[Free]

I prefer a good suit, so I'll wait with 2♦. 2♠ is clearly better to get your shape across, but the suit is too weak imo.

There's also a chance opener rebids 2NT after which I'm able to show a strong 6-4 (implying that ♠s are weak because I didn't bid them immediately). If you can't do that you should change your 2NT structure, not your 2♣ responses.

[johnu]

 chasetb, on 2013-July-10, 20:48, said:

I'm surprised at this post. You REALLY can't see any advantage? Then let me teach you a thing or two.

Great, that's why I read these forums, to learn the latest about bridge.

 chasetb, on 2013-July-10, 20:48, said:

First, you usually want the strong hand to describe and declare, so you don't want to waste any space unless you have to. Hearts isn't so bad, but swap the Heart and Diamond suits in the example hand, and then hear the auction go 2♣-2♠, 3♥. You just pre-empted opener and wasted a whole lotta space. Taking this a bit further, if you swapped the Spade suit in the example hand with a minor suit, do you STILL want responder to show that suit and respond 3m???

What if you changed the ♠Q to the ♦5, the ♣K to the ♣5, the ♠10 to the ♣J and the ♥9 to the ♠A? This reminds me of a recipe review where the reviewer substituted chicken for salmon, corn for asparagus, water for shrimp stock, etc, etc, and declared that this was a terrible recipe.

 chasetb, on 2013-July-10, 20:48, said:

Second, how about when opener has a balanced hand? You wrong-side the contract, and possibly get the partnership too high. It's pretty hard on this hand, but let's replace the K♣ with a spot. Next thing you know, you end up in 5♠ -1 because you are missing the AK♠ and the finesse if off, or a ruff, or the J♠ is off. Standard bidding won't get that high, since the 2♣ bidder will know partner has long but lousy Spades and should be able to stop in 4.

Let's also replace the ♥K and ♥Q with small hearts. I don't see how this is a positive response with only a queen and a jack. It's much better to bid 2♦ with this hand.

 chasetb, on 2013-July-10, 20:48, said:

Third, even if opener has a minor hand (which seems likely), the auction isn't an issue if it goes 2♣-2♦, 3♦. When I bid 3♠, partner knows I have 5+ Spades, but not the best suit. It's not a suit where I want partner to raise on xx(x). Now if the auction starts 2♣-2♠, partner can always raise later on A/K stiff, or even xx if it seems like a misfit. Also, this might not apply for you, but when my partner bids 3m, (s)he has almost no interest in a Major.

On a more serious note, the 2♣ opener has no clue that you have an opening hand by many player's standards after you bid 2♦ and then 3♠, and probably still won't have a clue how strong you are after your next bid. If partner signs off in game, I'm guessing that you are probably going to end up blasting to a slam based on sheer power with this hand. Basically, it's a trade off between showing strength and being a little vague about suit quality with a positive response, and not showing any strength initially, and being totally vague about suit quality after a 2♦ initial response.

[gnasher]

 mikeh, on 2013-July-10, 16:30, said:

If I sat down with almost all of the good to expert players with whose games I am familiar, and held KJx A AKQJxxx Ax, my rebid over 2♠ would be a simple, direct 7N.

I have to say that I think that bidding 7NT directly would be somewhere between unreasonably dogmatic and completely insane. Regardless of what agreements you have or think you have, it costs nothing to bid 3♠ and follow with Keycard.

I'm not arguing that with Q109xxx one should normally give a positive. I'm saying that with this hand it's the right thing to do.

We have a far stronger hand than we normally would have in this situation. We know that we are going to bid a slam, and that the main decision will be between six and seven. If we start with 2♦ and partner rebids 3♦, it will usually be impossible to tell partner that this is the case, so we will often have to guess. In many sequences it won't even be possible to ask for aces. After 2♣-2♦;3♦-3♠;3NT, what are you going to bid?

