[kenberg]

The following uncontested auction came up. I am responder.

1D 1S
2C 2H
3H

Yes, my partner is 0=4=5=4. He bid his hand. My 2H was artificial and game forcing, but being artificial does not mean that I deny having four hearts.

Now to my possible hand:
I could have a four card heart suit and I could be interested in a heart slam.
I could have a four card club suit and I could be interested in a club slam.
Or I could have diamonds instead of clubs.

How do I handle these two situations?
I suppose raising 3H to 4H is very passable, showing a gf hand with five spades and four hearts, but not showing anything else.
I suppose a 4C bid shows clubs, and we are still in a gf, right?

Here is the hand I actually held:

---

After 2C I don't think 3C is forcing. I bid 2H and, if partner bid 2NT, I planned to bid 3C. Presumably this shows a gf hand with doubts about NT. Alas, partner bid 3H, not 2NT and not 2S.

I am asking not just what to do here, but also what to do if I have four hearts rather than four clubs.

This seems basic enough that I would expect it to be discussed in many places, but I can't recall seeing it.

Later I will say how the hands actually fit, but for the moment I am more interested in the general idea of how to move over the raise of the 4sf call.

[wank]

this is very awkward in standard methods: there are at least 5 hand types you want to be able to show: game in hearts, slammy in hearts, slammy in clubs, slammy in diamonds, slammy no fit, but there are only 4 obvious bids available.

4c = clubs
4d = diamonds
4H = natural, to play
4nt = natural no fit extras, probably 5323 or 6 dodgy spades. i suspect many people would ignore this handtype, probably out of ignorance, and play 4nt as rkcb for hearts though.

it occurs to me, very anti-intutitively, that depending on the rest of your agreements, you might not need a natural 3S call and that this could be the heart raise. the idea being that you wouldn't be trying a dodgy 6 card suit here, opposite known shortage, and a good 6 card spade suit would have already made a forcing spade bid - i don't know your response structure but fairly normal where i'm from is a 2s response is 3-7(8-)ish 6 cards, 1s>2s = 8+-11 6 cards, 1s>3s = GF good suit 6 cards.

[Cyberyeti]

Does 3♥ guarantee hearts, or can it be "5th suit forcing" with no clear direction ?

What is 1♦-1♠-2♣-3♥ for you ? could this be used to deal with one of the hand types ?

[mike777]

yes it seems using 3h as a splinter raise for clubs is more useful than say showing 5-5 in s and h.

so one vote here for 3h after 2c.
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with gf and 4h rather than 4c I would start with 2h over 2c.
with less say roughly 7/8-11 and 4h I can start with reverse flannery over 1d
with 12-13 and 4h or so I either gf with 2h or perhaps bid 2nt as invite and natural or use reverse flannery over 1d depending on the rest of the hand.
--------------


the goal of all of the above is to try and reduce the usage of 4sf on this type of auction

[ArtK78]

3♥ over 2♣ should be a splinter raise of clubs.

Once you arrived at 3♥ in your auction, you had to decide whether to make a club raise and by-pass 3NT, or just bid 3NT. Given the massive duplication of values in the spade suit, I would go with 3NT.

[gszes]

step 1 what happens earlier in the bidding helps set the stage for later on. This means when you bid 2h as an artificial game force you need not worry about your bids below game as being forcing or not because by definition they are (unless you have partnership agreements to the contrary).

step 2 what you choose to NOT DO in the bidding is just as important as what you DO. This pertains to this hand since you had a very natural game forcing 3h bid available (over 2c unless you had some side agreement to the contrary). Your failure to use 3h should means you deny having 4 hearts.

