I made an error yesterday. Alert the media! Joking. Of course I often err, but in this case I thought a few words might be of interest. First, and there is no way around this, I am going to disagree with something Larry Cohen says. See
https://www.larryco.com/bridge-articles/versus-opponents-preemptsI quote:
"When used after a weak-two is doubled, a pull to 2NT is artificial and shows weakness. It requests the doubler to bid 3
and then the partner of the doubler can pass to play in 3
or remove to 3 of a new suit to play there."
Our auction began (2
)-X-(Pass). Surely the weak response when i have four spades is 2
. This not only makes sense, I have never known anyone to play it otherwise. After (2
)-X-(Pass) there are fewer options and so I agree that Leb followed by 3
is the weak sequence. Possibly LC simply thought it was so obvious that the direct 2
was the weak call that he didn't include that in his discussion.
Back to the auction that we had. (2
)-X-(Pass)
My hand was
K732
6
A8732
Q64
This is a slightly peculiar hand in that partner made a take-out double of 2
, I have only one
, and Rho still did not raise hearts. But anyway, I have to decide what to bid. 2
, my choice, was clearly wrong, at least when Leb is available. The sequence (I'll omit their passes) (2
) - X - 2
is weaker than the sequence (2
) - X - 2NT (Leb) - 3
(as requested by Leb) - 3
.
Partner has a strongish hand so we have:
AT84
A4
K6
AJ532
K732
6
A8732
Q64
As you can see there should be a good play for 4
but 6
would require a fair amount of luck. What I want is to be able to do is show partner I have a good hand without getting him overly excited, and Leb is the way to do that.
I regard this interpretation as standard, so if we have agreed to play Leb, we had, and agreed to play it over weak twos, we had, then the Leb route of 2NT followed by 3
is what I should have done. Partner rescued me by raising 2
to 3
, I bid 4, I am not totally nuts, so all is well that ends well.
There is a companion piece of a couple of weeks back where i mention the maximal double. The same caution applies in both cases. It just isn't enough to agree to play a convention by naming it. You have to agree on what it means.
The KW site is not the one I was earlier trying to track down but I think it does the job. if partner's were to agree to pay Leb over weak 2 bids and play it in the KW way, I think they would find it takes care of a good many hands. Or they can do trf leb if they are up for it.