[broze]

 PhantomSac, on 2015-November-22, 11:46, said:

<snip>

Thanks very much for the super-comprehensive answer! Some great food for thought (particularly as I also play Rusinow off in p's suit *cries*)

[shyams]

 PhantomSac, on 2015-November-22, 11:46, said:

Anyways sorry for rambling but hopefully you see why even professional pairs sometimes have to be practical with exceptions in order to remember everything, especially when it comes to competitive bidding agreements where you are going to face a wide variety of systems/situations and you need agreements and meta agreements that cover all of them that are effective and something you can remember.

I am one of (hopefully) 100s of readers who find your posts both insightful and valuable in improving my thinking and/or my bidding system.This post of mine is to record my appreciation of your efforts and say that your posts, however long, are worth reading.

What I'm getting at is that you don't need to feel sorry or bad about such things. Ever.

[Zelandakh]

 PhantomSac, on 2015-November-22, 11:21, said:

Compare that to this auction. I play over 1x DOUBLE 1Y, that 2X and 2Y are both cuebids showing a good hand with a corresponding other suit. BTW I think this is a good agreement since it allows you to jump with just trumps and not a classical 10 point hand or w/e. But anyways, 2x (the lower bid) should show the major IMO, basic theory is that we should save more room with the major. Ok that's great but on the specific auction 1C X 1H, it makes no sense for 2C to show spades and 2H to show diamonds, because 2C allows us to stop in 2D, and 2H still allows us to stop in 2S. One possible solution is to play that 2x is always the minor and 2y is always the major, but that is terrible on especially the auction 1m X 1S (now we have to force to the 3 level to show a good hand with the major which is not what we want to do, we'd rather be able to show a good hand with the major more aggressively cuz we're trying to get to GAME), the other possible solution is to not worry about it and be suboptimal on 1C X 1H, and stick to 2C spades and 2H diamonds, but to me it is important enough to play 2x=major unless it is the specific auction 1C X 1H. So here I'm willing to make an exception to my rule, but I promise you that every single time it goes 1x X 1y I have to go over it in my head (because I don't think of it as the exception is 1C X 1H, I think of it as "the exception is when we can stop at the 2 level in both suits"). And my partner messed this up when we first started playing it.

You could play that the next cheapest cue below the major shows that suit and the other cue shows the minor. That would give you a rule without exceptions but move around the bids in one auction:-

(1♣) - X - (1♥): 2♥ = ♠; 2♣ = ♦
(1♣) - X - (1♠): 2♣ = ♥; 2♠ = ♦
(1♦) - X - (1♥): 2♥ = ♠; 2♦ = ♣ (suits reversed from your rule here)
(1♦) - X - (1♠): 2♦ = ♥; 2♠ = ♣

You can see from this summary that the practical effect is that when they bid hearts, that is always the cue for spades and when they bid spades it is always the minor showing hearts. This strikes me as simpler generally quite aside from the issue of exceptions.