Cyberyeti mentions 3h as a "catch all" bid (no spade support and no ability to bid 3n--note that the presence of 4 hearts is entirely irrelevant opposite a hand that has already denied 4 hearts). That is one idea I would use 3h as showing a partial heart stop and 3s as my "catch all" (since I could bid 2s with spade support). My bids also do not worry about heart length for the same reasons as above. Note how the bidding has taken on a completely different "flavor" and allows responder to make a much more accurate assessment of the over all potential of the hand when opener does not waste a level showing something (4 heart cards) that is probably irrelevant. Responder (with short hearts) is no better placed than they were when they bid 2h as to the probability of hands belonging anywhere from 3n to 6m.

I see a couple of suggestions that 3h should be used to show 55 in the majors or a splinter showing club support. Neither is needed in any circumstance when one uses 3h are showing 4+ hearts and game forcing. Using the concepts above allows for a much wider range of contracts to be reached and splinter theory works just as well when you can tell p has no wasted values opposite your short suit so there is little need for a splinter there.

This should answer your question about how to proceed when you have 4 hearts (vs say 4 clubs). Given the bidding at your table I would hazard 3n hoping the knowledge of opener having 4 hearts would act as a lead inhibitor on those hands where openers 4 heart pieces are of marginal quality. There is also no reason opener cannot have a couple of heart stoppers thus making 3n the best contract anyway.

[nige1]

I agree with mike777 that 1♦ - 1♠ - 2♣ - 3♥ should be a splinter. With that agreement, it would then be the systemically correct bid with kenberg's 5134 hand. (With 5♠s and 5 ♥s, you could rebid 2♥ and then bid them again).
On the actual 1♦ - 1♠ - 2♣ - 2♥ - 3♥ auction, I agree with Wank that continuations should be natural. (With real ♥s you can raise or bid 4N)

[mikeh]

I strongly disagree that 3♥ over 2♣ should be a splinter, unless playing a method in which 4SF isn't an absolute gf. One needs to be able to bid an invitational 5-5 major hand somehow, and if 2♥ establishes a gf, there is no choice but 3♥.

As it happens, I do have a 'solution' for the OP problem, but it will strike some as too artificial and too complex/problem-creating. I can tell you from experience that it works pretty well.

After 1♦ 1♠ 2♣ :

2N is an artificial one round force, promising 4+ hearts. If only 4, then gf.

2♥ is a form of FSF, but denies hearts and may be an invitational hand in notrump.

If opener fits hearts, after 2N, he can bid 3♥ with a hand that would reject an invite, and bid 4m as a cuebid or 4♥, the latter being acceptance of a game invitation but with no slam interest at all.

Absent some such artificiality, the OP problem becomes insoluble. Using 3♠ over 3♥ as agreeing hearts only works if you play strong jump shifts, since otherwise how does responder set spades as trump while preserving a slam try? Now, if 1♠ denies a 6+ spade suit with at least gf values, you can use 3♠ artificially.

[mike777]

As I mentioned the problem hand becomes the one that is inv range with both spades and hearts. (reverse flannery handles less). Some play 1minor=2s to show that but I do not.

I guess you choose your poison on this auction.

[Cyberyeti]

mikeh, on 2015-March-04, 15:56, said:

I strongly disagree that 3♥ over 2♣ should be a splinter, unless playing a method in which 4SF isn't an absolute gf. One needs to be able to bid an invitational 5-5 major hand somehow, and if 2♥ establishes a gf, there is no choice but 3♥.

Bingo, we play 4SF not GF at the 2 level unlike the OP, hence 3♥ as a splinter. I wonder if playing 1♦-2♥ as 5-5M inv has any play to remove this problem.

[kenberg]

I confess that bidding 3H over 2C had not occurred to me. I didn't reject it, I simply didn't think of it. But I also am not sure what partner would have made of it.
I generally take the view that the default meaning of a second round jump by responder is that it is invitational. I am developing agreements with this particular partner, but I don't think that we have close enough agreements sop that he would be confident of the meaning of 3H even if I had chosen it.

As to the raise of 2H to 3H, yes, I think he and I both expect that to promise four.