Even if partner has a balanced hand, responding 2♠ will work at least as well as 2♦, assuming that partner continues to play bridge. The correct level will usually depend on whether we have the aces and ♠K, so if spades get agreed it will usually be trivial.

If he happens to have a perfect balanced hand without ♠K, like ♠A ♥A ♦AKQJx ♣AQx (or AKQJ AQJx in the minors), I can't see how starting with 2♦ improves things - it just means that the exchange of information about suits starts a level higher, and partner will still be in the dark about what the objective is. If we show spades, hearts and indeterminate strength opposite a balanced hand, it will be very hard to distinguish between ♠K and ♠A. If, instead, we start by showing a good hand, get our suits in one level lower, and then find a way to show ♣K, we have a fighting chance of getting to 7NT opposite those hands.

[rhm]

 mikeh, on 2013-July-10, 16:30, said:

It depends on methods.

If I sat down with almost all of the good to expert players with whose games I am familiar, and held KJx A AKQJxxx Ax, my rebid over 2♠ would be a simple, direct 7N.

If the main reason not to allow a 2♠ response is, because opener might bid slam by jumping 4 or more bidding levels in a game forcing situation, then this argument sounds weak to me.
Not all experts in NA require 2 of 3 top honors to bid a major over 2♣, though some do. See http://www.districts...%202011-04.aspx

I think some of the more important issues in a natural response context of 2♣ are:

1) Do I have a reasonable suit?

2) Will I save or loose a bidding level by bidding my suit now instead of 2♦. In case of a 2♠ response this depends how likely opener would want to show hearts next.

3) How important does it look to make opener declarer? The weaker you are the more important this may be.
Note, that this might well be the case when you hold a strong suit, but nothing outside. Opener will often have a strong balanced hand.

4) Do I have a strong hand? Since 2♦ waiting promises nothing, it is often difficult for responder to catch up later since responder is forced anyway below game.

5) Can I give a fair picture of my distribution below 3NT if I start with 2♦

So I think a "flexible" non dogmatic approach here is much better suited to expert bidding.
Telling a beginner that he needs a 5 card suit with 2 out of 3 top honors is fine.
But for an expert a 2♦ response looks to me revolting here, whether these experts are from NA or not.
The requirement needing two out of three top honors should not be etched in stone.

Rainer Herrmann

[Dale57]

Thanks for the many responses. At the table, West chose 2♠.

---

Up to you, East.

[Zelandakh]

Many possibilities, such as:

2♣ - 2♠;
3♦ - 3♥;
4♣ - 4♠;
4NT - 5♦;
5♠ - 7NT

The initial response does not seem too important, for example:

2♣ - 2♦;
3♥ - 4♠;
4NT - 5♦;
5♠ - 7NT

is essentially the same thing.

[gnasher]

Our spade suit seems to have improved since the original post.

Anyway, after 2♣-2♠ it's trivial:
2♣-2♠
3♦-3♥
4♥-4NT
5♦-6♠ *
7♥

* When partner asks for kings and you have an unshown king in his first suit, he should obviously be willing for you to go past six of the trump suit.

[Cyberyeti]

 mikeh, on 2013-July-10, 17:38, said:

My eyesight isn't what it used to be, so I may have misread your post.

Are you suggesting that I was posting on how to respond to 2♣ with Q109xxxxxx KQ void KQ??????

If so, please point me to where I mentioned that pipedream fantasy of a hand in my post?

You're apparently from the UK. I have no idea who you really are, and no interest in knowing, but I suspect you have limited, if any, experience in NA or playing against a lot of NA experts. My view is that if you had two NA experts sit down for a game, with little experience playing together and a discussion of '2/1, strong 1N', most would expect that a positive suit response would show a 5 card suit with 2 or 3 of the top 3 honours.

The fact that in the UK a similar pair would assume that the requirements would be different isn't, despite your personal views of the matter, proof that your way is the better.

