[rhm]

jogs, on 2014-August-02, 18:11, said:

I agree 3♥ is better non forcing in contested auctions. But it doesn't matter what I think. Most Americans play ambiguous(or undiscussed) bids in contested auctions are forcing.

PhantomSac, on 2014-August-03, 21:15, said:

Cite? I have never heard of bid-bid-bid-bid being forcing in any circumstances unless one of the first 2 bids was a preempt. Seems pretty silly even after a 2 level overcall, but lol after a 1 level overcall.

I beg to differ and appearances can be deceptive.
I play new suits at the two level non-forcing even when partner has opened (negative free bids) instead of overcalled, which is a minority view.

But playing that a new major suit bid at the three level should be non forcing is not my cup of tea.
You might have slightly better possibility to contest the part-score if you play it non forcing.
On the other hand you must be quite narrow in strength to be able to make a non forcing bid at the three level and survive a non-fit in your suit and that both sides can just make something at the three level is not that frequent anyway.
But I just might lose some part-score battles and sometimes I will stretch. But I play a new major at the three level as game forcing.
Not here of course since DBL stands out. but If I had a heart more and a club less I would stretch and bid 3♥.
So in the end on almost all hands where you will bid 3♥ I will bid 3♥ as well, but I can not afford to limit such a bid to a narrow range of hands when opponents have taken away our bidding room.
I can do this with strong hands too, secure in the knowledge that overcaller will not pass and we can find our best strain and level.
If no game makes big deal. When opponents have a good fit of their own they are rarely able to punish us if we find our best strain.

Giving strong hands fewer options affects your game and slam bidding and this can be really expensive.
In today's competitive world almost everybody plays jump raises as weak and preemptive. So do not tell me advancer could not be strong giving such a start.
Stopping on a dime just one trick below game is in my opinion a long term losing strategy.

Rainer Herrmann

[gordontd]

Rainer,

Do you share the original poster's overcall style of "...fairly aggressive. An 8 count from partner would be totally normal here"?

[nige1]

Free, on 2014-August-05, 01:07, said:

Time for a reality check...

Exactly

When I award marks to calls that I consider, It seems logical to award 10 to the call I choose (e.g. Double).

IMO, however, it's unrealistic to award zero to calls chosen by others (e.g. 3♥).

Analogously, sometimes, expert partners, on magazine bidding panels, ridicule a problem because there's only one possible call. Unfortunately, each partner chooses a different call

[phil_20686]

So I am surprised at the unanimity of this poll.

There was a sharp difference of opinion among my teammates on basically all facets of this board. One thought dble basically always shows 5 hearts, another thought it was routine to double with 3424 looking for the 4-4 heart fit rather than spades, and was therefore strongly opposed to the idea of responding 3H on three cards, since he would routinely raise 3h to 4 holding 34 in the majors.

This was a problem some teammates faced, The player did indeed double, but partner with KJT97 K94 72 Q66 bid 3♠, so they went off in 3S rather than bidding 4H.


The full hand was:

---

At my table I opened an unbalanced diamond and partner only bid 2d rather than three, which is normal in our style with balanced hand. But that gave the opps an easy 2H bid. Course, you would expect norway to negotiate this position easily.

[whereagles]

phil: if you bid michaels on any 5-4, dbl is easy, as is bidding 3♥ on 3 cards. If you're very strict on using michaels (e.g. only 5-5 and/or top-bottom range), then 3♥ gets more attractive.

[jallerton]

phil_20686, on 2014-August-06, 06:35, said:

So I am surprised at the unanimity of this poll.

There was a sharp difference of opinion among my teammates on basically all facets of this board. One thought dble basically always shows 5 hearts, another thought it was routine to double with 3424 looking for the 4-4 heart fit rather than spades, and was therefore strongly opposed to the idea of responding 3H on three cards, since he would routinely raise 3h to 4 holding 34 in the majors.

This was a problem some teammates faced, The player did indeed double, but partner with KJT97 K94 72 Q66 bid 3♠, so they went off in 3S rather than bidding 4H.

I am surprised at the thoughts of some of your team-mates!

