Brian Davies
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Yes Ken. I guess that this was not mentioned as it was the Easier Hand, but a combination of Vacant Places and Restricted choice make the finesse by far the best choice.
The more tricky part is planning to cash the king of spades first rather than the ace of spades, so that the finesse will be available. Many would miss that.
I’m not sure that I would have made the overcall with the South hand and if South remains silent there is no reason to get this right!
I was watching live. A spade seems to indicated by the auction, but not by my spade holding – although declare can still get it wrong, even if partner holds Jxx in spades. Still, I didn’t like it and was considering which ace to lead …
Hi Julian, if undiscussed you have the auction 1H-(2C)-2S-(Pass) are faced with finding a rebid with:
53
J9432
A10
AK95
Do you rebid the ugly hearts? Or bid 2NT anyway – upgrading the club holding(!)
Reg,
I don’t know.
Certainly frequent enough to be worthwhile. If you asked me to guess, I would suggest about once every three sessions and half of those would lead to slam. If you play 2NT as “invitational or stronger” then you will double the frequency of occurrence (but no more slams).
System, such as the one described by Stewart, are designed to not give too much information leakage if the partnership stops in game.
Playing “standard” Jacoby, the bidding might be (say) 1H-2NT-3D-4H. Responder might have little ambition beyond game, but the auction has told defenders that declarer has a singleton diamond. Expert defenders are well placed to make use of this information in the defence. Lesser players like me are content to reach the right game and hope that the defence are not skilled at using the additional knowledge!
Yes, I acknowledge that problem. But note that opener is two-suited in the majors, so our two diamond response is likely to be opposite shortage, making it is less likely that we are missing a slam on the first of these hands.
I stated above that the British styles tends to be to show a second suit at the three level. Here is an example of an English auction at the European Qualification Event today:
Nice Grand Slam!
Yes, it is interesting John. I made a comment about this in another thread.
From what I observe, it is more usual in Britain to jump to show a shortage and a new suit at the three level shows a second suit. I tend to side with Americans who mainly play the original Oswald Jacoby method that shortages are shown at the three level and the a jump to the four level shows a second suit. If you show a second suit at the three level, you can take the approach of simply bidding out your shape – being less strict about the requirement for a five-card suit with two honours. The quiz hand from today’s Live presentation ♠42 ♥KQJ74 ♦KQJ6 ♣94 would be suitable for 1♥-2NT-3♦ if playing this method. Keeping the second suit as a very good five-card suit would mean that your three level bids become rare and you take up valuable bidding space too often. But I’m not convinced how useful this is.
There are many ways to play the 3M, 3NT and 4M responses. The 4M response should be a rare bid, it takes up too much space.
With one partner we play our 2NT response as invitational or stronger. Our method is:
- 1M-3M is pre-emtive, with 8 Playing Tricks and fewer than 10 points (how few will depend on vulnerability etc.).
- 1M-2NT-3♣ shows a hand which would not have passed an invitational raise (responder can bid an artificial 3♦ if still interested in looking for a slam).
- A new suit at the three level shows shortage.
- Three of the suit open shows a singleton club (because we used 3♦ for the minimum). This comes with a major health warning if you are prone to forget things!!
- 3NT shows most non-minimum balanced raises.
- 4M shows a limited hand with solid trumps.
As far as nomenclature goes, when asked by an opponent, it is best practice to always describe what the bid shows rather than giving a name (whether Jacoby or “Modified Jacoby”).
Thanks Bernard. I raised the topic to gauge reactions.
Once responder has a fit and opening values or more, there is an interesting symmetry playing 4-card majors, where the suit may be 4-4 or either partner might hold the longer major. We design our system where we can identify a singleton in either hand – either by a responder splintering, or opener showing a shortage in response to the Jacoby 2NT.
The standard* Jacoby responses allow opener to show a suit such as ♦AQJ52, through the sequence 1♥-2NT-4♦. You commented today how valuable that might be opposite a responder who holds a fitting honour. I would argue that this suit is equally valuable if responder holds the suit and declarer holds the fitting honour. Certainly I have found it useful to occasionally still use a DGR.
The number of trumps shown is of course a difficulty with the DGR. As you say, a jump to four after a 2NT is clearly a DGR. If opener bids a second suit, then they are less likely to be interested in responder’s side suit anyway, if opener raises the DGR suit we have found a double fit. The more tricky case is when opener rebids their own suit and there is no simple solution to identify the fourth trump (4th Suit Forcing creates other problems).
* I am not completely not convinced there is a “Standard” Jacoby. There is an “Original” Jacoby, but few seem to play it in exactly the original form and it was anyway designed in the context of a five-card major, strong no trump system. For example, the sequence 1♥-2NT-4♥ is unusual in Acol, because we usually open 1NT with these hands and many use this sequence for other purposes – such as a weak hand with solid trumps.
I have certainly been following progress Julian. And the news.
The Scottish team, the Welsh team and all the teams who continued to send the message deserve our full support.
Hi Bob, I am also a member at a club which is planning this hybrid type approach.
For what it is worth, here is my opinion. This is not ideal and I think it a bad idea if it were a long-term solution. But I think that it is realistic compromise in the current climate where club committees have to balance between two competing groups of members – those keen to be back playing face to face bridge and those still too nervous to want to take the risks.
Hi Bruce, I really think that you should be rethinking your expectations about what a 1NT looks looks like. When we agree 12-14, we mean 12-14. Yes, of course we will sometimes upgrade a very good 11 High Card Points (HCPs) and value those as 12. Similarly we will sometimes look at a very poor 15 HCPs and only value those as 14. Most hands have plusses and minuses and it is relatively rare for our evaluation to shift the needle by a full point in either direction and it never happens that we upgrade 10 HCPs into a 1NT opening or downgrade 16 HCPs into 1NT.
Starting from this base ground, I think that, at Pairs, you should be making invitational raises on 12 points or a good 11 points. Remember, partner will accept the invite with 14 or a good 13 Points. There is no advantage in stretching for marginal game contracts at Pairs and a combined 25 does not guarantee a making game, it simply suggests that the odds of making game are a little better than 50%.
The North hand has 10 HCPs and a bit of shape. I am happy to accept a valuation of 11. But I tend to agree with David, that an invitational raise is borderline. Having the four-card major might tempt me to bid Stayman as I am more excited if we can find a fit in a major, but it is a close call.
