[Hanoi5]

Say it goes:

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4♥ would be a game hand but, what about 3♥? Is it better as an invitation or as competing? What about double? Couldn't it be like a maximal double? What if responder holds spades?

[PhilG007]

If you provided a hand for West,I could have given a reply. Without seeing
the cards,I couldn't give an honest answer.

[gordontd]

 PhilG007, on 2013-September-08, 02:28, said:

If you provided a hand for West,I could have given a reply. Without seeing
the cards,I couldn't give an honest answer.

Does the meaning of a call depend on the cards you hold?

[BillHiggin]

 gordontd, on 2013-September-08, 02:39, said:

Does the meaning of a call depend on the cards you hold?

Of course not. I depends on the speed of the bid, whether or not you slap down the bidding card, and is modified by intense staring!

Edit - oops, forgot the [sarcasm] and [/sarcasm] tags that are required for this sort of online answer.

[PhilKing]

Under my meta-rules, double is for take-out. Logically it should show four spades and invitational or better values.

3♥ = to play. 4♥ = game try

[1eyedjack]

If 2C can be the start of a garbage hand, I would give up on competing just for the sake of buying the partscore, even if you know that you have a Heart fit. So 3H would show genuine game interest and you do not need X to include those hands.

[RSClyde]

This is an interesting question.
I think 3♥ is invitational. If responder holds only 4 hearts then the desire to compete isn't clear anyway: you only have 8 trump, why is it clear to bid 3 over 3, "competitively"? Pass, it would seem, logically shows a garbage stayman hand, so this may allow opener to find another call. I'm not saying that it's likely, but possible: you don't have to have 4 hearts so he'd either need a 5th heart or 4 spades to do something other than pass, as well as nothing wasted in and as few clubs as possible. If you have 5 hearts and a weak hand with both majors, then I admit, 3♥ would look right competitively, so that would be unfortunate.

[phoenix214]

I think you can do the same as after someone has opened 1M and competition has began after you have found a fit. That is, that One under 3M is Inviting to game, and 3M is competitive. In case opp bids one under 3M, then X is the invite bid

[helene_t]

given that opps have a club fit I think the chance that responder has a weak hand is quite high. With a game try in hearts you just have to bid 4♥. Dbl shows four spades.

[helene_t]

given that opps have a club fit I think the chance that responder has a weak hand is quite high. With a game try in hearts you just have to bid 4♥. Dbl shows four spades.

[fromageGB]

I don't often want to compete to the 3-level with a 4-4 fit over a minor, and think 3♥ would therefore be 4 card suit game invitational strength.

The double? On the face of it, 2 good possible meanings - game values with 4 spades, and maybe just less than game values not necessarily holding spades, ie penalty. If 2♣ promised a major, then I would think the former has more weight, otherwise the latter.

[beatrix45]

3♥, it seems to me, has to be competitive usually holding a five card (or rarely longer) suit and some playing values. You just don't get to invite in a crowded auction. 3♦, unfortunately, is 4-x-6-x. Double is 4-x-x-4 and some cards.

[aguahombre]

 phoenix214, on 2013-September-08, 11:13, said:

I think you can do the same as after someone has opened 1M and competition has began after you have found a fit. That is, that One under 3M is Inviting to game, and 3M is competitive. In case opp bids one under 3M, then X is the invite bid

We can't do that. Regardless of whether 1NT was weak or strong, we need to be able to bid 3D in the OP situation as a GF with longer than 4 diamonds...having 4 Spades (say 4-3-6-0 or 4-3-5-1) would be a logical, but not guaranteed inference.

[Zelandakh]

 aguahombre, on 2013-September-08, 16:36, said:

We can't do that.

Well you could if, for example, you decided to play 3♠ as showing diamonds.

[jallerton]

If you had agreements like this, I suspect your system file would be very long!

[jallerton]

 aguahombre, on 2013-September-08, 16:36, said:

We can't do that. Regardless of whether 1NT was weak or strong, we need to be able to bid 3D in the OP situation as a GF with longer than 4 diamonds.

Not necesarily. Some partnerships would not start with Stayman, preferring instead to show diamonds on the first round, with this hand type.

[aguahombre]

 jallerton, on 2013-September-09, 16:40, said:

Not necesarily. Some partnerships would not start with Stayman, preferring instead to show diamonds on the first round, with this hand type.

Hence, the word "we". What we choose to give up is the merely competitive 3H bid in the given situation, like FromageGB. However, Helene's idea that 3H would be mere competition and 4H would be the stretch with a good invite is probably be the IMPs strategy most likely to win over the long run.

[gnasher]

 helene_t, on 2013-September-08, 11:17, said:

given that opps have a club fit I think the chance that responder has a weak hand is quite high. With a game try in hearts you just have to bid 4♥. Dbl shows four spades.

I think this is right. Once they've found a fit your invitational hand has usually become a well-fitting invitation, so you'll usually want to bid game anyway. Furthermore, when we bid game we want to leave them guessing whether to save or not, so it woudln't be good to tell them that our values are marginal.

[guido]

 BillHiggin, on 2013-September-08, 02:54, said:

Of course not. I depends on the speed of the bid, whether or not you slap down the bidding card, and is modified by intense staring!

Edit - oops, forgot the [sarcasm] and [/sarcasm] tags that are required for this sort of online answer.

You also forgot to note that some of us play reverse hesitations, inverted bidding card slapping, and two-way staring,

[DJNeill]

Tangent: if you are playing weak NT, see the weak NT system bible from Kokish-Kraft. It has a lot of good stuff, including something about this sequence.