The hands

---

[wank]

mikeh, on 2015-March-04, 15:56, said:

Absent some such artificiality, the OP problem becomes insoluble. Using 3♠ over 3♥ as agreeing hearts only works if you play strong jump shifts, since otherwise how does responder set spades as trump while preserving a slam try? Now, if 1♠ denies a 6+ spade suit with at least gf values, you can use 3♠ artificially.

standard among weak jump shift players in my country is 1d-2s weak, 1d-1s-2c-2s invitational and 1d-1s-2c-3s GF with a good suit.

[mikeh]

wank, on 2015-March-04, 21:33, said:

standard among weak jump shift players in my country is 1d-2s weak, 1d-1s-2c-2s invitational and 1d-1s-2c-3s GF with a good suit.

Standard in my country is for a weak jump shift to be 3-6 or 4-7 or so....weak.

Invitational opposite a potential misfit would be 10-11.

We have a word for hands that fall between these ranges:we call them 'constructive'

I guess that you must use the word weak as somewhat stronger than we do, or maybe in your country everyone is so much better a declarer than we are in mine that you can invite on misfits with 8 counts.

Or maybe you throw in deals where responder has 6 spades and 8-9 hcp?

[Mbodell]

If you can tolerate artificial stuff, this is a good candidate for mulberry (Rodwell's convention):

4♣ is a puppet to 4♦ over which any game bid is a slam invite in that strain.
4♦ is a puppet to 4♥ to pass or correct at game
4♥+ are keycard (possibly rearranged so 4♥ is KC ♣; 4♠ is KC ♦; 4nt is KC ♥)

This covers all those types of hands people were talking about.

Some people (Kit Woolsey) reverse the 4♣ and natural invites so direct natural bids are the slam invite in that strain and keycard goes through the puppet. This might be slightly better if you are worried that partner might forget, because if they pass you are at least in the right strain.

[kenberg]

The Mbodell suggestion above makes a lot of sense to me. 2H put us in a game force, 3H leaves us in an ambiguous situation, we use some tricks to sort it out.
This is not quite the same as saying that I will suggest to partner that we play it..Artificial bids are a tricky business. We have to make sure we are on the same page and this means writing them down and reviewing them. Most of us can handle some such agreements, but if the number becomes too large we are asking for trouble.
But it does seem to solve a problem, and I like it,

Added: The best is, of course, to just get it right. On this hand, where the four card heart suit is so much stronger than the four card club suit, 3NT is a fine contract. 5C can be made, but might not be. 6C, which is where I put my partner, requires at least one revoke to make.

[wank]

mikeh, on 2015-March-05, 00:24, said:

Standard in my country is for a weak jump shift to be 3-6 or 4-7 or so....weak.

Invitational opposite a potential misfit would be 10-11.

We have a word for hands that fall between these ranges:we call them 'constructive'

I guess that you must use the word weak as somewhat stronger than we do, or maybe in your country everyone is so much better a declarer than we are in mine that you can invite on misfits with 8 counts.

Or maybe you throw in deals where responder has 6 spades and 8-9 hcp?

i'm inviting at the 2 level. there is space between that and game to differentiate on marginal hands. i fail to see where this is in trouble compared to your method where you have a tighter range but you're inviting at the 3 level. i play IJS so it's irrelevant to me, but i still prefer this method to your's.

[mikeh]

wank, on 2015-March-05, 10:25, said:

i'm inviting at the 2 level. there is space between that and game to differentiate on marginal hands. i fail to see where this is in trouble compared to your method where you have a tighter range but you're inviting at the 3 level. i play IJS so it's irrelevant to me, but i still prefer this method to your's.

Ok, so a rebid of 2♠ is not 'invitational', but is either constructive or invitational, and you have space to differentiate between the two types. Fair enough.

Of course, sometimes opener has enough to want to be in game opposite an invite and so needs to force to the 3-level, only to find out that 8 tricks were the limit opposite a minimum constructive rebid.

