choices

[kenberg]

matchpoints, you are vulnerable, the opponents are not.


Q854
9
93
KQ8764

Dealer, on your right, passes, you pass, pass on your left, partner opens 1NT, a normal 15-17 NT hand, maybe with a five card major.
Pass on your right.

Your call, what's the plan?

Whatever methods you use are fine, I will tell you the options that they had. There are sub-options, depending on what happens next.

Option 1: 2 would show a club suit and a 2NT response to 2 would show at least three clubs headed by at least the Q. If you hear such a response, a call over 2NT of 3 would be a sign off., a call of 3 in any other suit would be game forcing and show shortness. In particular, if partner bids 2NT over your 2 , showing the good club fit, there is no way for you to now show your spades.

Option 2: 2 would, of course, be Stayman  If partner responds 2   or 2 , a 3 call would be natural and forcing, and would imply (since you started with Stayman) holding a major to go with the long clubs. Alternatively, , after 2 - 2 , you could bid 2 . This would show invitational strength with four spades, it would say nothing about clubs. After 2 - 2 a call of 2NT would be invitational.  And of course if partner responds 2 over 2 you will have to decide on 3 or 4 .
Added: It just occurred to me that there is one more sub-option here. Suppose it starts 1MT - 2 - 2 - 2 - 2NT. At this point it is known that responeder has invitational values and that opener, by not accepting the invitation, must be minimal. So, by logic 3 is a sign-off. Message: We have agreed that the combined hands only merit playing in a partscore, and I am betting that clubs will  be better than NT. I don't think I have ever discussed this with a partner, but what else could it be?

Option 3: You could Pass, showing a pass.

Of course it would be nice to have a call that announces holding four spades to the Q and six clubs to the KQ, but they did not have such a call available.

We were the the opponents. We got a good result when they chose wrong, but looking at it later I was far from sure what I would have done.

I think most IAC players use some form of transfers to the minors after a 1NT opening. There are many forms, so use whichever one you normally play here.  And those who do not lay transfers to the minors could think of what they would do. I do not see it as clear cut.

[OliverC]

I think most people would play 1NT-2 -2 -2 -2NT-3 as invitational with 4-card Spades and 5-card or longer Clubs. If that floats your boat opposite a 15-17 1NT, then that's fine and you've at least shown your shape even if you are a point or two light.


If you transfer to the Clubs then you have to forget about the Spades, because 1NT-2 - 2NT/3 - 3 is utterly game-forcing, as you rightly point out. If Partner bids 2NT to show upper range and Hxx or better in Clubs, then I might give 3NT a shot, especially at IMPs (I've been in a lot worse 3NT than that - played a 21-hcp 3NT the other day with no fits anywhere, nothing to run and only one sure entry to hand that was "taken out" at trick 2 [came out with an overtrick on a squeeze against LHO LOL!]).


At Matchpoints, however, there's much less incentive to get into dodgy thin games, so on this occasion I'd probably go quietly and just aim to play in 3 . Yes, Partner might have the perfect hand of J9, AKxx, Axxx, Axx, but for 3NT to have a decent shot you pretty much need them to have those 3 quick tricks outside of Clubs and sufficient cover in Spades to protect your Queen. That's a risk worth taking at IMPs when partner bids 2NT, but not at Pairs.

[kenberg]

I find it a tough choice between 2 and 2 . Of course it's an error to bid on too much hope of what partner has bit he did open 1NT and if he has    fit with the AK and the A , that's 11 points, then 4 is very  apt to make. Of course he probably does not have exactly that. Still.

They opted for 1NT -  2 - 2NT -3 -P.

I think if I took the 2 route and partner showed a fit with 2NT, I would give 3NT a try at any form  of scoring. With almost all 9 counts and some 8 counts I invite over 1NT. This is a 7 count but that's a lot of tricks in the club suit.

As it happens, 3NT is on ice.  If E has all four missing clubs you will have a problem but otherwise you are making 3NT. In the pass out seat,  after 3 - Pass-Pass,  I got a little adventurous and it worked out well, but perhaps I should have just let them at 3 . Here is the full hand. I'm W.

