BBO Discussion Forums: Stayman? - BBO Discussion Forums

I would pass, the hand is too strong for garbage Stayman. Looks like strength is about equally distributed so 1NT shouldn't be in a big danger, they probably won't be able to double and -100 or +90 should be OK.

Garbage stayman is a very useful tool, especially for those playing weak notrump. Over here, at least in the Pacific northwest, weak notrump is the exception rather than the rule, so it would be very unusual to see a beginner/novice player using it.

What I don't know is the rest of the response structure. This is important, since if we use a 2♥ runout over a 2♦ response to stayman as garbage stayman, suggesting declarer pass or correct, then we lose whatever meaning this sequence might otherwise have.

In one of my partnerships, we play 2 way stayman, with artificial responses to the 2♦ game force stayman call. The result is that with invitational hands with a 5+ major we need to go through 2♣ first. Should opener bid 2♦ our life is easy with 6+ since we bid 3M. With 5♠ we bid 2♠ but with precisely 5♥ we have no call, since we play garbage stayman. We 'solve' this problem by using responder's 2N over opener's 2♦ as invitational in notrump but may have 5♥s. Opener either passes or bids on. Bidding on shows acceptance of game, and opener can bid 3♥ to check back for the heart suit.


On the other hand, what if one plays transfers? Then one doesn't need my kludge above, but now maybe the 2♥ call might show 5♥ and 4♠. Some might want it to be weak, while others might want it to be invitational. It doesn't much matter so long as you recognize that adopting one convention often requires rethinking other sequences and, in some cases, this ripple effect spreads a long way. I think this is a good part of Timo's rant ( ) against recommending GS in this forum. I share his concerns, but since it has been mentioned I thought I'd show why, at least imo, it isn't a good idea to simply say: wow, that sounds like a good convention...let's use it.

Getting back to the OP, I would absolutely bid garbage stayman if available. The odds are quite high that partner has a major and, when he does, we are almost always going to score better in 2M than in 1N.

Even on those occasions when he lacks a 4 card major, 2M in a 4-3 fit will often, tho not always and maybe not mostly score the same as or better than 1N.

The only time when it is 'right' to pass is when 2M fares worse than 1N. That will happen on a substantial number of hands, but I think the upside is significantly greater than the downside.

Not playing GS, I'd pass, since now we can't always reach a 4-3 major suit fit and now the odds shift, in my view.

MrAce, on 2014-January-08, 20:21, said:

It doesn't seem to me to be any more complicated for beginners to learn that Stayman can be bid on any strength than to learn that it must be bid on invitational or better hands only. It seems especially simple to learn, first of all, that you can bid Stayman planning to pass any response. If people do this, a 2 ♥ pass- or- correct rebid will probably suggest itself eventually.

Vampyr, on 2014-January-09, 21:18, said:

You are wrong about novice and beginner level overall. But when you play garbage stayman or similar stayman, your entire system will be effected from this. No Novice or beginner needs to change their system just to try to find a 4-4 4-3 5-2 fits. No need to announce that you have a weak stayman hand to opps either. First they need to come to a level that they can manage 4-3 5-2 fit trumps.

And it never ends with garbage stayman, there are a lot of other things which are as easy to learn, they become a huge amount of things to memorize which they don't need ,most of the time.But playing reasonable lines as declarer or making reasonable basic defense is something they need every single hand.. Let them spend their time and energy to mostly card play, defense, reading opponents hand, counting cards, counting hcps of the opps and play a system as simple as possible. All of this are like some background application on your pc, running in the back ground and slowing your processor.

Perhaps context is relevant. This thread developed from an original post in the N/B forum from someone who, rightly or wrongly, felt that the thread belonged here. Clearly he had a variant of garbage Stayman in mind when posting the query. It seems to me that the issue that he was raising was not whether garbage Stayman is a good thing or a bad thing, or what it meant, but rather whether this hand is an appropriate example of its use. Who are we to judge that he is incapable of handling the response?

MrAce, on 2014-January-10, 04:31, said:

This is from a very narrow perspective of somebody who lives in strong no trump land.

If you live in weak no trump land, "garbage stayman" is absolutely standard beginner fare taught to you when you first learn stayman pretty much as a standard part of that convention.

I don't think playing 2♥ as weak is any more "advanced" than playing it as invitational. Obviously it is more advanced than having no agreements. Anyway, Eagles said that their agreement is to play it as weak, the question is then whether 4-4 is ok or whether it really has to be 4-5.

Obviously Eagles would be happy to play Gerben's condensed transfers, or some kind of psycho-escapes, or AWM's two-way 2♥ bid, if we could argue that they have merits, or at least that the technical disadvantages don't outweigh the fun But OK, such treatments would not be appropriate for the N/B forum in general.

I gave up playing garbage Stayman many years ago. I have not missed it.