There will be hands on which one approach works better than the other and vice versa. Indeed, had you actually understood my post, I suspect that you might have seen that I recognized that this hand type was one on which the UK approach might well be more effective.

The OP asked a question. Andy made a post that reflected what I took as a standard UK type of method. I pointed out that one couldn't actually answer the OP unless one understood what agreements were in place, which seemed and seems to me to be an appropriate point since other posters had clearly been of the view that a positive response promised 2/3 top cards.

Where you get from my pointing out that there are regional variances in standard agreements to imagining I was describing my approach holding 8 or 9 spades to the Q109 and two side KQ holdings is beyond my ability to discern.

You pointed at it obliquely by saying you'd bid 7N with the hand missing the ♠A, hence I can't respond 2♠ on the hand I posted.

[Hanoi5]

I really thought the 2/3 honours when giving a positive hand over a 2♣ opening was carved in stone. I didn't know experts carved some agreements on ice, especially one so specific.

Over 2♣ the space is limited and so the information given should be very clear. Or so I thought. I've had problems myself when openeing or responding to 2♣, for example:

- After a positive response, does opener's NT show a balanced hand or merely a lack of fit?
- A 2NT response might be used by responder to show a good (8-11- HCP's) hand with at least 3 controls (A=2, K=1), but what are the continuations?

And now you tell me that I can bypass the requirement of 2/3 high honours if I consider it right. The world has gone loco.

[PhilKing]

The BWS 2001 poll was very strongly in favour of 2M responses promising 2 of the top 3 when holding a 5-card suit (74% of experts), but lower requirements were assumed when holding six (there was no follow up poll on this issue, though).

[cherdano]

 PhilKing, on 2013-July-11, 07:01, said:

The BWS 2001 poll was very strongly in favour of 2M responses promising 2 of the top 3 when holding a 5-card suit (74% of experts), but lower requirements were assumed when holding six (there was no follow up poll on this issue, though).

I think the poll was pretty clear - only 26% of experts were in favour of stronger requirements than "at least 6, or 5 headed by two honours".

Anyway, I think it's very inferior to mandate a two-top honour requirement. There are so many hands where the chances for slam depend on the quality of the fit, and not being able to respond 2S with a shapely hand with values like the one we have here just delays the chance to find out about this.

[PhilKing]

 cherdano, on 2013-July-11, 07:19, said:

I think the poll was pretty clear - only 26% of experts were in favour of stronger requirements than "at least 6, or 5 headed by two honours".

Anyway, I think it's very inferior to mandate a two-top honour requirement. There are so many hands where the chances for slam depend on the quality of the fit, and not being able to respond 2S with a shapely hand with values like the one we have here just delays the chance to find out about this.

26% preferred weaker requirements. The 74% referred to those who wanted at least the requirements above - 18% wanted even more restrictive requirements, to the point where one wonders why bother responding anything other than 2♦.

[mikeh]

 rhm, on 2013-July-11, 04:56, said:

If the main reason not to allow a 2♠ response is, because opener might bid slam by jumping 4 or more bidding levels in a game forcing situation, then this argument sounds weak to me.

<snipped>

Rainer Herrmann

Why do you think that this is the 'main reason'?

I simply pointed out that if one has the agreement that a bid means something specific, regardless of WHY it carries that meaning, it is foolish to make the bid with a hand that does not match the agreement.

I'm baffled by the response to my first post on this thread. All I ever did was to state something that is patently true, and surely obvious to the meanest bridge intelligence: that to decide how to bid the responding hand one had first to know what one's agreements were.

Were I to sit down with a European expert, undiscussed, I would bid 2♠ because my understanding is that this would be viewed as standard in Europe. Were I to do it with a NA expert, I would bid 2♦. Philking's reference to the old BWS poll supports my assertion, and I suspect (from my own experience) that the 2/3 top card approach is more popular in some parts of NA than others. Where I play, 2/3 is almost universal amongst the better players when they play a standard based method.

