David Stevenson
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The minimum strength will open a strong hand with 2C is 16 points, or 12 points with at least 5 controls, where ace is 2 controls and king is 1 control. My advice is to stick to an absolute minimum of 16 points playing Benjamin, or 21 points playing Acol.
I would open the hand shown with 1S, and rebid 6H whatever the next three calls are.If you play 1D (2S) 3S as a raise in diamonds, you describe it as “A raise in diamonds”. If you play it as any hand asking partner to bid no-trumps with a spade stopper, you describe it as “Asking for a spade stopper”. In neither case should you use the term Unassuming Cue Bid since it is not the normal use of the term.
However if that sequence came up and the opponents described it as an Unassuming Cue Bid then I would expect them to mean a raise in diamonds although it would be safest to ask.I have read in several places that the demand for online bridge will continue because of people who unable to play face to face and also for ongoing fears of Covid. I think that people should realise that there is another probably greater reason why online bridge can and will continue: that is that because of having learned to play online during the pandemic a number of people will prefer it. For example, my regular partner and I have always played a lot of bridge, locally in clubs and leagues, travelling to English events and going overseas to major events in other countries. My partner who has a day job especially dislikes going out in the evening to play bridge in a local club or league and we will continue to play a lot of bridge online wherever possible.
When travelling and going to places we have spent a lot of time before we also wonder whether it is worthwhile spending all that money to go and play in Harrogate (to take an example). While Harrogate is a lovely place to visit the first couple of times, people like us who have played there 30 or more times do not see a particular attraction any more.
I am sure that we shall continue to play in new overseas places and to play in events where we have to travel and there is no alternative if we want to play. But in many cases where there is an online alternative we shall continue to play online.
There is also the question of age. Some players stop going to their clubs because they feel too old to get there. If they have learnt to play online at home the age at which they stop playing is likely to be greater. When directing the EBU duplicates online I am always very careful with one particular player who seems to have no regular partner and to fix up partners at the partnership desk. I have treated him very gently ever since I discovered that his age is in the mid nineties!
So while I am happy that clubs are reopening I do hope that clubs remember that to service all their members they need to continue providing online bridge.
Many players use judgement to bid differently from their basic point count, many players do not. It is really impractical to try and distinguish between the two. It would be fairly ridiculous for a player to say “12-14, but my partner uses his judgement” in such a case. This game is a mixture of technique, memory, partnership agreements, style, judgement and other things and it is only reasonable to let opponents know about the agreements.
It would also be somewhat unhelpful even if you feel it might have helped in this case. The moment an opponent was known to use judgement you would have less faith in what is shown and you would be trying to apply your own judgement which would probably be totally different. Certainly if you count points in defence you will occasionally go wrong because of an opponent’s judgement but being told he uses judgement will not help.Furthermore the presumption that the player’s partner knows about it is rather dubious. If you were to ask this player’s partner whether he might be two points out of his range I am quite sure his partner will give you a puzzled look and say “No, why should he?”
As for the actual hand I fancy it was a poor player with poor judgement. There is no reason whatever to deduct two points for KQ doubleton.
Just to be clear, people do play 1M – 2N as a raise to 3+M but they must not call it Jacoby. If you say you are playing Jacoby, then 1M – 2N is a 4 card raise to 4+M.
I dislike the skill level thingy for myself on BBO since I reckon I am probably Expert but I actively dislike calling myself Expert. To me what my skill level is should be decided by others not me, and that is why I put Private. I know one player who puts World Class and I am quite confident that I am better than he is! I would like to put Not Too Bad as my skill level.
However when I am directing and there are an odd number of pairs I put in substitutes and I pick two substitutes whose skill level is the same. Unfortunately because people do not tell the truth necessarily they do not always get on!
I play from time to time in an American club and get the impression the people there are much more modest over their skill level.
You should not say anything. That gives unauthorised information to partner and will cause a lot of problems if he has forgotten the meaning. You should tell the opponents at the end of the auction if you become declarer or dummy, and at the end of the hand if you become a defender. Furthermore you must ignore his alert and not treat it as though he has forgotten the system since his failure to alert is unauthorised information to you.
As far as opponents are concerned there is no requirement for them to ask except in the most obvious of positions where it really has to be alertable. For example, if my partner opens 1H and my right-hand opponent overcalls 2H then I can be pretty confident that 2H is not a natural bid so I would be expected to ask if I wanted to know what it meant. However for most positions if the opponent did not alert I can safely take the bid as its non-alertable meaning and the director will adjust the score if I am wrong and it is alertable and I have been damaged.You may be right about KQx but not splintering with singleton ace because he might have KQx will, in my view, miss slams when partner has xxxx or similar.
Yes, these need to be alerted. Without an alert the opponents have a right to assume that the sequence 1D-2S shows a strong, game forcing hand with spades. Any other meaning for 2S needs an alert.
The view about not splintering with a singleton ace is quite a common one but I am never convinced by it. The advantage of splinters is that partner knows the place where values (apart from the ace) are not helpful and that applies just as much with a singleton ace as with another singleton.
The director would suggest to dealer she refrain from comments about her hand, would point out to dealer’s partner that he must do his best to take no advantage whatever from the comment and tell the opponents that they have the right to take advantage of the comment at their own risk and should call him back at the end of the hand if they have any doubts about the dealer’s partner’s actions.
In case people do not realise ‘promissory Stayman’ is a new idea. When Stayman was invented by Jack Marx in England and George Rapee in USA at pretty much the same time there were no transfers, 2D was a sign off in diamonds and as Alan describes 2C then 3C was a sign off in clubs!
I am not suggesting that you do not follow Bernard’s or Julian’s approach as in Julian’s post above but it is worth understanding that a lot of people these days play 2S as a transfer to clubs and 2N as a transfer to diamonds. Like transfers to the majors these can be strong or weak. Such players use Stayman to make a game try in no trumps even when they have no major.
I do not agree at all with Stewart that he would expect a fully completed convention card to include continuations after Jacoby. If you try and include continuations and other details to that extent, any convention card will be 100 pages long where people play a complex system. But what is the need for these continuations anyway? The whole idea of a convention card is to give opponents the idea of your basic approach to system and also things that they are likely to need to defend against, not later rounds bidding which they can ask about. It is not obvious to me what the problem is the self alert. After a Jacoby 2N response, openers rebids can be described by self explaining. Why do opponents need to know any more than this? As for including details in Chat Manager, it is difficult to then include them in the self explain box, yet another of BBO’s many many flaws.
But none of these comments alter the basic fact that after one of a major and a 2N response described as Jacoby the meaning of the next bid is not known without explanation or agreement.
The problem will come when someone calls it Jacoby playing it Bernard style and someone assumes Robson style. I would never make any assumptions whatever about the rebids from the name Jacoby.
While I personally play 2N differently (I play it has a raise to 3 or better), like you, I limit splinters to a raise to 4 so bid my 2N with a Singleton and raise to 5 or better.
