[Kaitlyn S]

Hi - these problems should be very easy for experienced players but an I/N player needs to think about the right things in an auction. If you get them wrong, don't feel too bad as long as you understand the rationale for the answers. I'll provide the answers later but I'll put a hint as a spoiler. Try to solve the problem without the spoiler. Also, let me know if you would be interested in seeing more of these from time to time.

Assume you are playing Standard American (a natural system with 15-17 1NT openings and 5-card majors), IMPS, and nobody is vulnerable except hand 1 where you are vulnerable.

Some background:

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Suppose you have this hand and your right hand opponent (RHO) opens 1D. You don't have a 5-card suit to overcall, you can't double with a singleton spade (partner will almost certainly bid spades and if you bid something else you are showing 18+), and you have neither the strength nor shape to overcall 1NT, The unusual 2NT overcall (if you play it) on 4-4 is a terrible idea.

All is not lost; LHO bids 1S and RHO raises to 2S. Now you have the perfect hand to double. Partner will know that you didn't double the first time because you were short in spades. You still show an opening hand counting shortness in the suits they bid, so you could double 2S with less than you have. Some pairs prebalance with bad hands with short spades. I don't recommend it since a likely result is that the opponents bid 4S and finesse your partner for any missing spade honors because you showed short spades.

You are expecting your partner to choose between clubs and hearts. Since you only are giving him two suits to choose from, you should really have at least four cards in each suit. You could have five clubs but aren't likely to have five hearts. Why not?

Spoiler

With opening values and five hearts, you probably would have overcalled 1D with 1H.

Let's see how the advancer should bid in this auction. Try these three examples.

1.

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Spoiler

Can you set 2S? 2NT is encouraging. Do you want to encourage? Where is your best likely fit?

2.

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Spoiler

If your partner is minimum for his action, how likely is game?

3.

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Spoiler

If your partner is minimum for his action, how likely is game? How well do your hands fit?

[Kaitlyn S]

Answers:

1.

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Hint:Can you set 2S? 2NT is encouraging. Do you want to encourage? Where is your best likely fit?

Answer. Tthe opponents probably have at least half the deck and eight spades. The chances to set 2S are not good. Passing would be a mistake.

2NT is not a place to bail; it is a game try. This makes sense as notrump contracts are easy to double when the opponents have more points than you do. If the responder as as much as 9 HCP, doubling 2NT is a good bet, and if not, partner will probably have enough to raise to 3NT which could be doubled.

Suit contracts aren't as easy to double at IMPs unless you find somebody with a stack. Your partner has clubs and hearts Is one of these preferable to the other? Partner has at least four of each, and could easily have five clubs that just weren't good enough to overcall at the two level. Partner could have overcalled 1H and didn't, so it's not that likely partner has five hearts. The suggested call is 3C.

2.

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Hint: If your partner is minimum for his action, how likely is game?

Answer: This time your hand is better, but with the opponents likely having eight spades between them, passing 2S doubled isn't advisable. You probably only have one spade trick, and may not have any once you leave the double in, implying the spades are in your hand. Your diamond honors are poorly placed.

Now you have enough to try for game with 2NT. Or you could take a shot at 3NT. How will 3NT do if partner is minimum?

While partner shows an opening hand, he is including points for spade (and perhaps diamond) shortness. Partner could have 10 HCP and a singleton spade. Also, when bidding a thin game, it is helpful when the opponents don't know what their best lead is. On this auction, their best lead is very likely spades and you know it. Unless partner has a spade honor, you have one stopper so the opponents will set up three spade tricks in a hurry.

Suits with more than three cards can sometimes produce extra tricks, but neither of your four card suits is going to provide a length trick (unless opener is 4-4-3-2 in which case partner's heart and club suits are breaking badly) and your diamond honors are poorly placed. Your spots are poor. If partner has extra values, you might be able to make 3NT and partner will bid it, but if partner has a minimum double, 2NT is quite enough, and is the recommended bid.

3.

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HInt: If your partner is minimum for his action, how likely is game? How well do your hands fit?

Answer: Unlike the last hand, this hand is going to play very well. Partner is short in spades where you have no wastage. All your points are where partner needs them; the C-AQ supporting his four or five card suit, and the DA has to be working. Your nine card heart fit makes your lack of heart honors less relevant.

Consider this:

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North has a bare minimum takeout double of 2S and yet six hearts has play. Partner will have a stronger hand if he has two spades.

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North still has a bare minimum, yet you will make 4H unless East has three hearts to the king, unlikely in light of the fact that West opened.

While your job is normally to just pick 3C or 3H here, you have a fantastic hand based on the auction and the recommended action is to jump to 4H.

[Stephen Tu]

Is 2nt by South really encouraging on this auction???

I would teach students that voluntary 2nt bids in constructive situations, when passing partner's bid on a misfit is a reasonable option, is a try for game, not a bid based on weakness/misfit. 1d-p-1s-p-2d-p-2nt etc.
But passing opps in their voluntarily bid 2M, doubled into game when partner wants you to takeout, is not something one wants to do usually, so I think I would not teach them 2nt as encouraging here, as the 2nt isn't really voluntary.

[Kaitlyn S]

Stephen Tu, on 2016-October-27, 10:21, said:

Is 2nt by South really encouraging on this auction???

