mikl_plkcc, on 2021-October-09, 11:42, said:
I really don't understand now what hand I should bid with a 2-level overcall. Should I only overcall with a 6-card suit or a solid 5-card suit?! Does that mean I should even pass 1♠ with ♠xx ♥AK ♦AJxxx ♣KJxx ?!
Nothing is perfect. However, you seem to be arguing that you should overcall 2D with Kx xxx AQxxx Qxx because you’d hate to pass with xx AK AJxxx KJxx.
There’s no reason to equate those two hands, and the fact that you think, so it appears, that they are equivalent says you have a lot of work to do before you become a decent player.
Personally, if not vulnerable, I would always bid 2D over 1S with the 2=2=5=4 16 count. I wouldn’t be happy, but I think bidding is better than passing, although both could work best on any given day.
Give me xx AK Jxxxx AKJx and now I’m really hating it! Now I’d pass at any vulnerability since 2D on that suit is awful, doubling is asking to play in a 4-2 heart fit with an eight or nine card minor suit fit that we can’t reach, and 1N has an obvious flaw in the spade suit.
Fortunately, probabilities being what they are, the odds are pretty good that when one has a strong hand one will usually have values in a long suit…the more of your cards are in any one suit, the more likely it is that your honours will be there as well.
I don’t have a rigid rule. As I’ve said many times, I don’t reduce my hand evaluations to a single value, no matter how complex your scheme might be. So it’s difficult for me to give you any simple rule to follow. Indeed, if you gave me the same borderline situation a few months apart (so I don’t recognize it the second time) I might give two different answers.
However:
If overcalling a 5 card suit, I suggest you need at least a decent 12 count and good values, including good spot cards, in your suit.
If you hold xxx in opener’s suit, downgrade the hand and err on the side of caution, especially when they bid 1M. Xxx, including Jxx, is the worst holding possible.
If you hold a 6 card suit with decent internal strength, you can overcall 2/1 with a good 10 count.
Say you hold x KQ1098x AJxx xx. I’d happily bid 2H over 1S even red v white.
xx Q10xxxx KQx Kx I’d pass even white v red
Anyone who thinks that those two hands are even approximately the same needs to work on valuation.
There has been a powerful trend over the past 40 years or so to ever increasing aggression in bidding. This trend is because, in the hands of expert players, aggression tends to pay off.
Even when lesser players ramp up the aggression, they usually get away with it. They are almost always playing against players of the same general skill level, so each side makes enough mistakes that, on balance, they end up quite similarly to the experts.
But there’s a limit to hyper-aggression, and it’s found most of all in making 2/1 overcalls.
Why? I addressed some of the reasons in an earlier post so won’t repeat myself other than to say that good players routinely carve up bad overcalls.
You may get away with bad overcalls in a weak field, because your opps generally don’t know when to reopen or when to convert (or even when to pass as responder, to await a reopening double. Plus defence is the most difficpart of the game so weak defenders often let declarer off the hook on which he had impaled himself.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
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