[Fluffy]

PhantomSac, on Mar 3 2010, 11:13 PM, said:

Fluffy, on Mar 3 2010, 05:58 PM, said:

5♠ shows lack of heart control you cannot undo that lol.

well I guess it must be true then!

I was afraid of being biased here, since I have a tendency of saying the contrary of you when you say its "obv", so I asked dad (my usual partner), he said 5♠ was asking for heart control (pretty much my example), but he also said 4NT+5♠ was absurd .

He says with the hand given you have to just guess between 4♠ and 6♠, and 4♠ it is for him.

[jdonn]

Of course you don't want to go crazy with the definitions here because it's so rare. I mean in theory I would probably do something like make 5♥ and 5♠ both be this hand but one asking for help in clubs and one in diamonds, after all having a very strong hand with a hole in a minor like we actually do seems much more likely than 11 solid tricks outside hearts. But we have to be a little practical.

[rogerclee]

gnasher, on Mar 3 2010, 04:57 PM, said:

What does a direct 5♥ show?  I think it should be this hand, so that 5♠ can deny a heart control.

As long as we're talking about theory I would definitely swap 5H and 5S so that 5H does not show a heart control and 5S does. This is to stop you from being forced to play 6N opp Kx.

[lmilne]

5♠, 4NT is not "minors or something else" because LHO can still bid.

It would be dumb if we bid 4NT planning on masterminding the auction later and a) LHO bid 5♥+ or partner bid 6m+.

[PhantomSac]

gnasher, on Mar 3 2010, 06:57 PM, said:

Regarding continuations after 4NT-5m, 5♥ is a grand-slam try for the minor with first-round heart control, so wouldn't 5NT cover all your other grand-slam tries? You can hardly be missing another ace in addition to not having heart control.

5N to me is trying to get back to diamonds. You could be 7-5 for instance and have to bid 4N, then when partner bids 5C 5D is NF, and 6D goes past clubs, so 5N is def just tryin to get to diamonds.

Good point about a 5H overcall, it should mean something.

[PhantomSac]

Fluffy, on Mar 3 2010, 07:00 PM, said:

PhantomSac, on Mar 3 2010, 11:13 PM, said:

Fluffy, on Mar 3 2010, 05:58 PM, said:

5♠ shows lack of heart control you cannot undo that lol.

well I guess it must be true then!

I was afraid of being biased here, since I have a tendency of saying the contrary of you when you say its "obv", so I asked dad (my usual partner), he said 5♠ was asking for heart control (pretty much my example), but he also said 4NT+5♠ was absurd .

He says with the hand given you have to just guess between 4♠ and 6♠, and 4♠ it is for him.

So your dad thinks that 5S should cover one very specific, extremely unlikely hand type (spade 1 suiter, with almost 11 tricks and 2 low hearts), and ALL other hands that are between 4S and 6S should just have to guess?

If your dad thinks about this long and hard, I'm sure he would come to the conclusion that it is better to have the not-so-specific, far more common hands that are too good for 4S, but not good enough for 6S, be able to bid 5S. This leaves you with a hard problem on the type of hand that comes up 0 times per lifetime, but it stops you from having to guess every time you have a great hand but one not great enough to drive to slam.

In general when your only way to show a suit are 4S, 5S, and 6S, 5S does not show something specific, because you don't have enough room to be specific. The reason 5M usually asks for a control in their suit for slam is because usually we have numerous other forcing bids/cuebids available and our trump suit is already set. It is absolutely terrible to dedicate 5S to a super specific hand and leave yourself no bid for other hands that are at least 100x more common. If you have another way to show a hand that wants to invite 6 generically (a la gnashers 5H), fine, but if you don't then maybe you should reconsider your definition of 5S.

It's very mature to just try to post the contrary of what I say when I say obv though.

[Fluffy]

PhantomSac, on Mar 4 2010, 12:15 AM, said:

It's very mature to just try to post the contrary of what I say when I say obv though.

I admit my mistakes, that's why I tried to fix'em

Having 5♠ to show something specific makes life easy for partner, having a blame transfer 5♠ is not a big improvement, how does partner know wich cards are working? besides ♠A (or ♠K on other case), he won't have any card he knows it is useful.

Even if this treatment happened to be slightly better in the long run, having clear agreements is way more important.

[lmilne]

Fluffy, on Mar 3 2010, 07:40 PM, said:

Even if this treatment happened to be slightly better in the long run, having clear agreements is way more important.

It's not that great when the agreements are so esoteric that they never come up...

[vang]

PhantomSac, on Mar 3 2010, 11:20 PM, said:

5S obv. No this doesn't ask for a control, it just shows a hand between 4S and 6S.

why? is there a rule for when is this and when is that?[SIZE=1]
whups, sorry, didn't read page 2. thanks for explanation ;-)

[pooltuna]

what is the difference between bidding 3♠, 4♠,5♠, X and then 4♠, X and then 5♠

[ArtK78]

pooltuna, on Mar 4 2010, 08:23 AM, said:

what is the difference between bidding 3♠, 4♠,5♠, X and then 4♠, X and then 5♠

I would hate to double with this hand and have it go all pass.

[gnasher]

pooltuna, on Mar 4 2010, 02:23 PM, said:

what is the difference between bidding 3♠, 4♠,5♠, X and then 4♠, X and then 5♠

Double followed by 4♠ is best played as a flexible hand, rather than a one-suited monster. Something like a strong 51(43), 6133 or 6-4.

Doubled followed by a jump to 5♠ sounds like the same sort of shape, but with slam-going values. But it's probably OK to use it as some category of one-suiter - partner isn't going to pass 3♥x very often.