	Q854 9 93 KQ8764
A T87642 AJ76 J5		KT732 QJ3 842 93
	J96 AK5 KQT5 AT2

When 3 was passed around to me I figured they have a 9 card club fit, we have a fit somewhere, almost certainly in hearts, and we are non-vul so I trotted out 3 , passed out. I think partner might have been a little flummoxed when he put down the QJx of trump and watched the opponents take two trump tricks.  But -50 was a fine result. S has a max, but on the auction he cannot assume N has any high cards at all so he cannot do much. But if N had doubled to show a decent hand for his sign off in 3 then perhaps S would have converted it to 3NT. Or not. I did not figure them to be signing off in 3 with a combined 24 count and a known running six clubs, so the seemed like a reasonable shot.

I am not entirely convinced that these minor suit transfers are worth the effort.  On the score sheet there was a 180 their way, presumably 1NT followed by three passes. There was also one 600 and even one 660, but mostly they didn't get there. I used to play Minor Suit Stayman. It's not so popular anymore, and it would not work here, but mostly the transfer didn't work here either. 

I truly don't know if I, as N, would start with 2 or 2 . I think 2 . It would work fine here, partner bids 2 , I bid a very nervous 2NT, partner bids 3 NT and brings in 9 tricks.

I can go for a long time w/o a minor suit transfer coming up, but in the club game on Thursday there were two hands where it might have. The above was one of them. On another, partner opened 1 NT and I held

9
Q7
AT8
KQJT874

I gave a moment's thought to bidding 2 (transfer) followed by 3 (shortness) but I got a grip on myself. For one thing, although I like to play 3 as shortness after the transfer I could not recall having discussed it. Anyway, I just raised to 3NT, they cashed their two aces, we scored up 460.

Worse, partner and I were playing that 2 shows either clubs or diamonds. I don't like it at all, but as mentioned it rarely comes up.

So: Two hands where the minor suit transfer could have come up On one of them they used it and got to the wrong contract, on the other i didn't bother with it and it was fine. Usually in a 24 board game it doesn't come up at all. I am not going so far as to suggest we chuck it, but I think I need to have a discussion with pard about how an auction might develop after we use it. If all we use it for is a sign off, I think it's not enough.

[OliverC]

Minor suit transfers are mainly useful in two particular situations:

• Responder is very weak and unbalanced with a long Minor. Now it's crazy to play in NT's and if you want to get any real use out of Responder's hand, you have to play in their suit.
• Responder has a game-going 2-suiter with a longer Minor. Now the transfer allows partner to show their shape effectively, thereby allowing Opener to guide the contract towards the best fit.

Back to your original hand. This is an awkward hand, no question, because you're pretty much "on the margin". It was fairly clear from the way you phrased the problem that 3NT was probably cold. The problem here is that you're looking at one example of what Opener might have had. You have to think of this problem in terms of hundreds of hands. Probably a majority of the time, 3NT will not make (given your criteria for super-accepts) for the following reason:

An interesting statistic was stressed (by Larry Cohen I think) during the vugraph yesterday, which is that (playing a strong 1NT) Opener is twice as likely to be minimum rather than maximum for their 1NT Opening (If you don't believe me, have a look at https://www.bridgehands.com/P/Probability_HCP.htm .). Your criteria for Opener super-accepting a Minor suit transfer (by bidding the intervening denomination rather than actually completing the transfer), made no reference to Opener being maximum as well as having at least Hxx in partner's minor (My criteria for super-accepts does include Opener having to be maximum as well, by the way, and having "quick tricks" outside Responder's Minor). Using your criteria, though, as I was, it's now twice as likely that Opener has a 15-count, so the Queen of Diamonds goes away or the K becomes the Jack. Now your prospects for 9 tricks are considerably worse, hence my original answer.

As an aside, that is one reason why I prefer not to use a strong 1NT and prefer Precision's 13-15 or OCP's variable 1NT (10-12 nv or 13-15 v). The frequency where 1NT hands occur hugely increases (and 1NT Openings, especially with 10-12, are very pre-emptive and tend to put Opps on the back foot, because they've spent less time thinking about defending against 1NT as they have other parts of their system). I've spent many years refining and developing the responses and continuations I use over 1NT and am generally at a distinct advantage compared to Opps, who have probably spent about 20 seconds agreeing their defence.

Yes, on this hand I would get a poor score, but over the long term I would probably come out on top at MP's, because there will be loads of occasions where I can make +130 in Clubs, but only 8 tricks are possible in No Trumps. If you use my criteria for minor-suit super-accepts the whole situation changes, of course, because now when the sequence starts 1NT - 2 - 2NT - ??, I know Partner has a 17-count with quick tricks outside my suit, so I'd have less of a problem on this hand.