I'm not claiming that your method is silly or terrible, but I do think that you tend to underestimate the problems inherent in making a 2♠ rebid so wide range. Maybe the reason you do this is that you don't in fact play either my method or the method you claim is better. You instead play a different method that will surely have its own problems, which will be different from the problems of my method or the one you described.

For example, the idea that one can play transfers at the 4-level over a 3♥ raise of the FSF 2♥ (as suggested by another poster) bid works well until one realizes that to show clubs one must pre-empt the auction to 4♥, losing half a level of bidding precisely when one would likely most want to be able to show or deny a diamond control. It may well be that the gains from the 4♣ and 4♦ calls outweigh the cost of the 4♥ call (and I suspect they do), but one shouldn't rush into adopting this 'solution' without thinking about whether we can justify this cost, or whether other solutions may be better or easier to remember (a problem for partnerships that don't play very often).

What all of this brings into focus is that there are no free lunches when it comes to 'fixing' bidding problems that arise from systemic choices. Every choice we make in system design ripples through the rest of the system to some degree, and every method has flaws.

At the end of the day, almost any reasonably well-thought out method, which takes into account the integration of the gadget into the system, will work well enough that one would need to be unlucky to have a hand arise in which one's methods consistently cost compared to the methods chosen by others. It is more important for the partnership to be comfortable with its methods than for the methods to be some unascertainably perfect solution. You like your methods and I like mine, and should we ever play a long match against each other, I suspect that the differences in method would have little impact on the outcome, or if they did, such would likely be random in either direction. Card play and judgment would almost certainly carry far more weight.

[Zelandakh]

It seems to me that Mike's method is effectively a way of avoiding a 3♥ response to 4SF. You can do that without the switch too so that the OP Opener would rebid 2NT and now 3♥ from Responder checks back for a heart fit. That will often be little more than a transposition of bids and involves no artificiality at all.

[kenberg]

On the hand I had, an agreement that 2NT does not deny four hearts would have worked well. I would then rebid 3C showing my clubs and partner would look at his strong hearts and weak clubs and rebid 3NT. I would feel that I have had my say and I would pass.

But, as mikeh says and probably we all agree, there is no free lunch. At the time that 2H is bid, responder could have four spades to the 7 or he could have six spades to the KQ. If opener's 2NT bid can be on a 0=4=5=4 shape, this might get difficult to sort out. Also, the quality of opener's hearts probably matters. I haven't thought this all through, I can see advantages to having 2NT not deny four hearts. Mostly it gives more room. But responder's 2H neither shows nor denies four hearts, and if now opener's 2NT neither shows nor denies four hearts, it seems this could get tricky. Maybe the raise of 2H to 3H could say "Yes I have four hearts, but not the sort of four card suit that leads me to want to play NT unless you have some help there.." Thus 2NT would be "Either I don't have four hearts but I can handle hearts in a NT contract or else I do have four decent hearts which I will be happy to show if you now bid hearts".

I dunno. The raise of the fourth suit doesn't happen all that often but it does happen, and it seems to create a bit of a mess when it does dome up.

This seems to me to be a good topic for the I/A forum. I play the game attempting to do my best but no one would (remotely) mistake me for Bob Hammon even though we both have white hair. The situation arises now and then, no doubt expert pairs have their ways to handle it, but mostly the players I partner with have not given it much thought since there are more basic agreements that they must get straight. I have not seen anything written on this and I have found the suggestions here to be of interest. Thanks.

[Zelandakh]

kenberg, on 2015-March-06, 08:19, said:

I have not seen anything written on this and I have found the suggestions here to be of interest. Thanks.

A general rule that can be used if one is willing to move away from North American standard methods is that after 2NT in a GF auction bidding the 4th suit checks for a fit in that suit (if this makes sense) while bidding the 4th suit without going through 2NT is a general force/stopper ask, again within the context of the auction to date. There are few auctions where this approach falls down, imo considerably fewer than the approach where bidding the 4th suit is natural. This is a topic that actually comes up regularly on BBF but the details are always slightly different so it is easy not to see the pattern.