Brian Davies
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David, in response to an inquiry, I would correctly describe 2NT bid as “invitational or better raise”. But of course it is never right to use a convention name to describe a bid. Even if you play the Jacoby convention as originally conceived (few do), you should explain what the bid shows, not what it is called.
Just to correct this:
1M-2NT: Invitational or better, Jacoby-type raise. At least 10 high-card points and eight losers or fewer. Opener will respond 3C with any hand that wouldn’t accept an invite.
Tim, for what it is worth, here is what I play:
1M-2M: Standard Acol raise, about six to nine high-card points. We do raise on a three-card suit if we have some ruffing potential and in practice it will often be only three.
1M-3M: Pre-emptive raise, promising eight losers but generally nine or fewer high-card points. Always a four-card or longer suit and will have some shape if only four cards.
1M-4M: Pre-emptive raise, promising seven or fewer losers but generally nine or fewer high-card points. Usually a five-card or longer suit, but that isn’t a hard and fast rule, so it might be four cards and a long side suit for example.
1M-2NT: Invitational or better, Jacoby-type raise. At least 10 high-card points and seven losers or fewer. Opener will respond 3C with any hand that wouldn’t accept an invite.
We play a different structure over a minor suit opening, incorporating inverted raises.
On a serious note, are you guys aware of the analytical features available in the “Play It Again” button on most club’s Bridgewebs results?
We scored a rather modest 52.4% for the session and it is always good to look at where we could have done better. Press “Play It Again” and you are able to access some analysis such as:
The columns that I marked A tell us which boards we scored well on (green bars to the right) and which we scored badly (red bars to the left). My partner’s declarer play is always good and there are plenty of green bars! But it was worth looking at board 2 in particular since there is a large red bar: we bid an excellent six hearts, which was unlucky to fail when the opponents led the ace of clubs and gave partner a ruff at trick two. Not much she could do there.
What about the hands where I am on lead? Some good / some bad. It is worth looking at the columns that I marked B. These give the comparison in the play against the optimum tricks if played double dummy. There are no red bars and a few greens, meaning we did better than the DD expectation. If we do badly on the score but ok against the DD defence, it suggests that the opponents are in better contracts than the rest of the field. Maybe our opponents just happened to bid their cards better against us (nothing we could do) or maybe we needed to compete better – worth looking at the boards to check.
Now the hands where partner was on lead and we only scored 38%. Again the analysis against DD expectations suggest that our defence wasn’t bad – it was more about the bidding …
If you haven’t looked at the “Play It Again” feature, I recommend it.
How about 30 points and no making contract?
I am not sure why this is a Laws & Ethics question to David?
A combination of a weak NT and five-card majors is possible, although not my choice. Chris Chambers wrote a series of article for the EBU’s English Bridge magazine. See here.
Joanna, whilst a 4333 shape is a bad feature, I wouldn’t downgrade a 15-count to the 12-14 range unless there were other bad features. In this case KQJ9 is a positive feature, owning the spade suit is a positive feature and you want a spade lead if you end up defending.
It seems like an obvious 1S bid.
“BIG SEMINARS with the 8 SET HANDS underneath (bi-weekly – current Seminar is on Suit Establishment in Suit Contracts)”
I think that this needs updating, I think that the current seminar is Basic Defence 🙂