The form of scoring really does make a huge difference here. At IMPs, especially if I'm vulnerable, I can't afford not to be in game, because the difference between +600 and +110 (10 IMPs) is big compared to the difference between +110 and -100 (only 5 IMPs).
At Matchpoints your thinking has to be different.

[kenberg]

A two part note, math with probability, and minor suit transfers. I keep hoping there will be more people getting into the discussion, and the minor suits transfers would seem to me to be a great spot for this

But first the math: It's an interesting table. Experience and logic suggest that 17 counts are less common than 15 counts. The table gives 4.42 for the 15 count, 3.31 for the 16 count,  and 2.36 for the 17 count. So yesm a 15 count is almost twices as likely as a 17 count. But there is also a possible 16 count.  From the table,  the percentages for a 17 count, a 16 count and a 15 count, given that the hand is one of these three counts, come out to approximately 23%, 33% and 44%. 

They mention it depends upon shape, and this probably brings the numbers closer together for the more balanced hands. For an (extreme) example take a 12=1=0=0 shape. A 14 count is possible, albeit only in 9 ways (Stiff A, and the missing card in the 12 card suit is T or lower. A 15 count is impossible with this shape. So 14 beats 15 in a 9-0 shut out.Of course nobody cares about such shapes, but this suggests that even with the more extreme hands, say 6=3=3=1, the spread in the probabilities becomes more pronounced. Since the books have to balance, this then also suggests that with more balanced hands the spread will narrow. Probably not by much. So 44-33-23 sounds about right.

Anyway, the chances go down significantly as the needed count goes up.

End of the math part.


Minor suit transfers. There are many versions. For example, this is from Bridge World Standard.

modified four-suit transfers with two spades = either a range inquiry (opener bids two notrump with a minimum) or clubs (simple new-suit rebid by responder shows shortness), two notrump = diamonds (simple new-suit rebid by responder shows shortness), three clubs = both minors weak (nonforcing), three of another suit = both minors strong (three diamonds = no major-suit shortness; three of a major = at most one card in the suit bid).

I want to focus on "simple new suit rebid by responder shows shortness" . I mentioned the hand from the club game where I considered a transfer to clubs and then a 3 shortness bid. I decided not to. The hand was such that 6 was apt to be a bridge too far, but it would not have been hard to design a 1NT opening where 5 makes and 3NT goes down. But I like simplicity, so I simply raised to 3NT.

I might look around a bit and see what various people play, but I am certain that there is a lot of variety. That being so, it would be a good thing for partners to discuss whether 1NT- 2 - 3 - 3 shows long clubs and one spade or long clubs and four spades. I like it as one spade, and so does BWS, but it is one of those things where I would hate to have my life depend on my being on the same wavelength as partner.

I do think that getting to a minor suit slam is one place where transfers can be very useful if the follow up bidding has been discussed. With slam hands, it is not unusual for it to make in a properly chosen suit and nowhere else. That suit is as likely to be a minor as a major.

[OliverC]

Maths:
Your analysis is fine, but if your super-accept over a minor-suit transfer doesn't include any reference to Opener's range, they're still a lot less likely to have a 17-count and that, in turn, really does affect your chances of being able to grab 9 tricks before Opps can grab 5. That's all I was pointing out.


Minor-suit Xfers:
THE BWS method is fairly popular, not necessarily on BBO - never seen it used there - but I saw that exact sequence a couple of times on VG over the past couple of weeks (ie: rebid  in a higher suit shows a shortage). I've never been tempted to follow that method myself, because if I have a game-going hand I think it's normally more useful to show my shape and infer shortness elsewhere. For example:


1 - 2
3 - 3
4


...certainly infers a Heart shortage. Clearly Responder was fishing for 3NT and if I had a Heart fragment I could have bid 3NT or a 3 4SF over 3 in an attempt to reach 3NT. Since 3 is effectively (or actually) game-forcing, 4 is certainly interested in going higher than 5 (if Responder has a suitable hand) in my book. This time we've exchanged more information and ended up at a lower point than 1 - 2 - 4 (splinter for ) would have managed.


(As has been said a few times) at the end of the day, being of the same wavelength as partner is far more important than exactly what you play. Two experts playing stone-age Acol will still get to the right contract most of the time if they have good agreements and a clear understanding of what partner's bids mean.

[kenberg]

It might well be right that a super accept should show a max. Another possibility is that the super accept have values in each suit such that opener is confident that no suit can be run. Of course they still could have five tricks off the top, say three in one suit and two in another. 