Nowhere did I assert that either method was inferior to the other. There seem to me to be solid arguments on both sides.

I happen to be more familiar with the 2/3 top honour approach, but in my serious partnerships we use 2♠ to show a balanced hand of 7-10 hcp, so we couldn't bid 2♠ anyway. I didn't mention that, nor how I would bid the hand in my partnerships, because I was only trying to make a point about requiring or assuming agreements in order to know what might be appropriate.

[Hanoi5]

 mikeh, on 2013-July-11, 09:01, said:

I simply pointed out that if one has the agreement that a bid means something specific, regardless of WHY it carries that meaning, it is foolish to make the bid with a hand that does not match the agreement.

I totally agree with this. But I think the others meant that even though you have an agreement you can sneak out of it and that it is responsibility of the partner to verify it.

Say you hold a hand good enough for 3NT, no majors in front of partner's 1NT opening. But you think bidding 3NT would be better if you find out partner holds 4 hearts. So you bid stayman and partner shows 4 hearts but when you bid 3NT goes to 4♠. And you go down either passing 4♠ or bidding 4NT, would you blame partner for by-passing your 3NT?

I think if you play that 2♠ shows 2 of the top three you CAN'T bid 2♠ with the mentioned hand. If you agree to show 2/3 or very good six, then I have no issue with it. But I too might jump to 7NT if you show me 5 cards to 2 honours and by pass a question I don't need to ask.

[gnasher]

Sometimes we bid a three-card suit, even though it shows four. That risks being raised and not being able to escape, but we do it anyway because the benefits justify the risks.

Sometimes we open 1NT with a singleton, even though it shows a balanced hand. That risks playing in an inadequate trump suit, or playing in notrumps when we should be in a suit, but we do it anyway because the benefits justify the risks.

I don't see this situation as any different. The benefits of bidding 2♠ are significant. If the only risk is that partner happens to have ♠KJx in an otherwise solid hand and eschews Keycard, it seems quite a reasonable risk to take. I'd bid 2♠ even opposite MikeH, if I were ever lucky enough to find myself playing with him.

[Hanoi5]

I agree it is normal to take detours in certain situations because of the possible benefits. However, I'd call it a psych, very dangerous bid and probably serious error to lie about the number of key-cards you hold (even though you can 'lie' about holding the Queen) and to show a different number of controls than you have if your 1♣-16+-opening-partner asks for them.

There are things you can lie about and there are things you can't. Is that correct?

[aguahombre]

You can lie about anything you want to to partner when you are certain you can take over control of the auction to its absolute final conclusion. There is rarely an occasion where you would want to do that.

For instance, asking for Kings when missing an Ace is not a good idea because partner might forego answering Kings and just bid 7 because of an unexpected side source.

You can lie about your shape with a NT opening if you are willing to complete a Texas Transfer.

When you lie about the agreed suit quality of a 2M response to 2C, you run the risk of Partner thinking she knows all she needs to know.

QTXXXX
KQXX
X
KX

K
Ax
AKQJXXXXX
A

P-2C
2S-7N

[mikeh]

 gnasher, on 2013-July-11, 11:58, said:

Sometimes we bid a three-card suit, even though it shows four. That risks being raised and not being able to escape, but we do it anyway because the benefits justify the risks.

Sometimes we open 1NT with a singleton, even though it shows a balanced hand. That risks playing in an inadequate trump suit, or playing in notrumps when we should be in a suit, but we do it anyway because the benefits justify the risks.

I don't see this situation as any different. The benefits of bidding 2♠ are significant. If the only risk is that partner happens to have ♠KJx in an otherwise solid hand and eschews Keycard, it seems quite a reasonable risk to take. I'd bid 2♠ even opposite MikeH, if I were ever lucky enough to find myself playing with him.

