[helene_t]

helene_t, on 2014-July-09, 03:23, said:

I was wondering if pass is forcing here. If it is, 5♦ could say something about diamonds.

mikeh, on 2014-July-11, 00:03, said:

I don't see where anyone has yet discussed this, but are we in a forcing pass situation here?

Thinking more about it I think yes. I am not sure about what the general rule is. I think it was Wortel/Michielsen that had some general principle involving game bids r/w setting up an FP. Here, the fact that opps "obviously" don't expect to make 5♣ adds to it, but I don't think that's the point.

[MrAce]

PhantomSac, on 2014-July-10, 16:14, said:

Are we not allowed to open 1N with 6 diamonds?

Yes we are of course. The question is, do we really want to spare this (5 dia) bid for it? I personally like what Mike suggested more. On this particular hand you can predict the club void. But in another hand you may not and pd can still have void in their suit.

Not only rare to hold 6 carder in a NT opener, but also rare that we will be willing to bid on at 5 level with doubleton in pd's suit. But since I do not have an agreement what 5♦ is, I replied to the question by giving more options other than bidding 6♥ (5 NT or 6♦..)just in case pd may be bidding with natural diamonds. So that we can play diamond slam if pd thinks it is better. But if what you are saying is that 5♦ is passable, I personally do not like it.

[aguahombre]

mikeh, on 2014-July-11, 00:03, said:

I don't see where anyone has yet discussed this, but are we in a forcing pass situation here? I would think not, since the 4♥ call was under pressure, but otoh we are red v white and we have bid game. I think this is one of those areas where it can be reasonable to play it either way.

If we are in a f/p situation then we may be able to make use of the pass and pull to 5♦ as one hand type and the immediate 5♦ as another.

This is a very unusual situation in which we don't need a lot of gradations for opener's hand. In many normal fp situations, one of the strong side is either unlimited or at least wide range, but here the 1N bid narrowly constrains the hand type, and the desire to compete at the 5 level and/or try for slam further refines the hand anyway.

We'd need agreement, but my take would be that this is a great situation to play that pass requests a double, while double shows a desire to bid 5♥ and but without slam interest, and bids of 5red show a slam try. With long diamonds, wanting to try 5♦, pass and then pull.

I assumed it was a FP, and I don't have many of those. If it weren't, then all the posts about the Diamond holding expected from the 5♦ bid might be moot. We would have to use the bid as a LT with any array, even 3-4-3-3 with great controls and nothing in Clubs. Opposite that possibility, I would still bid 6H.

[PhantomSac]

MrAce, on 2014-July-11, 03:24, said:

Yes we are of course. The question is, do we really want to spare this (5 dia) bid for it?

Quote

You could reserve the 5♦ bid for hands where you opened 1NT with a 6 card diamond suit. This would work when 5 or 6 diamonds was the correct contract. I would guess that would happen once in about 76 years.

Or you could use 5♦ for a slam try in hearts, which probably comes up once or twice a year.

To me the weird thing would be that we might have a natural 5D bid, it might be our best spot, and yet we can not make it so that we can make a slam try opposite a passed partner as a 1N opener when partner has not made a slam try. I guess I am of the Fred school that bids that can be natural should be natural, especially game bids. Of course they are all rare, but if I have a good hand with hearts I have a bid for that: 5H. Yes, I might want 2 grades of 5H bids, even though any 5H bid is a pretty big bid, but to sacrifice my one way to show diamonds when we could easily belong in 5D is not a great sacrifice.

I guess I disagree that we are unlikely to want to bid 5D with a doubleton heart. On this auction we are likely to want to bid 5D when we have 6 good diamonds, most opps are going to be 8-3 in clubs for this auction. Sure they might be 8-2 or 7-3 sometimes but with nothing in clubs it is likely a 30 point deck and when I have 6 diamonds we are likely to have a good fit there. Not being able to bid 5D is going to be a big loss since we won't be able to play 5D anymore. Yes, I might have a hand that is so big in support of hearts that I am uncomfortable even bidding 5H, but in that case at least I will get to play 5H, I won't get to a miracle slam oh well it is not the end of the world.

