[mike777]

Scoring: IMP

---

Please bid this in your style of 2/1-Standard.

[kenrexford]

South starts 2NT (20-21)

North Puppet

South 3♦

North 3♥

South sets trumps with 4♦. This shows the cheapest 1 1/2+ quick tricks/controls holding -- in diamonds -- and super-accept values (at least five assured covers).

North cues 4♥. The diamond cue was huge.

South now knows that North (probable captain) is slammish, probably with a problem in clubs. Holding this, he can complete the pattern description with a 5♣ call, first-round without the King or Queen (declined 4♣ when available).

North will visualize ♦AK(x) ♣ Ax(x) in the minors (11 HCP), with two more covers (trump A-K, trump K heart A, or trump A heart A).

With only one top spade, North would likely NOT super-accept, alhthough AJ10x or KJ10x is OK. In any event, spades are solid or near solid. A quick ditch for the second club loser is available in hearts if spades are not solid. If spades are solid, the likely club lead may force a requirement that South has AKx in diamonds, or a 3-2 diamond split and a 3-2 spade split. A 4-1 diamond split can be handled if spades are 3-2 and the short diamond is with the short spade, as well.

If you feel lucky, bid the slam. If not, cuebid 5♦. The 5♦ cue may disclose the heart Ace and a better chance for the slam (even a grand might make opposite AJ10x).

[cherdano]

I have a gadget for this hand:
2N-3C-3S-4S.

2N shows a balanced hand with 20-21 points. 3C is artificial and asks for a four-card major....

[hrothgar]

There's a reason that they call 2N openings "the slam killer"

I'd end up in 4♠ after a stayman sequence

[pbleighton]

"I have a gadget for this hand:
2N-3C-3S-4S."

That's weird, I play the same thing.

Peter

[kenrexford]

This hand brings up a benefit to Puppet Stayman that may be "hidden" to many people. The hidden benefit to Puppet is in enabling better slam moves when a 4-4 major fit is found.

Using traditional Stayman, Opener shows the major (here, by bidding 3♠), with little as to room to explore slam for Responder. Most new calls in most partnerships would be natural here.

With Puppet, Responder shows the 4-card major(s). When the auction starts 2NT-P-3♣-P-3♦-P-3M, this allows the partnership to focus on a precise suit for cuebidding purposes, as 3NT is the usual "only" rejection bid of this major. This allows Opener to identify a poor cover-card hand (perhaps KJxx-AQJx-Ax-KQJx?) from a good cover holding (e.g., the one shown).

I sympathize with those who use regular Stayman here -- the 2NT call does jam the auction. It is interesting, however, how much info is available once Puppet is used. Knowing about the five "assured covers" will surely move the partnership toward the slam, on this and many similar hands.

[P_Marlowe]

mike777, on Nov 5 2006, 03:09 PM, said:

Dealer: South Vul: None Scoring: IMP

♠ Q764 ♥ K ♦ QJT765 ♣ 72 ♠ AKT3 ♥ Q63 ♦ AK ♣ A543

Please bid this in your style of 2/1-Standard.

2NT (1) - 3T (2)
3S (3) - 4H (4)
4S (5)

(1) 20-21
(2) Stayman
(3) 4 spades, no 4 hearts
(4) slam try, I was debating with myself,
but the King of hearts may or may not be
a full card, most of the time I would bid 4S,
but 4S is certainly a lazy bid
(5) min. 2NT opener, I see no reason to upgrade

With kind regards
Marlowe

[hrothgar]

kenrexford, on Nov 6 2006, 01:01 AM, said:

This hand brings up a benefit to Puppet Stayman that may be "hidden" to many people.  The hidden benefit to Puppet is in enabling better slam moves when a 4-4 major fit is found.

Using traditional Stayman, Opener shows the major (here, by bidding 3♠), with little as to room to explore slam for Responder.  Most new calls in most partnerships would be natural here.

With Puppet, Responder shows the 4-card major(s).  When the auction starts 2NT-P-3♣-P-3♦-P-3M, this allows the partnership to focus on a precise suit for cuebidding purposes, as 3NT is the usual "only" rejection bid of this major.  This allows Opener to identify a poor cover-card hand (perhaps KJxx-AQJx-Ax-KQJx?) from a good cover holding (e.g., the one shown).

I sympathize with those who use regular Stayman here -- the 2NT call does jam the auction.  It is interesting, however, how much info is available once Puppet is used.  Knowing about the five "assured covers" will surely move the partnership toward the slam, on this and many similar hands.

All fine and dandy...

Lets assume that the auction starts

2N - 3♣
3♦ - 3♥ (3♥ = 4 Spades)
4♣ - ???

The NT opener now has the option to seize captaincy and show his control rich 20 count with a 4♣ cue bid. If you're real fancy you might even have 3♠ available as a forcing bid.

