cardsharp, on Jul 15 2007, 03:17 AM, said:
This hand tested many at the Peebles Congress yesterday, including me. You are playing with a new partner and playing a fairly natural system.
It is debatable whether you want to find the club slam, but how do you think we should bid it?
Paul
Playing 2/1, I would sadly never mention clubs.
1S-2H-3D(extras. yes maybe my void in partners suit should slow me down, but I do have a 5-5 15 count)-3H-3N-4H
Without the heart T I might pass 3N and take my chances, but its generally better to be in a suit on a misfit, if there is a suit thats good enough.
Note: I generally play that in a GFing auction after partner has bid NT you can bid the 4'th suit naturally, but this only applies at a lower level. At the 4 level, the best use for a bid of the 4'th suit is a good bid of a different suit. Which suit is it a good bid for?
Well look first at if you can set all the suits as trumps below game. If there is only 1 suit you can't set below game, thats the suit this 4'th suit bid shows. If there is more than 1 such suit (or if you can agree all the suits below game) than this is a good raise of the most recently bid of those suits.
E.G.
1S-2D-2H-3D-3S-4C=Slam try in Spades (spades bid more recently than hearts, can bid 4D naturally below game so thats eliminated)
1S-2H-3D-4C=Slam try in Diamonds (Can bid all suits below game, so next look at what is most recently bid. Note: I consider this sequence the most contraversal, since you can legitamtely set all the suits below game, so the question is if there is a better use for this).
1S-2H-2S-3H-4m=Cue bid for hearts. yes these are only the 3'rd suits but in general, we don't introduce suits at the 4 level when we could have introduced them earlier and didn't.
1S-2H-3C-3H-4D=Slam Try in Hearts (As 3S and 4C are forcing, and 4H is not forcing, this must be for hearts).
Is this basically the rules that everyone here plays? If not what are the differences?
Note: There are other auctions where only 2 suits are in play, where you can't set either suit below game. For instance if you play 1N-3S, as both majors GFing, then most play 4C=Good 4H bid, 4D=Good 4S, 4H=bad 4H bid, and 4S=bad 4S bid.
There are other auctions, such as 2N-3C-3M where you can't possible want to play in the other major unless partner can bid it (if you had only 5 of that one but not 4 of the other you would have transfered not bid stayman) but you might have a 5+ card minor you were intered in playing in. Hence 4 of either minor is natural, and the idle bid of the other major is the only strong raise. Once again note, there is no cue-bidding before you agree a suit...
Principle: When there is only one idle bid available, you should use it to show "extras" and interest in going higher, and not use it as a cue bid or a specific help suit. (For instance in the auction, 1S-(2D)-2S-(3D), 3H is the only game try available, so it shouldn't promise hearts. there is a similar principle at the 4 level when trying for slam and at the 6 level when trying for a grand. When there is two or more suits to choose from, then they become semi-natural (below 3N) or cue-bids when trying for slam.