[mikeh]

3H showed a limit raise or better

---

Your choice? Feel free to to explain your thinking

[mike777]

Pass
Looking for grand.
Will pull if partner doubles

Probably just end up in 6S

[hrothgar]

mike777, on 2025-May-12, 16:54, said:

Pass
Looking for grand.
Will pull if partner doubles

Not sure whether partner's limit raise + has established a forcing pass at the 5 level

[hrothgar]

I am going to bid 6♠

I don't think that we have nearly enough space to intelligently explore a grand.
Unlike Mike, I'm not sure that a pass by me is forcing

To me, at least, 6♥ should be exclusion, but I play 3104 and I'm screwed if I get a 6N response
5♦ would be showing a first round Diamond control, but this is asking in Hearts.

[mw64ahw]

There are a limited number of picture cards partner can have assuming the opponents have a full court in ♥. I want to be in 6♠ opposite partner with 2 quick tricks, but 6♠ has a hint of finality. I bid 6♥ showing the 1st round control.
I hope I'm not playing with the pack joker who passes splinter bids

Further thinking: The 5♥ bid suggests 6+♥ at this vulnerability & few points so partners 3♥ bid has upside. The downside is that ♠ may be unevenly split if 2N vs 3♥ differentiates trump support.
Plus of course 4.5+8.5 mod. losers gives me some comfort at the 6-level.

[jillybean]

hrothgar, on 2025-May-12, 18:00, said:

Not sure whether partner's limit raise + has established a forcing pass at the 5 level

I'd say yes but it's a good question. I have discussed it more on BBF than I ever have with partners.
Pass (forcing)

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

5S.

I like to go plus.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[P_Marlowe]

<snip>

[Huibertus]

mikeh, on 2025-May-12, 16:44, said:

3H showed a limit raise or better

---

Your choice? Feel free to to explain your thinking

You need to understand what your partnership agreement is. Does an invite set up a forcing pass? I am used to have the agreement it does when we are vulnerable, otherwise not. (By the way, put this on your convention card when you play IRL, it protects you against arbitration when you take time to decide on a pass and partner does the right thing thereafter)

IF pass is forcing, pass makes sense, you want to pull out of double next round to show slam interest.
If pass is non-forcing, what does double mean? If it is positive (encouraging to bid on UNLESS partner has great defense) that'd be my choice.
If you have no agreements at all, 5 ♠, it wouldn't surprise if both 5♥/♠ make.

This hand remains a gamble no matter what (that's why people still preempt), but the chance of getting it right decreases top down from the options I described.

[DavidKok]

I'd like to share, with my usual level of subtlety, that I think some of you are making a mistake. The people discussing whether or not a pass is forcing have been bitten by the system bug. This is the wrong hand and deal for a forcing pass.

Without forcing pass on a competitive auction like this you need to decide: am I bidding, am I doubling for penalties, or do I not have a sufficiently special hand to act. You're dividing the set of possible hands you have into three categories (of unequal size). Bidding is very committal and usually the least common, double and pass take most of the strain.
By agreeing to play a forcing pass you can split the range into four buckets: bid, double, pass-then-pass (after partner doubles), pass-then-bid (ditto). In return you give up the ability to defend undoubled.
Traditionally the fourth bucket is kept somewhat small or specific - we need to cater to the possibility that partner doesn't double after our forcing pass. Normally a forcing pass is initially assumed to be a hand that would pass a double, i.e. 'I am leaving the decision to you, partner!'. If partner then decides to run we are confident that partner wanted to do so despite our relatively middle-of-the-road hand. This puts some strain on pass-then-bid, since it needs to be able to cope with partner's non-double. One way to do this is by making the hands very extreme, so that partner is most likely to have a double for us. Another way is to make these pass-then-double hands extra strong, so that our values combined with partner's shape will give us a high safety level should partner bid again. A third way is to let the agreement depend on how limited partner's hand is, though this is very complex.

A common mistake when adopting a forcing pass is to turn the three-way decision without a forcing pass into a 10%/80%/10% (bid/pass/double) split, passing frequently and kicking the can to partner. This is non-comittal, highly social (as you involve partner), great for the postmortem, shows off your familiarity with the gadget and is obviously inefficient. To get the most value out of any competitive auction I believe that it is good to balance the strain on partner against the degree of commitment we are making. Sometimes this means overbidding or underbidding deliberately to describe our hand type better, to give partner easier decisions. It's not that overbidding or underbidding is good - it's that waffling with nebulous bids is worse. How is poor partner supposed to know what to do?

