[jillybean]

Here's an awful auction but top result that we had at the club last night.

---

2N I don't like it, I like 2♣ less, maybe I should have started 1♣
3♦* check back, we have recently added Wolff signoffs.
4♥ checking for aces, thinking partner has supported diamonds
...and so on

6N makes as clubs as 3-3

How should it be bid?

edit.. concious of Mike's comments about having a converstaton rather than a monolouge, I like 3♥/2N rather than checkback

[Phil]

jillybean, on 2012-May-03, 11:28, said:

Maybe I should have started 1♣

?

[blackshoe]

Not easy. How about 1♦-1♠-3♣-3♥-4♦*-4NT*-6NT?

*4♦ is a lie, sort of, but you have to tell one here. 4NT only if it's to play in your system. If it's Blackwood, well...

1♦-1♠-3♣-3♥-3NT**-4NT-6NT?

** 3NT is also a lie, but if partner has points in spades and hearts, which he should have given your holding and his bidding, it may be a better lie than 4♦ anyway.

6NT is also a lie in both these auctions, and probably you should end up in 3NT or 4NT. Note that since slam depends on the 3-3 club break, it's only a 36% slam.

[jillybean]

Phil, on 2012-May-03, 11:44, said:

?

1♣ 1x 2♦ just a thought

[G_R__E_G]

jillybean, on 2012-May-03, 12:12, said:

1♣ 1x 2♦ just a thought

No, bad thought. :-) A reverse promises that the first suit is longer than the second - not the other way around. This hand is good enough for a 3♣ rebid by opener and it describes the hand quite well.

[jillybean]

G_R__E_G, on 2012-May-03, 14:25, said:

No, bad thought. :-) A reverse promises that the first suit is longer than the second - not the other way around. This hand is good enough for a 3♣ rebid by opener and it describes the hand quite well.

1♣ 2♦ was somewhat tongue in cheek. 2254 doesnt seem to be shapely enough for a strong jump but I guess that is where I went wrong.

[Cyberyeti]

We would bid this starting 1♦-1♠-2♣ and we can be sure that if partner passes this it's vanishingly unlikely that you had a game that was better than a finesse (a major AQ and out with 109xx clubs is about the limit, and even that might raise).

1♦-1♠
2♣-3N
5N (in this auction like 4N, but more so, cannot be a grand invite given the 2♣ rebid and 3N response)-6N (not stony broke)

[TWO4BRIDGE]

That's the strangest checkback / Wolff auction I've ever seen.
You started with 1D open -- fine
2NT-jump rebid -- everytime I've tried a NT auction with TWO x x doubletons, I've gotten in trouble.

1D - 1S
2NT - 3C! ( checkback, implying 5 cards ♠ but may have 4 cards ♥ also** )
3NT ( no 4h or 3s ) - pass
_________________________________________________________________________________________
** If Responder 3H after 1S, it would show a 5-5
... And to show a 4-4, Responder would bid 1H first, followed by 3S over 2NT.
... So, the checkback auctions include 5-4 either way.

[jillybean]

TWO4BRIDGE, on 2012-May-03, 16:58, said:

That's the strangest checkback / Wolff auction I've ever seen.
You started with 1D open -- fine
2NT-jump rebid -- everytime I've tried a NT auction with TWO x x doubletons, I've gotten in trouble.

1D - 1S
2NT - 3C! ( checkback, implying 5 cards ♠ but may have 4 cards ♥ also** )
3NT ( no 4h or 3s ) - pass
_________________________________________________________________________________________
** If Responder 3H after 1S, it would show a 5-5
... And to show a 4-4, Responder would bid 1H first, followed by 3S over 2NT.
... So, the checkback auctions include 5-4 either way.

We had agreed to play Wolff signoff so 3♣ would be a relay to 3♦, 3♦ was checkback.

[TWO4BRIDGE]

jillybean, on 2012-May-03, 17:13, said:

We had agreed to play Wolff signoff so 3♣ would be a relay to 3♦, 3♦ was checkback.

Ahhhh, thx... I remember that version now.... sry.

[Flem72]

jillybean, on 2012-May-03, 11:28, said:

Here's an awful auction but top result that we had at the club last night.

How should it be bid?

edit.. concious of Mike's comments about having a converstaton rather than a monolouge, I like 3♥/2N rather than checkback

I like the 3D checkback version of Wolff also, but I thinnk ours would go

1D-1S/3C-3H/3N-4N/6N. I would upgrade the S hand for the solid sequences of honors.

[Mbodell]

blackshoe, on 2012-May-03, 11:47, said:

6NT is also a lie in both these auctions, and probably you should end up in 3NT or 4NT. Note that since slam depends on the 3-3 club break, it's only a 36% slam.

There are more ways to make than 3-3 clubs. QJ tight of spades makes slam easy. You have squeeze possibilities with long clubs + long diamonds or long spades + long diamonds or long spades + long clubs. This is not a horrible slam to be in (nor is it a horrible slam to miss).

[Zelandakh]

If South had remembered what 3♦ was then they would presumably have bid 3NT. North can raise that to 4NT - this seems like a nice simple auction within the style and methods provided. A good alternative for South's first rebid would have been 3♣ of course. Just occasionally such a jump shift is allowed to contain real clubs, even in American systems!

