Brian Davies
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If you play count on declarer’s lead and attitude on partner’s this a reasonable approach and easy to agree with partner and y0u might you might choose to keep it this simple. But sometimes your attitude is already known and it can be helpful to play count in those situations.
These hands are difficult.
You really are too strong for a preemptive opening and too weak (not enough controls) for a strong Benji 2♣ opening. The usual plan would be to open 1♠, intending to bid 4♠ at the next turn. But the problem with a one-level opening on these extreme deals is that the auction tends to leap to a high level very quickly and you won’t always be able to properly describe your hand and investigate a possible slam if the bidding is at a higher level.
If you like the idea of preempting on these types of hands, there is an alternative scheme. Some use 4♣ and 4♦ diamonds as strong preemps in hearts and spades respectively. Under these methods (sometimes called South-African Texas Openings, also Namyats), your hand would be suitable as a 4♦ opening and a more normal spade preempt would open 4♠. The disadvantage is that you lose the natural four-level preempts in clubs and diamonds.
Anything is possible on these freak hands.
1D-2C-2H-3C
3S-5C-Dbl-All Pass
Or:
1D-2C-2H-3C
3S-4C-4H-Pass
4S-Dbl-5D-Dbl(?)
I think that the slow arrival shows a stop variety used to be more prevalent and the default assumption. But more are now teaching the fast arrival shows a stop variation and it probably is more intuitive.
There are other things to discuss with your partner: (1) after 1NT-(2H), there are three ways to show spades. 2S is usually competitive, but what are 3S and 3S via 2NT? Some play one as invitational the other as forcing (but differences of opinion which is which). Some play both as forcing – one showing a five-card suit, the other a six-card suit and slam invitational. (2) there is also “Reverse Lebensohl”: in this variation, 1NT-(2H)-3D is non-forcing and the strong sequences go through 2NT. I play this with one partner and the logic is that you want to give the opponents less space with a weak hand, but you can take thkngs morr slowly with a stronger hand.
If your head is spinning, this is why Bernard is advocating Lebensohl Light!.
I think that the slow arrival shows a stop variety used to be more prevalent and the default assumption. But more are now teaching the fast arrival shows a stop variation and it probably is more intuitive.
There are other things to discuss with your partner: (1) after 1NT-(2H), there are three ways to show spades. 2S is usually competitive, but what are 3S and 3S via 2NT? Some play one as invitational the other as forcing (but differences of opinion which is which). Some play both as forcing – one showing a five-card suit, the other a six-card suit and slam invitational. (2) there is also “Reverse Lebensohl”: in this variation, 1NT-(2H)-3D is non-forcing and the strong sequences go through 2NT. I play this with one partner and the logic is that you want to give the opponents less space with a weak hand, but you can take thkngs morr slowly with a stronger hand.
If your head is spinning, this is why Bernard is advocating Lebensohl Light!
My personal opinion is that if you are prepared to bid 2 Spades when auction starts 1H-2C-2H, then you show your longest suit. If you are tempted to pass after 1H-2C-2H then you should have responded 1S.
I think that your hand is marginal, but I would respond 2C.
Yes, I think that Bernard suggested that it was possible to adjust the NT range if both 2C and 2D are strong openings and this was one possibility. But I think that 23-24 is the default range.
Nik, I answered Janes question. My very first sentence was: “I think that 4H should promise a very strong hand with close to 19 HCPs.”
I disagree with your assertion “I did not say whether the 19+ points is correct or incorrect, as I believe there is no correct or incorrect point count for this sequence!”
The key to answering the question correctly is understanding what the bid means: the values for a game raise based on High Card Points rather than distribution. I mentioned splinters simply to show that distributional raises should generally follow a different route. Yes you could use the losing trick count as a valuation method, but since partner has only shown a minimum hand, we should place partner with nine or ten losers (my example hand had 9.5 losers) so we will want a four or five loser hand for for our game contract. This will be close to 19 High Card Points in a hand without much distributional strength.