Personally I do not have a way to show a 6-5 with a void on this auction. I think we have to take decisive action - partner is never going to play us for this hand. This is committal and not ideal - that's what happens when the opponents bid to the 5-level rapidly. But I think it's better for us to guess than for partner to guess - almost certainly we have a better picture of partner's hand than partner has of ours, despite the limited exchange of information. Partner probably has 2-3 hearts, 3-4 spades, not a fitbid/splinter in clubs or diamonds (whichever was available last round). That's likely a balanced or semibalanced hand, with 3=3=1=6 being the most unwelcome surprise I'm willing to consider. I think partner needs a lot of extras for it to be a grand slam, and the teams odds of grand slams aren't favourable either. Meanwhile the chances of small slam are pretty decent - hopefully partner doesn't have that many wasted values in hearts. Values in spades are likely not wasted (though keep in mind the 2♥ overcall is sitting over our ace, so if we have to finesse in spades it's likely wrong) and partner can't have all that much in diamonds. We do not need a lot in clubs for slam to be decent. I don't like not knowing about a possible fourth spade though - the hand I'm afraid of looks something like ♠Kxx. ♥Kxx, ♦xxx, ♣KJxx. What would partner's 2NT (or 4♣ or 4♦) last round have meant?

At any rate, I think 6♠ is our best bid. If I wanted to look for a grand I'd bid 6♥. I think 5♠ has merit, but our hand is too good for that. We may well go down in 6♠, but there's no more room to find out (though if partner had a ton of alternative options last round I might be convinced to stay low here). In my opinion this is a poor hand for a forcing pass, and I think we're shifting the problem to poor partner more often than that we're actually solving the problem.

[Huibertus]

DavidKok, on 2025-May-13, 04:19, said:

A common mistake when adopting a forcing pass is to turn the three-way decision without a forcing pass into a 10%/80%/10% (bid/pass/double) split, passing frequently and kicking the can to partner.

You're misunderstanding what will happen on this hand, after the forcing pass you're obviously NOT letting a double stand. So you already are committing to showing partner you have serious interest in slam by passing, but you need something from him. Partner will fully understand what you need are first round controls of a suit not being ♥, he'll also understand one of those first round controls should be enough otherwise you wouldn't express interest in slam.

This is not kicking the can, it's called communication. This makes sure that IF you are in 6♠ they do not start defending by cashing 2♣. You might still miss 6♠ if partner has second round control of ♣ but preempts sometimes work, that's why they exist.

[DavidKok]

I understood that fully. In fact, the preceding paragraph is dedicated to it. I'm afraid the confusion is on your end.

I am stating that pass-then-bid is useful for showing interest in a grand slam but leaves much to be desired for investigating small slam. There is not enough room to communicate that we have this hand (first round control in three suits including theirs, extra trump, solid source of tricks) between 5♥ (the current bid) and 5♠ (the safety level for investigating a small slam). Pass-then-pull-double-to-5♠ does not give partner enough information to work with - whatever it shows, it can't be anything very specific. I think this old magic where partner intuits our problem is less reliable than us cutting the knot on this hand.

[hrothgar]

Huibertus, on 2025-May-13, 04:57, said:

This makes sure that IF you are in 6♠ they do not start defending by cashing 2♣.

Its also a really good way to make 6♠ when they have two cashing clubs

[Cyberyeti]

hrothgar, on 2025-May-13, 06:17, said:

Its also a really good way to make 6♠ when they have two cashing clubs

The best way of doing that is with a fake 6♣ cue, unfortunately on this hand the worry is that partner will bid grand and you won't have 13 tricks

[P_Marlowe]

The probability, that they have 2 cashing club tricks is low.
KQ in spade is not enough for the inv.+ cue, p wont have a lot in diamonds either.
Question is, how high is the probab. that p has heart wastage.

And how much is p allowed to stretch to make the inv.+ raise.

I play conventional stuff, so that p is able to show mixed raise strength in the given seq.,
this would strength the inv.+ cue.

[Huibertus]

Cyberyeti, on 2025-May-13, 06:27, said:

The best way of doing that is with a fake 6♣ cue, unfortunately on this hand the worry is that partner will bid grand and you won't have 13 tricks

That's what nobody is going to buy, you cue 6♣ partner cues 6♦ and you stay out of 7? They're leading ♣ no matter what.

[Huibertus]

hrothgar, on 2025-May-13, 06:17, said:

Its also a really good way to make 6♠ when they have two cashing clubs

Doing that IS possible, but don't overestimate your chances, decent opps will not lead ♠ and will not lead ♥. They'll look at their minor suits and decide which of the suits has the best chance of cashing 2 of them with help of partner.