The auction has been pre-empted and your team-mate wants to use one of the few sequences available to find a second 8-card major suit fit!

The player at the table rebid the 5-card suit he had already shown over a take-out double. Was he surprised to play in a 5-2 fit?

phil_20686, on 2014-August-06, 06:35, said:

At my table I opened an unbalanced diamond and partner only bid 2d rather than three, which is normal in our style with balanced hand. But that gave the opps an easy 2H bid. Course, you would expect norway to negotiate this position easily.

Sorry, I don't understand this either. What's the point of playing unbalanced 1♦ opener, if you don't pre-empt to the 3-level on hands like this?

[MrAce]

Phil why did the guy with 5 spades rebid his spades? Yes doubler can have only 4 hearts so what? He bids his 3 card hearts and pd will not expect this to be necessarily 4 cards. In fact it's very rare for pd to hold 4 cards in this suit when he is in a situation with limited space and chose to bid one of the suits as low as possible that was implied by doubler.

Assigning this double to only 4 cards or 5 cards is a luxury that we can not afford in such competitive and pressured auctions IMHO. Flexibility is the best approach as far as my personal experiences taught me.

[Zelandakh]

nige1, on 2014-August-02, 05:24, said:

I give 0-5 for calls I don't think would work, 6-9 for calls that might well work (even if I wouldn't choose them) and 10 for what I'd probably bid.

Could I perhaps suggest an amendment nige? How about if you gave 1-3 for calls that might be considered but you feel would not work, 4-6 for calls that might work but you do not think should be chosen and 7-9 for calls that you think would realistically be chosen by a reasonable proportion of experts? That would probably bring your marks more in line with the levels most are used to from MSC-type columns and more clearly differentiate the most important choices (graded 7-10). I think marks of X = 10, 3♥ = 7; 4♠ = 6; 3♠ = 5; 4♦ = 4, or some variation of that, would probably show your thoughts more clearly, allowing you to award 9 only on hands where you think the decision is genuinely close to 50-50.

[nige1]

Zelandakh, on 2014-August-07, 04:58, said:

Could I perhaps suggest an amendment nige? How about if you gave 1-3 for calls that might be considered but you feel would not work, 4-6 for calls that might work but you do not think should be chosen and 7-9 for calls that you think would realistically be chosen by a reasonable proportion of experts? That would probably bring your marks more in line with the levels most are used to from MSC-type columns and more clearly differentiate the most important choices (graded 7-10). I think marks of X = 10, 3♥ = 7; 4♠ = 6; 3♠ = 5; 4♦ = 4, or some variation of that, would probably show your thoughts more clearly, allowing you to award 9 only on hands where you think the decision is genuinely close to 50-50.

Thank you, Zelandakh. I agree that a range of marks provide useful feedback to the OP and Zelandakh's suggestion is attractive. I'm just reflecting my own assessments, however. I sometimes consider many calls that, on reflection, I feel are unlikely to work, and I like to present them in some kind of order.

I'm unqualified to emulate an MSC type column. For example, when Justin Lall or another expert chooses a bid, which I mark as 7, I'm tempted to give it 10 and downgrade my choice; but IMO, that would be pointless, given that

• BBF readers soon get to know who the experts are.
• Topic polls can show the relative popularity of calls.

Interestingly, here, some experts reckoned 3♥ to be worth zero (or less) and one poster opined that it was hard to imagine a context where it would be more successful than double. Hence, I feel that my award of 9 marks is not completely unrealistic.

[phil_20686]

jallerton, on 2014-August-06, 12:13, said:

Sorry, I don't understand this either. What's the point of playing unbalanced 1♦ opener, if you don't pre-empt to the 3-level on hands like this?

Because the auction often comes back to you in 4M and opener has to decide whether or not to sacrifice? If it goes 1d 1s 3d 4s, its useful to know that partner has some reasonable ODR to go with his 4 trumps, and isnt about to put down a 4333 with four little trumps and three side suit queens. Doing the right thing in more 5d/4s auctions matters a lot here.

Having said that, we have a lot of space and bids here, so we could definitely tighten up our agreements here. Use 2N as a bad/low ODR raise. Use 3D as a mixed raise with shape.