What do you expect responder to bid? The key to this hand is that the 2NT opener has almost nothing wasted opposite responder's stiff. Furthermore, opener has the AK of Diamonds opposite a six card suit to the AK. I don't think you can get this all across with a 4♥ cue bid.

[rbforster]

hrothgar, on Nov 5 2006, 05:22 PM, said:

If you're real fancy you might even have 3♠ available as a forcing bid.

I'm not always fancy, but I figure 3♠ must be forcing on the puppet stayman sequence 2N-3C-3D-3H-3S. Without a spade fit, opener would have bid 3NT instead of 3S after responder showed his 4♠s. This leaves a 4♠ jump by opener as a signoff and both 3♠ and various 4 level new suits as slam tries in spades.

[Robert]

Hi everyone

The auction is not changed by bidding 2/1 methods. My 2NT bidding is the same in all of my serious play except that the range for 2NT changes slightly according to the system played. My Big Club method shows 21-22HCP and playing 'natural' type methods 2NT would be
20-21HCP.

2NT-3C*-3D*-3H*-3S*-4H*-4NT*-6S

2NT=20-21
3C=puppet stayman
3D=no 5 card major
3H=shows 4 spades, denies 4 hearts
3S=4 spades and some slam interest, otherwise bid 4S
4H*=Last Train, since you show some slam interest, I will indicate some more.
4NT*=Turbo 4NT showing an 'even' number of Key cards
6S=no promises, however, it should be a good slam most of the time.

Puppet Stayman does not add any measure of extra bidding IMO. Before I switched to puppet(to deny 'extra' information to the other pair) I would have bid

2NT-3C-3S-4H*-4NT*-6S
3C=Stayman
3S=spades
4H=Last Train, slam interest
4NT=Turbo 4NT shows an 'even' number of Key cards
6S=no promises, however, it should be a good slam most of the time.

I play that a 3H* bid over either a 1NT or 2NT opening bid is CONFIT asking for the number of controls held and later seeking suit fits. The fact that I used Stayman instead of bidding 3H* strongly suggests that my hand is unbalanced.

I strongly up grade this 2NT hand when partner shows both 4 card spade support and some slam interest. You hold 4 key cards, good trumps, good controls and a possible ruffing value in diamonds.

A long time ago I read that 'if' you hold good trumps and partner suggests slam, you should bid the slam as he has weak trumps and is still suggesting slam.

Meckwell often 'upgrades' hands to the next level. I would guess that 19HCP and some 18 HCP hands would open 2NT in Meckwell hands.

His partner might not want to 'suggest' slam opposite a likely 19(18?) HCP hand. My bidding style is to open decent 20HCP hands and open one of a suit with a 'slightly' undervalued 20HCP hand.

Regards,
Robert

[hrothgar]

Robert, on Nov 6 2006, 03:21 AM, said:

2NT-3C*-3D*-3H*-3S*-4H*-4NT*-6S

2NT=20-21
3C=puppet stayman
3D=no 5 card major
3H=shows 4 spades, denies 4 hearts
3S=4 spades and some slam interest, otherwise bid 4S
4H*=Last Train, since you show some slam interest, I will indicate some more.
4NT*=Turbo 4NT showing an 'even' number of Key cards
6S=no promises, however, it should be a good slam most of the time.

The corrolary to all these treatments is that a 4♠ bid shows a minimum hand. This smacks of "fast arrival" which I never really liked.

Even so, if you are going to drag some kind of Turbo variant into the system, I would think that it would make more sense to do immediately after 3♥.

A 3♠ rebid would show an even number of keycards
Bids between 4♣ and 4♥ show an odd number of keycards and place controls.

[Robert]

Hi hrothgar

We appear to share very different views on fast arrival.

No one except my partner uses all of my methods.

You chose to use 3S* to show an odd number of controls, I like to use it to show extra values. I have a very strong opinion of the use of 3S here.

If you do not like 'fast arrival' style bidding, what do you bid over 3H* 'if' 3S* shows an odd number of controls and slam interest? 3NT would seem to deny a spade fit and you already suggested that 4C-4H should be cuebids 'showing' an odd number of keycards.

Why show your controls to a responder that is most likely to just be bidding game about 90+% of the time. That other pair might be listening and I do not want them to be bored with any 'exact' information that they do not 'need to know.'

I am a very big fan of Last Train(4H* here) so the 4H bid is not available for use as a control bid. Would you really bid 4H here to show an odd number of controls 'without' a control in either minor? If you are a confirmed 1st round control fan, please disrecard my last question.

I am a new convert to Turbo, so your comments are of more than a little interest.
If we do not agree on somethings, we have at least exchanged information.

Best regards,
Robert

[mike777]

Very Interesting all this talk of Puppet Stayman.