I can see the point of asking for something more than just a fit. Here is a problem. First, I must have an opening 1NT. Next, partner needs a six card minor. Next, partner needs to be neither strong but not slammish, he bids 3NT with that, nor so weak that he wants to play 3 no matter what I have. And then I need a 17 count, and as the figures from the table suggest this will be about one-fourth of my opening NT bids. So it all happens, but not often. Shading this just a little, so that opener needs a non-min but not a max, might help some. Say he needs a 16 count with some values in every suit. And maybe a ten or two.

The idea of using 1NT- 2 as a dual purpose bid, where the 2 bidder might be balanced and simply want to bid 3NT if opener has a max, has become popular around here. There is no super accept that shows a club fit. Opener bids 2NT if he has a min, which responder will pass if he just has an invit, not a club suit, while on the other hand opener bids 3 if he has any max, then responder passes if he had the weak club transfer and bids 3NT if he had the invit raise in NT. I have played it, but not often enough that I have an opinion.

I mentioned that with my partner of the the other day we were playing that 1NT- 2 shows either clubs or diamonds. Why do I play it if I don't like it?  That's easy to answer. We have many areas in need of discussion, and this thing with the minors does not arise all that often, and when it does I take my best shot. Often it suffices. In another post I mentioned that I am trying to get him to play U/U. That came up the other day. I opened 1 , then 2NT on my left and 3 by partner. I have a decent hand with six spades. I raised to 4, hoping for the best. He had a 9 count and three trump, it was fine.

This may seem like I am wandering to another topic, but not really. Many partnerships have not really worked through their agreements in detail. We should, but we don't.

I keep hoping that this Forum will be part of a solution to that, a place where people could say "Here is what i did and what I thought it meant, how do others play it?" but so far that is not happening. Too bad.

[OliverC]

The idea of using 1NT- 2 as a dual purpose bid, where the 2  bidder might be balanced and simply want to bid 3NT if opener has a max, has become popular around here. There is no super accept that shows a club fit. Opener bids 2NT if he has a min, which responder will pass if he just has an invit, not a club suit, while on the other hand opener bids 3   if he has any max, then responder passes if he had the weak club transfer and bids 3NT if he had the invit raise in NT. I have played it, but not often enough that I have an opinion.

LOL, I was playing that at University in the mid-1970's. In fact it was the precursor to the 2-way 2 response to 1NT that I created and licensed in the UK in the early 1980's. That works a little differently, though in that OCP uses raises via Stayman only wanting to be in a game opposite a maximum, whereas invitations via the 2-way 2 want to be in game if Opener is merely better than minimum (your 16-count or even a good 15-count.

The problem is that doesn't really help on your 4-6 7-count, because Partner might have the perfect 16-count and not super-accept using my methods because they're not max, and might super-accept with a crappy 15-count where 3NT has no chance, using your methods!

Moreover, there is a decent argument for always using 1NT - 2 - 2x - 3 (invitational) on that hand, because now at least you'll never miss the 4-4 fit when it's available. OCP plays that sequence as showing game values rather than invitational ones (and wanting to scramble up towards 3NT), but there are occasional hands when it would be nice to have it as natural and invitational.

As usual, you pays your money and takes your choice.

I mentioned that with my partner of the the other day we were playing that 1NT- 2 shows either clubs or diamonds. Why do I play it if I don't like it?  That's easy to answer. We have many areas in need of discussion, and this thing with the minors does not arise all that often, and when it does I take my best shot. Often it suffices. In another post I mentioned that I am trying to get him to play U/U. That came up the other day. I opened 1 , then 2NT on my left and 3 by partner. I have a decent hand with six spades. I raised to 4, hoping for the best. He had a 9 count and three trump, it was fine.

Yeah, I toyed with 3-way Transfers in the '70's as well, but hated them. Back then a lot of people were still not using transfers in the UK, but once you were convinced of the usefulness of transfers, 1NT-2NT as a natural balanced invitation just seemed like the waste of a good bid, since 1NT - 2 - 2x - 2NT effectively meant the same thing if you made the 2 bid non-promissory. That in turn changed a few of the Stayman sequences, but you didn't lose anything. 1NT - 2 - 2x - 2NT didn't necessarily have the "other" Major if Opener had shown one, for example, so Opener wouldn't go leaping off the deep end in the second Major if they were 4-4.