[CSGibson]

---

North/South play a system of raises so that 2♥ would have shown a good raise (2 1/2 hearts), implying an unbalanced hand with clubs and hearts, so 3♦ would show a better hand in context than normal with mini-splinters.

As for the rest of the auction, 3♠ was a serious slam try, 4♥ shows the weakest possible hand, and N-S are in a forcing auction at 5♦.

And now to the audience, to assign the blame.

[nigel_k]

I'm not familiar enough with the methods to be sure if this South hand qualifies for 3♦. Maybe it doesn't. But most of the blame is with North. After South bid 4♥, if North had passed 5♦ and South still could not do more than 5♥, how could slam be good?

[aguahombre]

In order to earn the right to question the stated agreements, I must first answer the question posted.

Assuming South described his hand perfectly, down to the working spade jack: North has taken over the hand and can be the only one of the two to "judge". He seemingly decided that East, who has ten pointed cards, held exactly one heart and two clubs. That is too much to hope for, IMO.

Now, with your set of raises, does South have any way of showing four-card heart support with a vanilla opening bid, or showing a weaker than 2 1/2 heart call unbalanced?

[CSGibson]

aguahombre, on 2012-March-23, 02:11, said:

Now, with your set of raises, does South have any way of showing four-card heart support with a vanilla opening bid, or showing a weaker than 2 1/2 heart call unbalanced?

Yes. We use 1-under bids as multiple meanings, including:

1) weak raise to 2M
2) game forcing raise of the major or
3) natural reverse

In this case, 2♦ would have been the weak raise

While systemically this treatment works remarkably well for us, it is in the context of intermediate (9-14) two bids, which makes something like 1♦-1♥-2♦ (forcing to 2♥, either weak raise, GF raise, or diamonds good 14-bad 18) playable.

[Codo]

The only cirtical auction by South was his 3 ♦ bid. He surely had liked to have a little extra, but to me this bid looks fine.
So all blame goes to north. 3 ♠ and 6 ♥ had been overbids.

[gszes]

Principle of fast arrival helps solve a ton of dilemnas.
When S bid 4h it should send a message that S was minimum
(or a tad worse) for previous bidding. While north has
a superb hand for slam (all controls) the 4h bid by S
should have given N pause before proceeding to slam
especially in the light of expected poor breaks.

I blame N for selective hearing (ie heard 3d but not 4h).

[ahydra]

3D if mini-splinter is a tiny bit pushy but I think it's fine. 3S is an overbid. 6H is a HUGE overbid.

North should X 5D. IMHO he gets 100% of the blame.

ahydra

[phil_20686]

To me the question is, can south have the club Q and still be consistent with his bidding? If the answer is yes, then its fine to be in slam, if the answer is no then north has done too much.

The mini splinter seems like quite a lot to me, but I don't really understand what inferences i should draw from your agreement.

[aguahombre]

Phil_20686:

It would seem that if South had KJX AQXX J KQXXX (the queen of clubs added to the OP), the hand would be too strong for their agreements with 18 support points because minisplinters do not commit to game.

However, if South accidentally did find that card after bidding 3D, he would not have been putting on the brakes with skid marks when North made his first slam try.

Irrelevant here, BTW, but ---if MY partner bid 3D under our agreements, Phil_20686's hand with the queen added to the OP hand would be just about right. We use the bid as a full- value splinter.

This post has been edited by aguahombre: 2012-March-23, 10:05

[phil_20686]

aguahombre, on 2012-March-23, 09:56, said:

Phil_20686:

It would seem that if South had KJX AQXX J KQXXX (the queen of clubs added to the OP), the hand would be too strong for their agreements with 18 support points because minisplinters do not commit to game.

However, if South accidentally did find that card after bidding 3D, he would not have been putting on the brakes with skid marks when North made his first slam try.

There is not normally an upper limit to mini splinters, as you can always raise. Its not like partner can pass. If feels like the hand he originally raised with was really a 2 1/2 heart bid. with only 13 HCP, and not really suitable for a mini splinter. Moreover, if it really was a typical min its hard to imagine north jumping to slam rather than FP and pull. North clearly expected more from south.

Like I said, I dont understand fully their agreements, but it looks to me like south overbid with the minisplinter.

I mean I can imagine if we polled with support doubles, there would be votes for a std 2H bid, so it clearly cannot be too much for a 2H=2.5 heart bid imo. A mini splinter is meant to be more than that, so....

[Fluffy]

north went overboard, he has an easy forcing pass to try to invite, he is missing ♠K ♥AQ ♣KQ and is sure to lose a diamond, so needs all of them, partner will double and te sensible 5♥ would be reached.

[aguahombre]

Phil: Yes, but:

"However, if South accidentally did find that card after bidding 3D, he would not have been putting on the brakes with skid marks when North made his first slam try."

Repeated for convenience with the one word deleted if a mini-splinter has a wider range than invite.

[mikeh]

I don't know the OP style, but when I play 3♦ as a non-gf splinter, it doesn't deny gf values...with gf values, we bid over a 3♥ signoff.

But even if opener could hold, say, Kxx AQxx x AQxxx (which seems to me to be just less than gf anyways), he denied such a powerful holding by bidding 4♥.

It seems to me that N must have thought that splintering on S's hand was either an error or, at the least, the worst holding he could have, else we can hardly justify a 3♠ serious slam try.

So maybe there was some partnership style issue going on at that point, and, if so, we can't assign blame since we don't know who was correct....indeed, it is possible that both were at fault because they were playing a method on which they had no agreement as to the range shown by the bid.

However, regardless of that issue, 4♥ showed, by agreement, a bad hand in context.....the worst possible hand in context.