Meckwell bid Puppet and still did not find this slam? What are you guys doing different? In fact they bid 3s?

2nt=3c
3d=3h
3s=4s
p


Wierd you guys bid Puppet and find the slam or did Meckwell mess up?

[awm]

As is often the case in standard bidding over 2NT, at some point responder has to take a position that this hand is worth a slam try in order to reach slam.

It's not hard to produce auctions to get there, for example:

2NT - 3♣ (regular stayman)
3♠ - 4♦ (natural, slam try, not specific about major)
4♠ (cue, good hand for diam slam) - 5NT (pick spades or diamonds)
6♠

Seeing both hands this is pretty easy, but again it's not clear whether people would bid this way at the table. Probably some would, but they'd also get overboard more often on hands where slam is bad.

[kenrexford]

mike777, on Nov 5 2006, 08:56 PM, said:

Wierd you guys bid Puppet and find the slam or did Meckwell mess up?

There are many possible answers to this.

One seems likely. Practicality. Meckwell may have decided that protection of game contracts against amazing defense outweighs exposing the hand too much through science.

A second is possible. Despite Meckwell's reputation for superb science, they may very well lack tools here, or at least the "right" tools. Super-acceptances and cuebids by the NT bidder should be oriented, IMO, toward the unbalanced responder. When Responder needs mere strength, or a mere "number of controls," quantitative bidding suffices. However, hands like these require more tight analysis of the location of Opener's values, not just the weight thereof. Opener's HCP's or LTC are less relevant than his cover card count, and that is difficult to decipher when Responder lacks room to complete pattern for Opener. Hence, it seems logical to allow Opener to locate unbalanced honor strength with his selection of super-accepts and cues. Hence, the 1 1/2+ cue. It may be that Meckwell lacks this approach. I have seen hints of this in other Meckwell failure auctions.

The comments regarding Turbo and similar approaches seem similarly to miss this concept. A "balanced" hand is rarely balanced in all ways. For slam purposes, opposite an unbalanced (by suit length) responder, the "unbalance" of top honors can be critical to the decision. As a simple example, secondaries and tertiaries, like KQx, are huge opposite length but relatively useless opposite shortness.

A hand with AK-A-A-A will produce five tricks almost assuredly, but KQ-A-A-KQ may produce more or may produce much less. The first might even feature the AK opposite a stiff, a poor holding.

Whereas the control count of the first is 9, is may be of less value that the second, with a "mere" 6 controls. Compare AKxx-Axxx-Axx-Ax and Axxx-KQxx-Axx-KQ opposite a responder with 1435 pattern.

Is the 19-count or the 18-count better? Is the 9-control hand better, or that with only 6? Obviously, the better cover card hand is the "better" hand.

How does Meckwell resolve this paradox? It seems that they do not, at least for this situation.

[Impact]

The key to the hand is clearly the location of both missing D controls opposite the otherwise running D suit -AND from responder's point of view his relatively poor hand (only one control - and a singleton K at that) which tends to militate against responder making a slam-try.

I suggest that the fallacy of standard methods in locating this type of slam is the concentration (not unreasonably) on game before slam - and hence the tendency to locate the Major fit but not complete shape (if opener knew that responder was 4-1-6-2 he could value his hand much better for slam).

Firstly, relay systems win out here because they have that information as to shape (but lose out in circumstances where the key is solidity of internal suit or a fitting singleton lesser honour), but parity in this Puppet Stayman auction at least can be restored by using the 3S rebid by responder as strong and allowing for a relay to disclose shape (the scheme should be consistent with the internal style of the remainder of the system eg 4C as long C, 4D as long D, 4H as last train balanced say and 4S both minors perhaps) .

That works because the trump suit is S, but if you switch both Majors in the 2 hands, the room is insufficient unless one hand takes a position or responder shows his long minor regardless of fit and you either scramble for trumps or sort out a mechanism.

All bidding systems require some compromises - which is part of the fascination of the game.

[FrancesHinden]

I'm not sure what counts as 'outbidding Meckwell'; on a club lead slam pretty much needs either both spades and diamonds to break 3-2, or the singleton diamond to have a doubleton spade which gets you to only slightly over 50%. So it's not exactly a disaster not bidding it.

Second, opposite a 2NT opening responder seems to have an immediate decision to make: is this a diamond slam try or not. If it isn't a slam try (other than opposite a 5-card spade suit) then start with puppet Stayman and play 3NT or 4S depending on partner's spade length.

If it is a slam try, then surely responder should show diamonds first, whatever methods he happens to use.