[mikeh]

DavidKok, on 2025-May-13, 04:19, said:

I'd like to share, with my usual level of subtlety, that I think some of you are making a mistake. The people discussing whether or not a pass is forcing have been bitten by the system bug. This is the wrong hand and deal for a forcing pass.

Without forcing pass on a competitive auction like this you need to decide: am I bidding, am I doubling for penalties, or do I not have a sufficiently special hand to act. You're dividing the set of possible hands you have into three categories (of unequal size). Bidding is very committal and usually the least common, double and pass take most of the strain.
By agreeing to play a forcing pass you can split the range into four buckets: bid, double, pass-then-pass (after partner doubles), pass-then-bid (ditto). In return you give up the ability to defend undoubled.
Traditionally the fourth bucket is kept somewhat small or specific - we need to cater to the possibility that partner doesn't double after our forcing pass. Normally a forcing pass is initially assumed to be a hand that would pass a double, i.e. 'I am leaving the decision to you, partner!'. If partner then decides to run we are confident that partner wanted to do so despite our relatively middle-of-the-road hand. This puts some strain on pass-then-bid, since it needs to be able to cope with partner's non-double. One way to do this is by making the hands very extreme, so that partner is most likely to have a double for us. Another way is to make these pass-then-double hands extra strong, so that our values combined with partner's shape will give us a high safety level should partner bid again. A third way is to let the agreement depend on how limited partner's hand is, though this is very complex.

A common mistake when adopting a forcing pass is to turn the three-way decision without a forcing pass into a 10%/80%/10% (bid/pass/double) split, passing frequently and kicking the can to partner. This is non-comittal, highly social (as you involve partner), great for the postmortem, shows off your familiarity with the gadget and is obviously inefficient. To get the most value out of any competitive auction I believe that it is good to balance the strain on partner against the degree of commitment we are making. Sometimes this means overbidding or underbidding deliberately to describe our hand type better, to give partner easier decisions. It's not that overbidding or underbidding is good - it's that waffling with nebulous bids is worse. How is poor partner supposed to know what to do?

Personally I do not have a way to show a 6-5 with a void on this auction. I think we have to take decisive action - partner is never going to play us for this hand. This is committal and not ideal - that's what happens when the opponents bid to the 5-level rapidly. But I think it's better for us to guess than for partner to guess - almost certainly we have a better picture of partner's hand than partner has of ours, despite the limited exchange of information. Partner probably has 2-3 hearts, 3-4 spades, not a fitbid/splinter in clubs or diamonds (whichever was available last round). That's likely a balanced or semibalanced hand, with 3=3=1=6 being the most unwelcome surprise I'm willing to consider. I think partner needs a lot of extras for it to be a grand slam, and the teams odds of grand slams aren't favourable either. Meanwhile the chances of small slam are pretty decent - hopefully partner doesn't have that many wasted values in hearts. Values in spades are likely not wasted (though keep in mind the 2♥ overcall is sitting over our ace, so if we have to finesse in spades it's likely wrong) and partner can't have all that much in diamonds. We do not need a lot in clubs for slam to be decent. I don't like not knowing about a possible fourth spade though - the hand I'm afraid of looks something like ♠Kxx. ♥Kxx, ♦xxx, ♣KJxx. What would partner's 2NT (or 4♣ or 4♦) last round have meant?

At any rate, I think 6♠ is our best bid. If I wanted to look for a grand I'd bid 6♥. I think 5♠ has merit, but our hand is too good for that. We may well go down in 6♠, but there's no more room to find out (though if partner had a ton of alternative options last round I might be convinced to stay low here). In my opinion this is a poor hand for a forcing pass, and I think we're shifting the problem to poor partner more often than that we're actually solving the problem.

I think you’ve made a fundamental error in how you view a forcing pass situation. You write as if there are only three types of hands, and criticize what you perceive as a tendency to overload the FP.

I’m not commenting yet, on what I think one should do over 5H nor going on to describe what might follow. For now, I want to address what I perceive is your error…if I’ve misunderstood you, then I apologize.

When confronted with a FP possibility, as I think just about everyone would agree is present here….whether you bid, double or pass (nobody is doubling), you have to admit that a FP, if this is a FP situation, is a possibility.

Ok, first issue…is this a FP situation? My basic rule is that we are only forced to the level to which we have committed. 3H only forced to 3S so had RHO bid 4H, this wouldn’t be a FP. But I think it’s a mistake to let the opps bid 5H over 3H at their favourable vulnerability and not treat this as a FP situation. Nobody bids 5H here ‘to make’. It’s an announcement that the 5H bidder thinks you can make at least 4S. To me, this is one of the clearest examples one could have of a FP.

