Alighting on a pinhead

When I first started learning competitive bridge, my experienced partner told me that there was little point in stopping in four of a minor, as it was as akin to angels alighting on a pinhead. You may as well bid five, he said wisely.

And – he said in another lesson – let's play that 4NT is always Blackwood, and then we won't get into a muddle when it's not clear what is going on.

Later, other wise heads taught me that when playing pairs there was little point in stopping in five of a minor, since everyone in 3NT would probably score better. You might as well bid six, they said.

Being a good pupil, I took all this on board, and realised that once we had passed 3NT with no major fit in sight, six of the minor was the next available stopping place. Yes, my mentors all agreed, and that is why you shouldn't go past 3NT unless you can count twelve tricks.

This is all common knowledge amongst club players, which is why a likely result on any duplicate night is 3NT+2 for a flat board when six of a minor is stony cold.

A little older and wiser, I now realise that these advices were well meaning but only partly true. In Chilli we have gone some way to relieving the tyranny of the 3NT road block by making 4NT available as another stopping point, so that we can afford to put our toe in the water and then swiftly remove it again if it's too cold. Now we're going to go a little further ...

What do you want to do after partner opens 1 and you hold 92 Q84 AQ53 KQJ7? This is a perfectly respectable 14-count, and so surely you would want to force to game with a 2 Chilli relay?

That would be the right thing to do most of time, but every so often partner will turn up with a minimum flat hand, a fit for one of your minors and an empty heart doubleton. Now 3NT will probably go down on the obvious heart lead, and five of the fitting minor looks like too much of a stretch with only 26 points and two balanced hands between you. For once the right thing would be to explore 3NT and then to play in four of that minor.

It would be quite simple to make the 2 relay forcing only to 3NT to achieve this. But a problem would then arise when we have forced to 3NT and we are having our one shot at finding a minor fit at the three-level. If partner has just bid, say, 3 and we have a primary fit, currently we raise to 4, forcing, and take it from there.

If instead 4 were not forcing as per my suggestion, how would you bid a stronger hand that does want to go to game?

My suggested answer comes from looking at what jumps to the four-level opposite 3 currently mean. A bid of four of either major here is defined as to play if it is possible or a fit bid if it is not. It is quite easy to show that the 'to play' meaning should never be used.

Suppose partner has never bid the major but you have. So you are setting some strong suit, but then you could and – more importantly – should bid three of the major, a forcing suit-setter. I say 'should' because partner should be given the chance to re-evaluate his hand in the light of your unilateral suit-set, and space to then express an opinion (which might be 3NT to play or values-for-five, for instance).

Exactly the same argument applies if you are giving delayed support to partner's major i.e. setting a Moysian fit.

And we don't need to stop at four of a major: a jump to 5 is also to play and also wrong: set the suit first with 4 for the same reasons. Ditto five of a major.

Exactly the same analysis applies opposite 3 with one slight caveat: a jump to 4 currently shows a semi-solid suit, whereas going via 3 does not. But I can let that go: the sequence has never arisen, and in any case if you subsequently set diamonds, in all likelihood you have something like a semi-solid suit anyway.

So what we can say is that a jump suit bid opposite a neutral three of a minor is something we will never hear, and therefore these bids become prime candidates for re-use. What I have in mind for them is that they should all be fit bids agreeing the minor, and then interpreted as if we were already in the fit auction.

A simple schedule should clarify. Opposite 3 in a neutral game-forced auction, all these bids agree diamonds:

• 4: to play (i.e. values-for-four)


• 4: values-for-five


• 4: Keycard Ask


• 5/5/5: Exclusion Keycard Asks

And similarly for clubs. After either values-for-four or values-for-five, partner can continue in standard fit style, including the cheapest side-suit as the Keycard Ask.

Providing this special treatment for the minors does seem right. They get badly neglected up to this point, and they do not have the luxury of the 2NT agreement available to the majors, so they should have some extra tools when they do finally get their moment in the sunshine.

To support good minor suit bidding we need the right mix of encouragement to go beyond 3NT to explore minor fits coupled with good ways of stopping safely. In combination with 4NT to play, I think this provides just that, as well as relieving any fear of the unknown associated with the 2 relay.

Alan

The Chilli bidding system is described and defined at chillibidding.org.

Financial crisis causes double to weaken

Hello Chillians

Like everyone else, Chilli is not immune to the global financial crisis, so here at Chilli Towers we have been conducting a mid-winter review of our operations, and we have come to two important decisions which I will tell you about.

First, although we have always believed in rewarding our staff richly for success, we recognise the zeitgeist and, unlike some, we will no longer be paying ourselves huge bonuses. One can safely say that those juicy +1100s and +1400s are history.

Second, after an intensive management consultation using the latest 'two pints of beer' methodology, our review of the system ended with quiet satisfaction overall but a recognition of two areas where we could do better. With our usual zeal for improvement, we've come up with two small but very significant refinements in these areas. I'll blog about one here and now, and the other next week.

The strong double refers to our opening double of their one of a suit, which might be either their opening bid or their first response. It shows 16+ points, and is intended to be a replacement for our lost 1. The auction stays neutral, and as far as possible we retain the normal neutral structure.

The strong double has been around for a long time. The main reason for its existence is that we were trying to avoid a whole new set of continuations that would be needed after a standard takeout double. So if we could squeeze everything a bit (well, quite a bit) we could pretend that they hadn't bid and continue on our neutral way.

In practice, the strong double is a bit of a pig over one of a major, and particularly so over 1. All the continuation ranges have to be compressed, so we have to respond 1NT on a very wide range of hands, leaving doubler with a difficult decision as to whether to continue. A lot of weaker overcalls have to be placed unsatisfactorily in a 1NT or 2 overcall, thereby polluting their world too. And finally there is the rather ugly and somewhat unsound three-suited cue bid.

During the review we realised that the original main reason for the strong double had now gone. If we made an opening double of one of a major be a takeout double and made it disturb the auction, then the weak 2NT and shunts would provide all the vocabulary we could possibly want responding to it on stronger hands, while two-level suit bids would sensibly all be to play.

A little research and some practice showed that the idea was a significant improvement. The scheme:

• An opening double of one of a major becomes takeout, disturbing the auction


• The immediate cue bid of one of a major is retired as a takeout - pending some perceived better use, it reverts to being natural


• 2 over 1 reverts to being the equivalent of a 2 opener, so e.g. six cards in second position


• 1NT over one of a major remains as neutral 12-15 without necessarily a stop in their suit (which continues to be a real money spinner) but it will now always be a balanced hand


• A 1 overcall of their 1 continues to show an opening hand with four spades (another money spinner), so double instead will deny a minimum hand with four spades.

What about over their one of a minor? Over 1 the strong double works perfectly as a substitute for 1, but over 1 it's slightly cloudy. But if you think about it, there are very few (if any) hands of less than 16 points that cannot be handled with an overcall of one of a major, 1NT or at the two-level. The exception would be the minor two-suited type that would have opened 1, and surely the best action with these hands over their 1 will be to pass smoothly and await developments.

So the idea is that the neutral strong double remains as now over their one of a minor. But we do scrap the takeout cue bid idea, which was never necessary over one of a minor in the first place.

Alan

The Chilli bidding system is described and defined at chillibidding.org.