And ofc I was talking in the case of pass being NF. If pass is forcing then you can pass and pull with a strong hand. Playing normal forcing pass then 5D is obviously natural since you have another way to bid with a slam try in hearts. Mikeh outlined the pass/double inversion, it is slightly superior in all forcing pass auctions since if you want to pass and pull your partner gets in the way sometimes by bidding immediately. Usually with a pass and pull you can just bid slam if your partner bids instead of doubling over your FP but that is not a great solution, you'd like to make sure he doubles hence the inversion. This is fine as long as you always know what auctions are forcing. I know Meckwell and other top pairs play this but you really need to know your ***** well in order to do so.

But if you are not inverting pass and double and play standard forcing pass then you really need the 5D bid to be natural and not try to pass and bid 5D naturally, because if you pass you are encouraging partner to bid five HEARTS, as no one has bid diamonds yet!. For instance, with his actual hand, he would bid 5H over a forcing pass, that's not great if you have 6 diamonds and 2 hearts lol.

Assuming you do NOT play forcing pass and 5D is your only bid, it is dangerous to think things like "well, I have a huge 5H bid more often than I have a natural 5D bid, thus 5D should be a huge 5H bid." That does not necessarily logically follow, what also matters is how much you gain/lose by having a way to show a huge 5H bid vs a natural 5D bid.

[ArtK78]

PhantomSac, on 2014-July-11, 10:00, said:

Assuming you do NOT play forcing pass and 5D is your only bid, it is dangerous to think things like "well, I have a huge 5H bid more often than I have a natural 5D bid, thus 5D should be a huge 5H bid." That does not necessarily logically follow, what also matters is how much you gain/lose by having a way to show a huge 5H bid vs a natural 5D bid.

I would say that in those rare instances where you want to take a bid over 5♣, you will be doing so MUCH more often because you have a huge 5♥ bid rather than because you have a natural 5♦ bid. On frequency grounds, the comparison of the 2 possibilities will not be close.

And if you analyze the potential gain from using 5♦ as a huge heart raise rather than as a natural bid against the converse, I think the huge heart raise comes out ahead.

[mikeh]

PhantomSac, on 2014-July-11, 10:00, said:

.

But if you are not inverting pass and double and play standard forcing pass then you really need the 5D bid to be natural and not try to pass and bid 5D naturally, because if you pass you are encouraging partner to bid five HEARTS, as no one has bid diamonds yet!. For instance, with his actual hand, he would bid 5H over a forcing pass, that's not great if you have 6 diamonds and 2 hearts lol.

Assuming you do NOT play forcing pass and 5D is your only bid, it is dangerous to think things like "well, I have a huge 5H bid more often than I have a natural 5D bid, thus 5D should be a huge 5H bid." That does not necessarily logically follow, what also matters is how much you gain/lose by having a way to show a huge 5H bid vs a natural 5D bid.

My take on this is that at imps it is rarely right to open 1N with a 6 card minor. Yes, it has a preemptive value, but that isn't always a good thing, since if the opps come in on your left, with a major-oriented call, your partner may go very seriously wrong in a competitive situation, and there are other problems as well.

I know opening 1N is all the rage, and I understand the attraction, but to me opening 1N with a 6 card suit is taking a position, and if I won't then decide that my subsequent high-level actions should cater to my having taken a position early on. If I have fixed myself through an initial distortion, live with it.

It cannot be good tactics to formulate your later actions to cater to having distorted your hand initially when it is also reasonable to play your later actions as showing a hand that is entirely consistent with your initial action.

Any other approach requires a huge amount of mind-reading by partner.

Now, if in one's chosen methods, it is thought to be routine to open a 15-17 1N with a 13-15 count 6322 hand (surely nobody would do it with a 16-17 count? Such hands are way too powerful in our suit to open 1N), that is a different matter, since now opening that way isn't a distortion. One might have disclosure issues in committee if partner later argues: of course it didn't show slam interest in hearts, because we often open 1N with 13-15 6322 hands, so we need this to be natural. Absent disclosure issues, then I can see that the frequency concerns that Justin has might make 'natural' more palatable.