N's 3♠ seems a bit rich to me, even if S ought to have held a tad more for 3♦. But the conversation that was going on was:

3♦: I have a hand that holds 4 trump, a stiff diamond, and a good invitation to game. (subtext: it is possible that it could also include a gf, but it has to be treated as a game invite for now)

3♠: if 3♦ was limited to game invitational values, 3♠ says: look, even opposite a less than gf raise, I have slam hopes. If 3♦ could include a big hand, then 3♠ might mean: I have a good game bid, and if you have more than invitational, I'm happy to cooperate in a slam hunt. Both meanings are overbids, the former more so than the latter

4♥: whatever you want from me, for slam, I don't have it. This seems to be a correct view

6♥: I don't believe you at all...you hold a much better hand than you think you do. This is idiotic, to be polite.


So while there is room for debate about the early rounds, by the time N had to bid over 5♦, he ought to have had no trouble at all. Imo, he should double and lead a trump.

On this auction, with a 4-4 trump fit and an LHO bidding like a maniac, there is no 5 level safety. Amongst other issues, he has the worst possible spade length. Note that even an impossible Kxx AQxx x AQxxx leaves him with little play for slam, since it is surely naive to think that it is more likely than not that trump are 3-2 and clubs 3-1 on an auction like this. Edit: I got carried away in my example and gave the AQJx in trump...while that still fails on 6-1 spades if they lead spades, it would usually make on a diamond lead, so I weakened it a bit to now read AQxx

[CSGibson]

By the way, I think Phil has gotten to the point N was trying to make. N was saying that this is beyond minimum for a mini splinter in the system we play, and that he expected the ♣Q in addition to the heart honors and spade card (or a good 6 card club suit) in order to make this bid. S agreed that it was beyond minimum in an uncontested auction, but thought that the 1♠ bid in front of him allowed him to re-evaluate upwards his KJx and possibly his ♣K in context of the auction.

Everyone else has gotten to the point that S was trying to make - he's heard the 3♠ cue, and still gave the 4♥ call. If partner perpetrates a pass-pull auction at the 5 level, S felt he was going to go to slam on almost all hands where it makes.

[akhare]

North went overboard IMO. Given that 4♥ was the weakest bid that South could have made in context of the auction, there doesn't seem to be enough oomph in the North hand to contract for 12 tricks...

[phil_20686]

@mikeh: Rho bid 4d over 3S, so I dont think 4H shows much. I mean its possible that one can have agreement about pass/ dble, but I'm not sure that I do. Pretty sure that on general principles my partner and I would play that passing here just asks partner if he wants a piece of this, I think doubling is the most negative, since I splintered I cant have trump tricks, and it just suggests I have poor cards for playing the hand. Not a good sign. So 4H would be the most encouraging except for a pass/pull.

[bluecalm]

This is quite a good contract :-)
Would be close to laydown if S had J of clubs instead of J of spades but bidding would be the same.
I agree that N actions look aggressive to say the least though.

[mikeh]

phil_20686, on 2012-March-23, 13:33, said:

@mikeh: Rho bid 4d over 3S, so I dont think 4H shows much. I mean its possible that one can have agreement about pass/ dble, but I'm not sure that I do. Pretty sure that on general principles my partner and I would play that passing here just asks partner if he wants a piece of this, I think doubling is the most negative, since I splintered I cant have trump tricks, and it just suggests I have poor cards for playing the hand. Not a good sign. So 4H would be the most encouraging except for a pass/pull.

The OP stipulated that their agreement was that 4♥ was the weakest action possible....which I think is a sound agreement, and is the agreement I play in all such auctions. Your agreement may differ, but I was addressing the post as per the anouncements given.

[han]

I sadly couldn't find anything to disagree with in mikeh's posts. However, in an effort not to admit that I'm going to take the discussion to a different direction:

I think it is a good idea to play in this auction that 3D and 3H are not specific about shape, but 3D is just stronger than 3H. For example, you could bid 3H with x AQxx Kxx Qxxxx (wouldn't you?) and bid 3D with something like an extra club king.

With a gameforcing hand you can bid 2S (without shortness), or 3S/4D.

What do people think about this? I think you can play it after a 1C opening whenever 3M-1 is a jump.

[mikeh]

han, on 2012-March-23, 16:18, said:

I sadly couldn't find anything to disagree with in mikeh's posts. However, in an effort not to admit that I'm going to take the discussion to a different direction:

I think it is a good idea to play in this auction that 3D and 3H are not specific about shape, but 3D is just stronger than 3H. For example, you could bid 3H with x AQxx Kxx Qxxxx (wouldn't you?) and bid 3D with something like an extra club king.

With a gameforcing hand you can bid 2S (without shortness), or 3S/4D.

What do people think about this? I think you can play it after a 1C opening whenever 3M-1 is a jump.

Before disagreeing with you, are you limiting your suggestion to situations in which rho has made an overcall, presumably at the 1-level or via a natural 2♣, which many (tho far from all) players have in their bag?

My experience has been that we rarely hold a hand in which we want to splinter in the 4th suit (assuming 3 suits have so far been bid). This factor underlies why most use fit jumps in auctions like 1♠ [2♥] 4♣....the odds that we have shortness in clubs are such that we tend, most of us, to see the fit jump as a better use than the infrequent side suit splinter.

After all, in terms of frequency of an off-suit splinter, we presumably need unexpected shortness (a suit no-one has bid) and a good holding in rho's suit, else we may be committing our side too high.

So I am prepared, to my astonishment, to be receptive to the idea, but I know I'll never get anyone to play it.