[jillybean]

TWO4BRIDGE, on 2012-May-03, 17:45, said:

Ahhhh, thx... I remember that version now.... sry.

There's other versions?

[blackshoe]

Mbodell, on 2012-May-04, 01:07, said:

There are more ways to make than 3-3 clubs. QJ tight of spades makes slam easy. You have squeeze possibilities with long clubs + long diamonds or long spades + long diamonds or long spades + long clubs. This is not a horrible slam to be in (nor is it a horrible slam to miss).

So it's better than 36%. How much better? Not a whole lot, I think. Still, I take your point.

[Mbodell]

blackshoe, on 2012-May-04, 07:49, said:

Quote

There are more ways to make than 3-3 clubs. QJ tight of spades makes slam easy. You have squeeze possibilities with long clubs + long diamonds or long spades + long diamonds or long spades + long clubs. This is not a horrible slam to be in (nor is it a horrible slam to miss).

So it's better than 36%. How much better? Not a whole lot, I think. Still, I take your point.

QJ tight of spades doesn't add much. 4-2 splits are about 48%, but only 1/15 of them are QJ tight. So +3.2%. (I'll ignore that the chance of 4-2 spades changes slightly when we know clubs aren't 3-3).

You are missing 7 diamonds. If diamonds split 4-3 (which they do 62% of the time) then the long diamonds and long clubs are not that unlikely: the person with 4 diamonds will have 4+ clubs 25.85% of the time. If diamonds split 5-2 (which they do 31% of the time) then the long diamonds and long clubs are more unlikely: the person with 5 diamonds will have 4+ clubs 16.56% of the time. A 6-1 split [7%] gives up long-long of 9.47%.

Adding just those up (because I don't want to combine with spade squeezes and QJ tight) we get:

3-3 club gives us +36%
QJ tight of spades gives us another +2.05% (3.2% of the times not 3-3)
d4-3 and longC-longD gives us another +9.93% (.62*.2585 of the times not 3-3 and not QJ tight)
d5-2 and longC-longD gives us another +2.67%
d6-1 and longC-longD gives us another +0.33%

Add it all up and ignoring even any spade-diamond or spade-club squeeze and just playing for QJ spades tight or club-diamond squeeze or club 3-3 gives you a 50.975% chance of making the contract. I'd call the extra 15% or so a fair bit better. But still it obviously isn't a disaster to miss a barely over 50% slam.

[Cyberyeti]

J10 tight or J10x of diamonds seemed to be missing from the calculation

[gnasher]

Mbodell, on 2012-May-04, 16:22, said:

QJ tight of spades doesn't add much. 4-2 splits are about 48%, but only 1/15 of them are QJ tight. So +3.2%. (I'll ignore that the chance of 4-2 spades changes slightly when we know clubs aren't 3-3).

You are missing 7 diamonds. If diamonds split 4-3 (which they do 62% of the time) then the long diamonds and long clubs are not that unlikely: the person with 4 diamonds will have 4+ clubs 25.85% of the time. If diamonds split 5-2 (which they do 31% of the time) then the long diamonds and long clubs are more unlikely: the person with 5 diamonds will have 4+ clubs 16.56% of the time. A 6-1 split [7%] gives up long-long of 9.47%.

Adding just those up (because I don't want to combine with spade squeezes and QJ tight) we get:

3-3 club gives us +36%
QJ tight of spades gives us another +2.05% (3.2% of the times not 3-3)
d4-3 and longC-longD gives us another +9.93% (.62*.2585 of the times not 3-3 and not QJ tight)
d5-2 and longC-longD gives us another +2.67%
d6-1 and longC-longD gives us another +0.33%

Add it all up and ignoring even any spade-diamond or spade-club squeeze and just playing for QJ spades tight or club-diamond squeeze or club 3-3 gives you a 50.975% chance of making the contract. I'd call the extra 15% or so a fair bit better. But still it obviously isn't a disaster to miss a barely over 50% slam.

You seem to have assumed that you can squeeze West in the minors. Perhaps you should reconsider that?

Leaving aside the exact percentages, the only reason that slam is close to being reasonable is that ♥10 is worth a whole trick, because it happens to be opposite KQJx. If you bid slam every time you have a misfitting combined 31-count you're unlikely to show a profit.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2012-May-05, 02:21

[mikl_plkcc]

1♦ (opening)
1♠ (4+ F1)

3♣ (GF)
3NT (stop, since 13+19=32 not enough for a slam)

[rmnka447]

There can be at least a couple ways to play Wolff.

The traditional way was for the 3 ♣ rebid to absolutely require opener to bid 3 ♦. Then, if responder make a further rebid in the major originally responded in, opener must pass. This allows responder a choice of runout spots -- 3 ♦ or 3 of responder's major.

Any responder rebid other than 3 ♣ is forward going.

More recently, some players playing Wolff have allowed opener to rebid 3 of responder's major when holding 3 in that suit instead of relaying to 3 ♦. That's OK as long as responder has 5 cards in the major, but precludes potentially stopping in 3 ♦.

Because I play Walsh (bypass ♦ to bid a major), I prefer the more traditional approach to Wolff to retain the ability to sometime signoff in 3 ♦. But pay your money and
take your choice.

The important thing is work through the various bidding sequences with your partner.