I don't remember the last time I bid Garbage Stayman opposite a strong NT.
When I used to play Stayman opposite a weak NT, I'd do it once a month, probably, at least. I don't think we played that 1NT-2♣-2♦-2♥ was pass-requiring - my guess would be 5♥, INV, as we also played 2-way Stayman; so I just passed out 2♦ and hoped we didn't get doubled (as we hadn't been so far, which was the point of bidding 2♣).

So I guess I'm agreeing with most of the Britishers here who are saying that those that think that Garbage Stayman is "more difficult than useful for novices" also think that the weak NT is "more difficult than useful for novices". Of course, in their games, it is - try finding another partner!

mycroft, on 2014-January-10, 10:41, said:

As i said i like GS.

I think people here have very different opinion about the level of beginners than mine. Beginner means a person who just started/applied to learn bridge. 1 level openings including NT, and responses to them are first things that they will be taught right after teaching them what hcps mean, what is the goal in this game, how does auction start, who starts it, how does an auction ends, game and partscore and slams what do they mean, rank of suits and auction rules etc..

Now you are trying to teach their first artificial bids, stayman and xfer. And artificial responses (2♦) You are trying to teach them to bid something that they do not have in their hand. Teaching them the first time that a bid can be used to ask something instead of showing. And of course, instead of asking them to memorize it and to do what u say, you are trying to teach them the reasons, why we need to do this, forcing, nf bids. At this point of their bridge adventure, you also have to make sure, and imho this should be your first priority, is to make them like the game, enjoy the game in order to keep them and avoid overwhelming them.( By saying you i am implying bridge teachers) With novices,you already started teaching them weak NT, which comes with a lot of things to handle as oppose to strong NT. Now you have to find a way to tell them how to handle strong NT hands after they open 1 suit and RHO overcalled at 2 level or preempted at 3 level. Will opener bid 2 NT - 3 NT ? Will he pass ? If he passes does his pd have to balance with all hands that may make game vs a strong NT ? If he does how will u teach them to stay away from 3-4 level if opener does not have a strong NT ? If weak NT is mandatory in the system that i am teaching, then it is fine. What is so absurd to me is the mentality that says you can not play weak NT w/o GS even at the beginner/novice level. WoW!



Having said that, all novices and beginners play NT contracts better than trump contracts. That is my personal observation until they get a grasp of game. Trump contracts has much more variety of maneuvers than NT contracts both for declarer and defenders. I don't think, any teacher, regardless of which NT land they live and regardless of what Nt range they teach, should be introducing GS to their students unless they are trying to pass the time and get their money. Do you have any idea how many preset hands a teacher has to prepare just for teaching simple stayman ? If we get into GS part of it, not only you have to spend much more time on something which they can easily live without, now you have to explain them what to do in competition and how to figure if pd staymaned with 3 hcp or an invitation hand. This is one way to bore the ***** out of them.

Why would anyone who has a little bit of sanity and willing to teach instead of making money, teach a beginner or novice the GS ? How many times it comes a year ? You said once a month that makes 12 times a year and i bet you are using GS with more hands than a beginner or novice would. If i spend that much time for something like that, in order to protect my students from hands where one of them opens weak NT, and the other one has a very weak hand, all suits except clubs, from playing 1 NT then where will i find the time to teach how to play and defend the hand ? Because that will come every ***** board, not 12 times a year ! And it takes much more time and patience and homework than teaching bidding. Today GS, tomorrow support doubles, other day inverted minor...that adds up a lot of info that they don't even need, unless you are confident that you did your job on the card play part. And by the time you are done with your basic card play - counting played cards- counting opponent hands - teaching them to remember the auction during the play- teaching them very simple and basic principles of hand evaluation and all other bids that are much more important than GS, such as reverses, difference between simple preference and support, competition etc etc, they are neither beginner nor novice anymore. Just like every OP in this forum is not novice or beginner. Some people try to be humble. What i wrote was directed to beginners and novices. This OP maybe novice maybe intermediate maybe advance, i can't tell b4 i watch him some number of hands. But if he believes that he is belong to this forum, he has no job with GS.

1eyedjack, on 2014-January-10, 06:22, said:

Fair enough. But then again try to look at it this way;

AJ7532 vs Q86 and you need to establish this suit by giving one in order to make your contract with no side entry to long suit side and you are playing from Q86 side. This hand was posted in N/B and i was aiming to see how they will play this suit (the hand has more into it but probably for I/A level) http://www.bridgebas...64082-play-4sp/

Only one N/B member replied it, and he was the same OP in this topic. And he got it right, he played the Q. Could not tell why he played the Q though. Then i asked couple more questions with some hints, he did not answer. It was a very educational hand from BBO that i watched.

