5-4 or 2C with four of those.