With that in mind, let’s think about options. Ignore the actual hand. What choices does opener have?

1. Bid 5S. This will be rare. We need to think that we are odds on to make 11 tricks opposite a limit raise. Not cold…but we expect to have decent chances.

2. Double. This will be, imo, slightly more frequent than 5S, since it simply says ‘I have a poor hand in context’, and partner can override with a very good hand. Compare to 5S, over which partner can’t express the opinion that he’d like to defend.

3. Pass…but, and this is critical….there are two very different hand types for passing, with no overlap. One pass says ‘I have extras but I’m not sure we have good play for 5S…take a look at your hand and let me know…’

Responder bids with a good offensive hand in context and doubles otherwise.

The other FP hand type is ‘I’m too strong to bid 5S….but not strong enough to force to or bid slam by myself’.

Look at that difference….one hand thinks it’s too weak to bid 5S and the other thinks it’s too strong!

4. Not only too strong to pass but so strong I’m forcing to slam.

So five different hand types…not three.

The hands that drive to slam opposite what will often be a limit raise seem like the least common.

Say that’s 5% of hands. The other 95% fall into one of four remaining classes….and two of them are shown by a forcing pass! Assuming that the four classes….weak, strong, strong but not sure what to do, weakish but not so weak as to want to double…are even roughly equally frequent, then surely one will pass more often than one bids or doubles…5S or double each cater to one class of hands…pass caters to two entirely different classes.

Another thing to bear in mind, which should at the least make a FP more attractive than I think David believes is that partner isn’t locked into doubling or bidding 5S. His hand is unlimited upwards…it’s at least a limit raise but it could be much more. With a good hand, knowing that your worst hand has some interest in 5S, he can do something other than double or 5S. Thus, by passing, you may learn something of great value.

I’m not in any way telling you what would happen….I’m simply trying to correct what I think is a fundamentally wrong critique of the FP. Say you pass, and partner bids 6C?

[Cyberyeti]

Huibertus, on 2025-May-13, 12:48, said:

That's what nobody is going to buy, you cue 6♣ partner cues 6♦ and you stay out of 7? They're leading ♣ no matter what.

Partner is VERY unlikely to cue 6♦, we know that looking at AK, whether partner bids 6 or 7 they lead a diamond, a heart or a trump, my concern is we don't have 13 tricks.

[mikeh]

This is a hand from real life, given to me by one of the players as a problem.

Personally, I prefer methods whereby responder can differentiate between a limit raise and a gf raise, which would make opener know much more about the potential.

For those who force to slam, consider what you’d bid, as responder, with Qxxx Kx xxx AQxx

Isn’t that a good limit raise? The well positioned heart King (there’s no reason to expect its wasted at your first turn to bid) and great trump support.

Yet slam looks distinctly against the odds, even if they help you out by leading the heart Ace (which they won’t do if you have cuebid hearts and probably shouldn’t f you just blast slam).

When slam has little play opposite many ‘good’ limit raise hands,maybe driving to slam without consulting partner isn’t the best course.

Doubling is very poor….nobody discussed it and the reasons are obvious so I won’t discuss it further.

5S…well, 5S rates to have some play opposite even a not great limit raise and while there’s very little chance of their making 5H, there’s also little chance of beating it by a lot…I’d expect 300-500 and 300 rates to lose 8 imps most of the time.

It does allow partner to overrule s with a great hand, but he’d never expect a heart void so we’ll miss a lot of slams.

That leaves a forcing pass, and that was my advice when given the hand. I was surprised by the lack of agreement when I canvassed a small group of players ranging from advanced to expert. The ensuing discussion and the comments here, particularly by David….with whom I’m often in agreement, suggests that there’s no unanimity about forcing passes.

In fairness, this auction is somewhat different from many FP sequences because we are not in a gf auction….responder's hand is not as well defined…not known to be gf…while in many situations such auctions partner will have established a higher ‘low end’ of his range.

I won’t repeat most of what I wrote in my most recent post, other than to say that I think this hand falls into the ‘strong’ class of FP. We are pulling a double, whereas if we had a weaker hand, still interested in having partner bid 5S with an offensive hand, we’d sit for a double.

As it happens, we catch partner with a very good hand, in context. He holds KQxx Qx xx AKxxx.

Knowing that opener was interested in 5S (or higher, but we should assume the weaker class of hands) we have an extra trump…more importantly we hold strong trump. Partner has at most AJxxx(x)(x) and yet is interested in an 11 trick contract. Clearly he has good diamonds.

I think bidding 6C here is pretty clear

When I gave experts a FP and a 6C cue by responder, everyone bid 7S.

Now, on a really bad day 7S can fail but it’s a great contract.