[kenrexford]

Curious on this. I have been playing "13-15 balanced raise" for some time, but I can never get partners to commit to an honors hand type (Aces and spaces, or quacks), except one person. This makes the pass-or-pull decision bad, and it makes the "I'm unbalanced and slammish" decision worse.

How do others play this?

[foo]

1M-3N is rarely the natural 12-14 or 13-15 flat IME.

The 2 most common uses I've seen are
a= "I have a splinter. Do you care?"
b= "I have a good 1M-4M preemptive raise." IOW, what few points you have contain controls and you may be exceptionally shapely as well.

[pclayton]

Hi y'all from Nashville.

If given a choice, I like 2N as the balanced hand and 3N as a preemptive raise with an outside trick. This jams the bidding nicely and keeps slam options open. It also defines 4M as a really, really bad 5 card raise.

[Fluffy]

I play it as forbidden bid. I think we actually play heart splinter but since it never comes up even if we have that we won-t bid it.

[mikeh]

In most partnerships, I play it as too good to bid 4M, not good enough to splinter.... almost always a side stiff, usually 5 trump, but can be 4 with real shape, and some stuff in a long side suit. The range depends on who I am playing with: one partner likes splinters to be relatively weak, so his 3N is lighter than those whose splinters may be decent opening hands.

In one partnership, I play that it is specifically 4333, with a 4 card minor, and stoppers in the unbid suits and 13-15 hcp. It is rare, but allows us to play 3N on 5-3 major fits, or even the odd 6-3. We haven't discussed (explicitly) the makeup of the hcp, but I would be astounded if either of us made the bid on 3 Aces and a King

[Echognome]

Arend can tell us BWS, but I'm surprised that a good 4M preempt is not one of the poll options.

[skjaeran]

mikeh, on Jul 22 2007, 08:47 PM, said:

In one partnership, I play that it is specifically 4333, with a 4 card minor, and stoppers in the unbid suits and 13-15 hcp. It is rare, but allows us to play 3N on 5-3 major fits, or even the odd 6-3. We haven't discussed (explicitly) the makeup of the hcp, but I would be astounded if either of us made the bid on 3 Aces and a King

That's in fact how I usually have played it.
With my current partner it show (23)44 and 13-15. (Doubleton in the opened major and 44 in the minors.) With our light opening style we should probably adjust it to 14-16 though.

[kenrexford]

I like this "good 4M" treatment. It certainly would be nice to have any bid that replaces this "balanced GF" treatment, that I absolutely hate.

Playing that technique, is there any follow-up available to Opener when he has a player; perhaps a 4-loser monstrosity? I would imagine that 4♣ should probably ask for the stiff, perhaps, but what are the parameters of this call?

"Good" doesn't really tickle me as a definition.

[rbforster]

Playing 2/1, I play 3N as a strong natural bid promising a doubleton in M, extra high card strength in the 16-18 range (slam invitational), and slow values and tenaces in the side suits.

Playing precision and all sorts of artificial raises, we play this as a strong balanced raise. Specifically 33(43) with 15-17 which is a choice of games and encourages slam opposite a maximum (of 15 for opener). Obviously this 3N with 3 card support gets pulled to 4M a lot more often than the other version, pretty much whenever partner has a 6 card suit or has opened a distributional minimum.

[foo]

kenrexford, on Jul 22 2007, 06:53 PM, said:

I like this "good 4M" treatment. It certainly would be nice to have any bid that replaces this "balanced GF" treatment, that I absolutely hate.

Playing that technique, is there any follow-up available to Opener when he has a player; perhaps a 4-loser monstrosity? I would imagine that 4♣ should probably ask for the stiff, perhaps, but what are the parameters of this call?

"Good" doesn't really tickle me as a definition.

A "good" 1M-4M means your HCP contain an A or a K in your non stiff suits.
You have no more than a J more than an A or a Q more than a K.

Thus to be forward going, Opener must have a =very= nice hand.
You essentially have to have a hand that rates to have 5 level safety opposite the above +and+ a hand that thinks 6M or 6N is plausible if Responder has the correct shape and A or K.