I don't have those agreements and see no reason why I would want them at imps.

[PhantomSac]

Yeah obviously if you don't open 1N with 6 card minors (and I'm guessing if you do it it's a baddish suit and positional/nty stuff outside?) then you don't need 5D natural. I was actually serious in my first post ITT when I asked are we not allowed to have a 6 card minor heh.

I don't know about disclosure issues, to me 6322 is similar to 5332 with a 5 card major or 5422 with a 5 card minor, I open it always if I feel I am in range, which 14 almost always is and 15 usually is and 16 rarely is (in general if I'm happy to rebid 3m or 2N I will open 1m, otherwise I'll open 1N). 13 sounds weird unless you're clee

I do always make an effort to disclose that all of our NT ranges can be upgraded and are almost never downgraded. Should I be making more of an effort to disclose that 6322 with 6m is generally treated as balanced if in range (and how do I do that?) I don't think it's that weird that 14 with a 6 card suit can be upgraded to 15, I doubt a committee would have a problem with that.

edit: FWIW I looked at my USBF system summary cards here is what they say about NT ranges...

With Joe: "frequently shade all nt's tactically and when have a good 5card suit."
With Kev: "Ranges are flexible and upgrades are frequent, downgrades not frequent."
With Bob: "decent 14-17 NT" which was actually our range since I would never be upgrading 13s when my max was 17 but many 14s were opened 1N so "decent" instead of "good" seemed appropriate.

[mikeh]

PhantomSac, on 2014-July-11, 14:25, said:

Yeah obviously if you don't open 1N with 6 card minors (and I'm guessing if you do it it's a baddish suit and positional/nty stuff outside?) then you don't need 5D natural. I was actually serious in my first post ITT when I asked are we not allowed to have a 6 card minor heh.

You're right.....if I ever open 1N with a 6 card minor, and I can't remember the last time I did it, it would definitely be with a bad suit and no completely open side suit. I have a vague memory that I used to do this fairly often way, way back, and then got to play a bit with Alan Graves, who has always had a different (and usually very interesting) take on the game compared to the way I learned it. I don't say that Alan is responsible for any bad decisions I made since then But I do think he got me thinking more about minor suit contracts rather than grabbing notrump...which latter was definitely a result of playing too much mps as a non-expert.

Quote

I don't know about disclosure issues, to me 6322 is similar to 5332 with a 5 card major or 5422 with a 5 card minor, I open it always if I feel I am in range, which 14 almost always is and 15 usually is and 16 rarely is (in general if I'm happy to rebid 3m or 2N I will open 1m, otherwise I'll open 1N). 13 sounds weird unless you're clee

I don't know how to deal with disclosure in this sort of situation. My guess is that in most of your serious events, there is no need, since I suspect that this sort of valuation/modification/distortion (whatever you call it) is accepted as 'bridge, mister' (one of my favourite lines was when a wanna-be expert challenged a real expert about 'what does that bid mean?', in an auction in which it is extremely unlikely that the expert and his only occasional partner had an agreement, and the answer was "it's bridge, mister")

My concern was more theoretical than real, and I can assure you that I would never be looking for a committee, but we've all seen situations that went to committee and the sometimes convoluted outcomes.

Quote

edit: FWIW I looked at my USBF system summary cards here is what they say about NT ranges...

With Joe: "frequently shade all nt's tactically and when have a good 5card suit."
With Kev: "Ranges are flexible and upgrades are frequent, downgrades not frequent."
With Bob: "decent 14-17 NT" which was actually our range since I would never be upgrading 13s when my max was 17 but many 14s were opened 1N so "decent" instead of "good" seemed appropriate.

As for your Bob card, it seems to me that many pairs these days write 15-17 when they mean 'decent 14 to indifferent 17'

I think the last time I had serious notes, in a string 1N context, I had 'frequent upgrades into and out of the range', but that was in the notes, not the convention card. I suspect that if I were doing what I seem to say others ought to do, I would be writing 14+ to 17-.