I would teach students that voluntary 2nt bids in constructive situations, when passing partner's bid on a misfit is a reasonable option, is a try for game, not a bid based on weakness/misfit. 1d-p-1s-p-2d-p-2nt etc.
But passing opps in their voluntarily bid 2M, doubled into game when partner wants you to takeout, is not something one wants to do usually, so I think I would not teach them 2nt as encouraging here, as the 2nt isn't really voluntary.

An interesting idea. I believe that even if it were slightly better to play 2NT as "just a place to play", I would hesitate to teach it because it is just one more exception to confuse the student in a situation that isn't common. However, given the ease of doubling notrump contracts, especially two notrump as opposed to 1NT, with evenly divided HCP and a decent lead, or a slight to moderate majority of the HCP, you're just asking to give away 500's. I remember when I first graduated from the novice game to the sharks, the danger of bidding 2NT as a competitive bid. I'd snag a +490 once in a while but many more -200, -300, -500, -800's against a part score. Here, both opponents have bid, the opponents have a pretty obvious lead based on the auction, and should be able to defend pretty accurately with the knowledge that you didn't want to bid 3C or 3H.

[Stephen Tu]

The vast majority of good players play 2nt in this situation (after partner make takeout double of 2M after opp's raise) as scrambling. It's a pretty common situation IMO to have takeout double in this situation after bid and raise of a major. Certainly should be common to have similar situation 1s-p-2s-x-p-?. What isn't common is having enough values opposite that double to want to bid an encouraging 2nt, you'll hold something like hand 1 maybe 10x as often as something like hand 2.

Whether to teach it as scrambling or natural, I don't know what's best for an average beginner. Maybe if the opps start getting good enough to double them in 2nt then teach them scrambling. Or maybe just teach them immediately. But it's a good place IMO to start teaching the concept of "2nt not natural in competitive auctions". But I don't think it's best to teach them that 2nt in this situation should invite game, since they'll practically never hold hand appropriate for that and will abandon the concept later. I think for beginners I would generally try to, as much as practical, not teach things they'll have to abandon later. I'd rather just leave bids undefined and let them discover the holes and ask what should this bid actually mean, and what should I bid with this hand when they don't have a bid for it, and kind of discover how more advanced players use rarer bids and see how these fill gaps, the logic behind why additional conventions are played.

[Phil]

If you're going to mention 2N, I wouldn't say it's constructive - frankly I've never heard of that use.

Probably easier to edit the hand out than to explain what 2N means at all.

[NickRW]

Just my two cents worth, where I am you see 2NT as:

a) "too play runaway" used a lot by beginners and many not so new to the game who ought to know better

b) Constructive by those who have their heads screwed on, but who haven't read much about the game or who have partner's who don't read.

c) Scrambling by a few.

[akwoo]

Anyone who wants to teach 2N as scrambling to beginners is way overestimating the mental capacity of most bridge players, not just beginners.

I might also point out that Kaitlyn's reasoning on (3) is already beyond the mental capacity of most bridge players, who simply don't have the ability to imagine possible cards for partner and what contracts would be made with those possibilities. They don't have enough working memory to think that far ahead.

[Kaitlyn S]

akwoo, on 2016-October-29, 10:56, said:

Anyone who wants to teach 2N as scrambling to beginners is way overestimating the mental capacity of most bridge players, not just beginners.

it shouldn't be that hard to teach 2NT as "scrambling, probably minor oriented" in a situation where encouraging game makes no sense, like 1S P 2S P P Dbl P 2NT. Given the fact that you expect someone to understand the concept of balancing (perhaps high intermediate), the concept of not using 2NT as encouraging but instead as helping to find the best fit doesn't seem much of a stretch; certainly anyone that pretends to understand both balancing and The Unusual 2NT should not have any more trouble than this. (I would not teach Unusual 2NT to less than an advanced class despite the fact that people here might expect their novice partner to be fluent with the convention. That being said, I have never had a student so advanced that I would teach 1S P 2S P P X P 2NT as "probably minors but if you correct 3C to 3D you have the reds" and expect them to apply it properly.

Nevertheless, I was shocked to see a suggestion that 2NT be used as natural and scrambling. The concept isn't hard, but distinguishing when it applies would be beyond most players, apparently including me.

akwoo, on 2016-October-29, 10:56, said:

I might also point out that Kaitlyn's reasoning on (3) is already beyond the mental capacity of most bridge players, who simply don't have the ability to imagine possible cards for partner and what contracts would be made with those possibilities. They don't have enough working memory to think that far ahead.

I am well aware of that and understand that my answer make only be vaguely understood by newer players. And yet, I unashamedly put several problems in where good hand evaluation techniques are required, for the reason that I want the I/N player to see factors that makes a hand more or less valuable than the point count indicates.

My thinking is as folliws: Without seeing these problems, the newer player will overbid a poorly fitting hand or underbid a well fitting hand, and think it's bad luck that the right contract wasn't reached, or won't understand how others reached the right contract when the points indicate doing otherwise. But having seen some of my examples, the player will miss a game and realize "oh yeah, that's like that one Kaitlyn had where I had fitting honors for both my partners long suits" and will get it right the next tine.