Nik, most do use splinters and given that Bernard has devoted a Big Seminar to the topic, I feel that it is reasonable to assume that players on this site are now playing splinters! 🙂
Given this context, I would argue that the the jump to the four-level will be close to 19 High Card Points. If you don’t follow Bernard’s advice to play splinters, then I guess that the jump to the four-level might be based on a distributional hand with fewer High Card Points. But I would still expect close to 19 Total Points when including Distribution Points. Unfortunately there are multiple ways of defining Distribution Points, but one common method assigns five points to a void, once a fit has been located – giving your example hand 18 Total Points. This matches my assessment that the hand is close to the requirements for a raise to game,
Nik, the hand that you quote (♠KQ108 ♥A765 ♦- ♣A10986) would not be suitable for the auction 1♣-1♥-4♥. If you judge that the hand is strong enough for game, then you should splinter to show your shape: 1♣-1♥-4♦. Personally, I think that it isn’t quite strong enough and that a four heart contract will fail opposite many minimum responding hands (say: ♠J63 ♥Q1082 ♦K763 ♣72) – but it is a close call.
I think that Jane is broadly correct and would expect that the sequence 1♣-1♥-4♥ would tend to deny the ability to splinter and would typically be close to 19 High Card Points.
On opening lead, I would advise that you don’t lead away from an ace in a suit contract. It might sometimes work, but you will tend to get worse results in the long run if you under-lead aces at trick one. This is because:
- You might never make your ace if an opponent has a singleton.
- You will usually win the trick, but your opponents will not be forced to play any of their high cards. Imagine that the player on your right has the king: you would like to play your ace on their king and prevent the king from winning a trick. If you lead the ace at trick one, the king will be able to win the next round of the suit.
- You might mislead your partner. Your partner should not expect you to lead away from an ace and will base their play on the assumption that declarer holds the ace. Imagine that partner hold KQ7 in the suit and wins the first trick with the queen. Partner will probably switch to another suit and you might be disappointed when declarer discards the suit later in the play.
Whilst under-leading an ace at trick one is almost always a bad tactic, it might be right later in the hand. By then you can see dummy and will know a good deal more about the hand.
Your opponents have no business commenting.
Yes, I think that Bernard’s method is to show the cheapest first. You wouldn’t bid higher than six of the agreed trump suit. Note that the 5NT bid always promises that we have all of the controls – if you can count 13 tricks you bid the Grand Slam rather than showing any aces.
We have a slightly different approach. Assuming that the king of trumps is included in your first response, there are three kings outside of trumps. Our responses are:
- If we can count 13 tricks, we bid the Grand Slam.
- With no outside ace, we bid six of the agreed trump suit.
- With one outside ace we bid the suit (assumes ranking lower than trumps)
- With two outside aces we bid the suit that we don’t have a king in. Partner should be able to tell whether we have one or two by looking at their own hand – if they can’t tell then a Grand Slam is probably not there!
- With three aces – you are probably counting 13 tricks!
You will recognise which king is important when you look at your hand. Imagine that your have a club side-suit which is QJ10986. If partner shows the king of clubs you will know that the suit is running, if partner denies the king of clubs your hand will be much less valuable.
Great question Ian. The relative Playing Strength* and Defensive Strength of a hand is such an important concept as it will help improve your judgement in competitive auctions. There are many factors involved:
Factors that increase the Playing Strength relative to the Defensive Strength include:
- Hands that fit well with our partner
- Double fits (a fit in two suits) is often particularly strong
- Distributional hands with long suits
- High cards in our proposed trump suit. No high cards in the opponents proposed trump suit.
- High cards in our long suits outside of trumps or in our long suits for No Trumps.
- High cards working together.
- Intermediate cards supporting high card holdings
Factors that increase the Defensive Strength relative to the Playing Strength include:
- Misfits with partner
- Flat and balanced hands – particularly 4333 shapes, but also other balanced shapes. 4441 hands are often better defensively unless a good fit is found with partner.
- High cards in the opponents proposed trump suit. Missing high cards in our proposed trump suit.
- High cards, particularly queens, jacks and tens, in our short suits.
- Isolated honours
At first sight an ace will be equally effective in defence as in playing a contract – it will generally take a trick (unless someone has a void). But an ace in our suit is helping to promote other honours and length winners when we play the contract, but will be less useful in defence and much less useful if it is an isolated honour and in a short suit.
* I have a silly preference for the term “Playing Strength” rather than “Offensive strength”. The latter sounds a little American to me and also a little bit … offensive!