Now you tell me, how appropriate to encourage someone the GS, who could not tell you why he played Q from this combination ? All other N/B readers who did not even find the right play Eagles did nor posted.. Just because the OP is N/B and asked a specific question, does not mean i can not warn him about bigger picture. He is asking me " which life insurance is best?" All i am telling him is that he should not be wasting his money on life insurance, which won't make any difference for him except than encouraging the beneficiary to kill you, when he does not even have a health insurance, which he may need any time and he will.

Weird, I would have said that novices and beginners (and many intermediates) play NT very badly compared to a trump suit - especially bad NT contracts. Many are afraid of NT because of how badly they play it. The number of times they lose control of the hand and have a suit run against them (and botch the pitches, and now another suit runs on them) is many more times than they lose control of the hand with a trump suit (even if they would if the trump suit is unlucky, but it isn't this time).

Yes, there are lots of tricks in trumps that work well that you don't have in NT, but the thing is that the trick, the one they all know no matter how novice they are, works miles better (or at least miles less badly) in a trump suit than in NT - pull trump, or some of it anyway, and cash tops, and scramble the rest. Long trumps are the ultimate stopper. (yes, bad 4-3s are a different breed :-)

One of the benefits of playing a weak NT is that you tend to lose your fear of hopeless contracts (or you quit the game, I guess) early. You'll play 12-opposite-4, frequently doubled, in the best place, and find out that your -2 that you were so upset about was a great score. You'll play 12-opposite-8, and scramble 6 tricks, only to find that the people that competed, or that competed against one-of-a-suit, made +110. You'll play a hopeless contract (again), and find that if you don't *look* like it's hopeless, the opponents pitch a trick at you, and booked for a zero, you end up with a good result.

I don't think that after trying to explain stayman (what transfers? why would I want to play transfers (especially because all the "tricks" you get with artificial and/or "memory load" followups are far beyond "2♦ artificial negative to Stayman" in "too much artificial steps")) you can work at "we're trying to find a 4-4 major fit, because they're better, and there's little reason to play 2♣, so we sacrifice it" and go ahead to "you can also use it to hopefully find any fit with a bad hand, provided you have few clubs" without much if any extra load. "2 level is to play, 3 level is invitational, 4 level is game" works really easily, and 1NT-2♣-2♦-p makes sense, as does 1NT-2♣-2♦-2♥, if you want that as Garbage Stayman - the 2 level is to play, after all. 1NT-2♣-2♦-2♠ to play too (yeah, that's not the best meaning for it, but it's as good a way to handle the bad 5=4s as anything else "natural").

MrAce, on 2014-January-10, 14:21, said:

Yes, probably this discussion applies only to those who are learning, or being taught, Stayman.

Quote

Do you read other people's posts? Did you read Cyberyeti's above? 'GS' is a "new" convention only if you have already been taught some other version of Stayman. I doubt that many people I know are familiar with "garbage Stayman" or those other terms that some people here use for Stayman with a weak hand. But they all play it.

Vampyr, on 2014-January-10, 17:57, said:

Vampyr i read other people's posts, as you know or i hope you at least noticed that i was trying to avoid quoting or replying to things you write for a time now until my previous reply and this one which will probably be the last you will ever see.

Yes you may learn GS, you may learn what ever you wanna learn or whatever you think is appropriate to learn/teach. You have the right to do so. If i remember correctly you said you have been playing bridge for 30+ years in another topic. You obviously have a lot of ideas about the bidding and conventions and other things than bridge you debated with so many people, which i mostly if not completely, disagree. And i have the right to disagree with the methods chosen by some other people about what to teach at what level. I may even be wrong, but seeing people who thinks it is important to make sure beginners learn GS and still can not play a hand as good as 2 years student player after 30 years but when it comes to bidding lecturing / name calling to people like Justin, Fred or thinking that Garozzo could not see what you saw in the bidding, is when i start to lose my calm and start to be annoyed.


There is no point for me to debate with you on anything. Because those who has much more bridge skills and knowledge and credibility than me, could not convince you in the past. They tried to reach to your logic, they tried giving examples, they tried almost everything to show you what you are failing to see. So that method did not work. There is another method, to speak in language you could understand, and tried by another member in the past, which i think worked pretty well in practice, even though the guy was booed by everyone for it, i think he is now enjoying forums Vampyr free. You ain't trolling around him. 3rd method is, which i am trying right now, is to request you to accept that you and i have totally different ideas knowledge or whatever you may wanna call it, and debates between us will serve to no good purpose. I mean i find the things you write or ask so predictable that i can't even get mad anymore.

How can i continue a conversation without being bored with someone who is asking if i read other people's post or not , when the person who is asking me this

a-did not read the post she is quoting
b-did read but can't get the point

Have a great life, and i mean it

MrAce, on 2014-January-10, 20:44, said:

ROFLMAO! I wish I knew what on earth you are talking about, but in any case your post is pure comedy gold!