[helene_t]

kenrexford, on Jul 23 2007, 01:53 AM, said:

I like this "good 4M" treatment. It certainly would be nice to have any bid that replaces this "balanced GF" treatment, that I absolutely hate.

Playing that technique, is there any follow-up available to Opener when he has a player; perhaps a 4-loser monstrosity? I would imagine that 4♣ should probably ask for the stiff, perhaps, but what are the parameters of this call?

After 1♠-3N you could play the same as I suggested for 3♠-4♣
1♠-3N
4♣-?
4♦= stiff ♦ or no stiff. 4♥ asks for a sign-off if no stiff and otherwise for keycards or such.
4♥=stiff ♥
4♠=stiff ♣

After 1♥-3N you have less bidding space. You could play
1♥-3N
?
4♣=interested in stiff ♣ or sign-off. 4♦ now shows the stiff ♣.
4♦=interested in stiff ♦
4♥=interested in stiff ♠

But this doesn't allow opener to shows interest opposite, say, a stiff in either clubs or spades. Besides, it points opps to declarer's weak point. So maybe some other scheme would have higher frequency of succes.

[Gerben42]

Some kind of splinter bid for me.

Quote

After 1♥-3N you have less bidding space. You could play
1♥-3N

Not if you make 1♥ - 3♠ the corresponding asking bid.

[kenrexford]

Gerben42, on Jul 23 2007, 03:12 AM, said:

Some kind of splinter bid for me.

Quote

After 1♥-3N you have less bidding space. You could play
1♥-3N

Not if you make 1♥ - 3♠ the corresponding asking bid.

That seems rather useful as well. 3NT would apparently be the spade splinter, and 3♠ the "3NT" holding.

[jtfanclub]

I play it as showing exactly 2 spades and one of:

A) 12-15 hcp and balanced, or

9-11 with a 5+ card minor with only one loser in the suit.

In other words, the hands most likely to want to play in 3NT.

I suppose I've missed some slams this way- I don't remember. I don't use it very often.

[SoTired]

In one partnership:
I like to play 2-tier splinters. 3oM = 10-12 HCP, unspecified splinter
1S - 3H = 10-12 unspecified splinter
1H - 3S = 10-12 unspecified splinter

That leaves the 13-15 natural splinter:
1S - 4C/4D/4H = 13-15 splinter
1H - 4C/4D = 13-15 splinter
1H 3N = 13-15, spade splinter since 3S is used for lower splinter
That leaves 1S 3N undefined

In another partnership:
1M 3N = 3-card support, 13-15 balanced, no 5-card side suit

[ArtK78]

In different partnerships, I have different agreements.

The most common seems to be that 1M-3NT is a "good" raise to 4M (although I have not had a serious discussion on exactly what constitutes a "good" raise to 4M - sort of you know it when you see it).

In one partnership I play that it is 13-15 with 4333, 3 card support, most cards outside of the trump suit.

[Impact]

The "Good 4M raise with a stiff somewhere" has been around since at least the 1970's and I recall an article by Joe Silver I think called "Sliver Bids" which was a neat name combining the anagram of Silver and a "sliver" being something less than a splinter!

On a separate note, I think you should differentiate between 1S-3NT
and 1H - 3NT as in the first case it is one step beyond the double raise, while in the second it is 2 steps.

On any symmetric basis the equivalence should be DR+1 so that 1S- 3NT should be analogous to 1H-3S in order to allow equivalent room for exploration/differentiation - whatever meaning is assigned.

I experimented in a relatively standard framework with sliver bids for about a decade : but the right hand did not come up.

I found whether playing Acol/standard or something freakier, that the minimum forcing balanced raise was the most useful treatment ie just enough to force to game, at least enough trumps to ensure an 8 card fit, no shortage no side 5+card suit....in standard that means that a delayed game raise actually shows a decent suit (or length at any rate) and allows you to maintain a still stronger ie slam invitational raise somewhere in your system.

If asked for a definition of the values I would say 4-4.5 cover cards with a maximum of about 14HCP.

A preferred continuation is for opener to indicate shortage (by coding or one-unders) if interested in slam opposite no wastage.

regards,