I think it's marginal whether it's worth a slam try, but I'd be tempted to do so in order to get my shape across, so I would start bidding:

2NT - 3S
3NT - 4S


3S = to play in 3NT or a slam try in diamonds
3NT = forced
4S = spades and diamonds, longer diamonds, forcing for 1 round
opener will now drive slam opposite a heart control

I don't think it's consistent to ignore the diamond suit, find a 4-4 spade fit and only then decide to make a slam try when partner knows nothing about your hand.

I'm not an expert on puppet Stayman as I don't play it, but I suggest you need some way to show a minor-suit slam try with a major on the side. Surely you can bid 2NT - 3C - 3D - 4D to show diamonds? If not, how do you ever show a minor?

[hrothgar]

Robert, on Nov 6 2006, 04:45 AM, said:

Hi hrothgar

We appear to share very different views on fast arrival. 

No one except my partner uses all of my methods. 

You chose to use 3S* to show an odd number of controls, I like to use it to show extra values.  I have a very strong opinion of the use of 3S here. 

If you do not like 'fast arrival' style bidding, what do you bid over 3H* 'if' 3S* shows an odd number of controls and slam interest?  3NT would seem to deny a spade fit and you already suggested that 4C-4H should be cuebids 'showing' an odd number of keycards. 

Why show your controls to a responder that is most likely to just be bidding game about 90+% of the time.  That other pair might be listening and I do not want them to be bored with any 'exact' information that they do not 'need to know.'

I am a very big fan of Last Train(4H* here) so the 4H bid is not available for use as a control bid.  Would you really bid 4H here to show an odd number of controls 'without' a control in either minor?  If you are a confirmed 1st round control fan, please disrecard my last question.

I am a new convert to Turbo, so your comments are of more than a little interest.
If we do not agree on somethings, we have at least exchanged information.

Best regards,
  Robert

Couple comments here, along with a qualification: (Its been a decade since I played a natural 2NT opening in any serious partnership, so anything that I say needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I hate natural 2NT openings because I don't think that there is nearly enough bidding space to figure out whats going on)

Comment 1: Natural 2NT openings are typically tightly defined with respect to strength. 20-21 HCP or 21-22 HCP are both typical ranges. Its entirely possible that the opening range will be defined in terms of Zar points or CCCC or whatever, but any way that you slice things, the strenght of the opening is farily narrowly bounded.

Comment 2: If your 2NT opening is tightly defined, then I question the utility of using fast arrival. (I dislike fast arrival in general, storngly preferring "picture jumps". However, I'm exceptionally skeptical about the utility of the bid here. Fixating on a sngle narrow parameter like the High Card strength of the hand, is pretending an impossible level of precision/foresight.

Let's return to the auction that we were discussion:

2N - 3♣
3♦ - 3♥

3N is obviously to play. I would argue that its a mistake to use 4♠ to show any minimum hand. I suspect, that it would be better to use the 4♠ to show a more specific hand type. For example, you might try something like the following:

I ran a quick monte carlo simulation assuming that North holds 20-21 HCPs with South uncontrained. I wanted to determine the frequency that North holds "N" keycards (the 4 aces and the King of trump)

0 = 0%
1 = 1%
2 = 17%
3 = 54%
4 = 27%
5 = 1%

In turn, this suggests something like the following rebid schedule:

4♠ A♣ + A♦ + A♥, denies A or King of Spades
4♥ 3 out of 5 control, denies Ace of Hearts and either Ace or King of Spades
4♦ 3 out of 5 controls, promises Ace of Clubs, denies Ace of Diamonds
4♣ 3 out of 5 controls, denies Ace of Clubs
3♠ Either 3+ Controls or 0-1 controls missing

There are a lot of different schemes that you might want to consider. For example, you might be interested in showing fragments with honor strength concentration rather than counting the number of controls. However, whatever you decide I think that 4♠ is too valuable a bid to waste on showing some arbitrary minimum hand.

(Please note: I'm not claiming that this type of scheme would get you to slam either. I think Frances has the right analysis. If you're going to try for slam, you need to focus on Diamonds to start with, not Spades)

[Walddk]

FrancesHinden, on Nov 6 2006, 09:00 PM, said:

I'm not an expert on puppet Stayman as I don't play it, but I suggest you need some way to show a minor-suit slam try with a major on the side.  Surely you can bid 2NT - 3C - 3D - 4D to show diamonds?  If not, how do you ever show a minor?

2N - 3♣
3♦ - 3♥*

* four spades.

If opener bids 3NT (not four spades), responder proceeds with 4♦, longer diamonds than spades, slam try. Same applies to 4♣ if that is your minor.

Over 3NT by opener (no 4 or 5-card major), responder bids a natural 4♦.

Roland

[FrancesHinden]

OK, so to extend my general desire to make natural calls, I would assume that

2NT - 3C
3D - 3H
3S - 4m

also shows 4 spades and a longer minor: tell opener where his high cards are important. Stick with 4H as a general values slam try.