If you were ever unlucky to play with me (some friends nicknamed me 'short straw' for a reason), I'd never expect you to promise 2/3 top honours, so we'd be safe on this hand.

More to the point: I think your analogies are flawed.

For one thing, I suspect that on most occasions when you bid a 3 card suit that is ostensibly 4 or more, it would be in a situation in which your partner is aware of the possibility. For your analogy to be apposite, we'd have to imagine something like a stayman auction in which opener bid 2M on a 3 card suit, promising 4. I have never seen that intentionally done nor can I conceive of a hand on which it would be the best choice.

The same is true of 1N with a stiff. When we perpetrate that action, it is because we have a hand that is unbiddable should a commonly foreseeable situation arise.

By contrast, responding 2♦ on a positive hand with QJ10xxx in spades creates no obviously insoluble problem. I admit that it leaves us poorly placed, by comparison to those able to make a looser 2♠ response, should opener rebid 3m, but being relatively poorly placed is not at all the same as facing a rebid problem on K AQJx KQxx Jxxx and hearing a 1♠ response to our 1♦!

At the same time, should opener rebid 2N, partnerships with solid, complex agreements will be in excellent shape...at least as good as if they had responded 2♠. I should make a disclaimer: I cannot show a major at the 2-level, since I use 2M for artificial purposes, as per Fred G. This does make it more useful for me to narrow the definition of a major positive since I can't show the suit below the 3-level. I am not basing my arguments in this thread on that fact.

Meanwhile, and independent of my particular methods, there are powerful arguments in favour of keeping positive suit responses narrowly defined, and these arguments are NOT principally based on allowing opener to leap to 7N!

I am not going to go into them, since doing so would take a lot of space, and I am not in this thread attempting to persuade anybody to adopt the method. Frankly, I suspect that if Andy and his regular partner bid 1000 (appropriately cooked) hands using his approach and I mine, the difference would be due to the skill level of the players far more than the intrinsic pros and cons of the different methods.

My point remains: if you agree that 2♠ delivers a certain holding, then don't distort.

[rhm]

 mikeh, on 2013-July-11, 09:01, said:

Why do you think that this is the 'main reason'?

I simply pointed out that if one has the agreement that a bid means something specific, regardless of WHY it carries that meaning, it is foolish to make the bid with a hand that does not match the agreement.

I'm baffled by the response to my first post on this thread. All I ever did was to state something that is patently true, and surely obvious to the meanest bridge intelligence: that to decide how to bid the responding hand one had first to know what one's agreements were.

Were I to sit down with a European expert, undiscussed, I would bid 2♠ because my understanding is that this would be viewed as standard in Europe. Were I to do it with a NA expert, I would bid 2♦. Philking's reference to the old BWS poll supports my assertion, and I suspect (from my own experience) that the 2/3 top card approach is more popular in some parts of NA than others. Where I play, 2/3 is almost universal amongst the better players when they play a standard based method.

Nowhere did I assert that either method was inferior to the other. There seem to me to be solid arguments on both sides.

I happen to be more familiar with the 2/3 top honour approach, but in my serious partnerships we use 2♠ to show a balanced hand of 7-10 hcp, so we couldn't bid 2♠ anyway. I didn't mention that, nor how I would bid the hand in my partnerships, because I was only trying to make a point about requiring or assuming agreements in order to know what might be appropriate.

I do not argue that if you have an agreement you should follow your agreement at the table with few exceptions.
It is generally better to follow inferior agreements at the table than violating them.
But if there are agreements there is hardly anything to argue, is there?
You mentally look at your rulebook and do as you have agreed upon just like a robot.
However, the opener did not specify any agreements.
So it must be allowed to discuss which agreements are helpful and which are not, even when they are popular in certain regions of this planet.

Rainer Herrmann

[the hog]

I cannot conceive of a 2D 'waiting" bid on this hand. This is a 2S response. If you are not going to bid 2S on this, what are you waiting for..13 spades?