I don't think Stayman with weak options is any harder to learn than without. Isn't it really simple to bid Stayman on any strength with 5-4 in the majors, and then jump next round if you want to force to game? Seems easier to me than "bid Stayman with that shape if you're strong enough, otherwise just take out into your 5-card suit", and it works better. What's the downside?

MrAce, on 2014-January-10, 20:44, said:

Have been thinking that I should maybe put the record straight lest anyone get the wrong impression -- I have not done any of the things listed above, nor do I plan to start.

I've taught Bridge to beginners, on and off, for 50 years (the blind leading the blind). I agree with Mr Ace that play-skills are what novices most lack and would most benefit from learning. Also, that no-trump play is easier to learn than suit-play. So I, too, try to focus on play and keep the bidding simple. One of my mantras is "Bidding is mental Play". I would prefer to teach 2/1 or, even simpler, Precision. In the UK, however, beginners want to learn Acol with weak notrump and they're fascinated by conventions like Transfers, RKCB, and so on. Mr Ace may regard Garbage Stayman as GIGO but, In the UK, as Vampyr and others say, it's almost synonymous with Stayman.

I'm not a cognitive psychologist, but it seems to me that Garbage and Crawling Stayman (or whatever terms you prefer) are much more difficult to comprehend than simple Stayman. "Try to find a 4-4 major fit" with two artificial bids involved in the process takes a bit of mental work to learn; "It's OK to pass an artificial bid [e.g., 2♦]" is a big step beyond that, as is "Bid a 4-card suit that partner already denied having." Those concepts do NOT flow logically from basic Stayman, they require another level of cognitive processing.

Most people learning the game can handle these structures eventually, but even the best can only pick up so many concepts and mental frameworks at a time. If they get overloaded they'll decide the game isn't for them and not come back; I've seen it over and over.

(Edit: I think the phrase I was groping for is "greater level of abstraction." Something like that.)

Teaching an outright novice is a difficult art.
At an early stage you have to commit to a basic bidding system. Yes, card play is a priority, but at some time you have to progress beyond minibridge and this is a decision that needs to be broached.
Generally that decision will be dictated by the prevalent system in the novice's environment.
In the USA that is a no-brainer: Strong Notrump and 5 card majors. End of. And you can forget about complications of 1N getting doubled, and yes the benefits of crawling Stayman can be left for a rainy day.

A novice starting out in the UK is in a bit of a quandary. Or rather his teacher is. If the novice is going to be spending most of his early bridge life on BBO then you can duck the issue by pretending to be the 51st US state. But if he is likely to be exposed to F2F bridge then warts and all he should start with standard english. At least there is an Acol Club haven on BBO to provide limited consistency.

That decision means starting the novice on a weak NT. It has some benefits in a learning context but also some drawbacks. It is a high frequency bid that comes with elevated risks. It is pretty soul destroying for a novice to go for 1100 only to be told that this is a perfectly normal result for their level of development. Don't worry your pretty little head about it, in a year or so all will become clear.

Like it or lump it, and much as we like to protect the novice from "systems", a weak NT comes with some baggage that cannot be put off for long, and I would say that they will still qualify as "novice" at the point that this mettle is grasped.

I have run the gamut of teaching the odd novice, one or two of whom abhor opening 1N, or playing 1N, or anything 1N-related. Part of their phobia stems from an apparent sink-or-swim, don't-bother-with-any-tools-just-do-your-best mentality. The shear relief that they release when a proper simple-yet-playable structure is explained to them is a wonder to behold. Assuming that they are ready for Stayman at all, then having explained it to them in a GF/GT context it is a tiny step, and one normally well within their tiny intellect to grasp, to see what weak hand types it can also cater for. And it has the huge benefit of being pretty standard, to boot.

A novice learning modern Standard American also has baggage. Remember:

It's a cardinal sin to open 1♥ on AKQT - you have to open 1♣ on 642 instead. However, it's also a cardinal sin to do anything but 1♥ in response to 1♣ on 8642, even with great clubs.

You pretty much have to learn transfers over that strong NT.

I've gone and taken 800s off strong NT more than once - probably more often than I've given 800s playing a weak NT (okay, yes, I do have good runout systems and know how to bail before I'm doubled, too).

When can I raise a minor - what do I need to raise a minor - how do I make a forcing raise in a minor -...all much harder when playing convenient minors (and that, too, when partner has a flat minimum) than when playing 4-card majors, and minors will be shapely or sound.

Bring 2/1 into the mix - even modern American Standard "2/1 is 10+ and promises a rebid unless opener bids 2NT" - and there's a whole number of unnatural bids that have to be made to make that work. Acol? You can and should respond 2♣ to 1M with AJTxxx and another card - which is what novices will want to do; bid their longest suit.