[Jinksy]

(forewarning - a bit of a stream of consciousness rather than a serious argument, but it's a view I hadn't considered or heard before)

As far as I can see, the biggest problem with an auction like
2♣ 2♠...

is that opener with a strong heart single or double-suiter now has to start describing it a level higher - which is generally a Very Bad Thing. But in the similar auction
2♣ 2♥...

opener hasn't lost any bidding space except in the highly unlikely case he's got his own primary heart suit (which hardly seems like a disaster), and has gained substantial information about partner's hand. Sure, you'll wrongside more often, but if that gets you to a different contract 1 time in 5 my guess is it will pay off against wrongsiding. And it will hurt slightly on the hands where responder has substantial extras - but how common will they be compared to minimal borderline positives?

Here's the hand that got me thinking about this:

x
AQJ
AKQ9x
AKQx

As someone who avoids 2♣ openings at any excuse, in standard bidding, at pretty much any colour or form of scoring I think you just have to do it on this hand (agree?). It got predictably unpleasant:
2C 2D
3D 3H
?

Assuming you don't have any fancy conventions to help you out that this point, you seem pretty much screwed. Would P bid 3♥ with such as Qxx xxxx x xxxxx, or a balanced Yarborough? Or do all hands that can't muster a pure 3M bid now or a diamond raise have to bid 3N? Either way there's a huge grey area that leaves you with what seems to me an impossible next step - do you raise hearts, or bid clubs, either of which could land you in a doomed Moyesian with 6 cold in the other suit. Or do you bid 3N and go off when they run spades when you had a slam in *either* round suit?

Whereas if you had the agreement that partner would respond 2H to 2C much more aggressively, this sequence might lose a lot of its bite. There will still be a grey area, but now partner (perhaps) can't have even a moderately good hand with Kxxxx of hearts, bidding clubs seems a lot clearer. And in that situation, if P rebids 4♥, that would sound more like a club cue showing the heart king (cha-ching$$) - since there's a very small set of hands that couldn't muster a weakly positive H response to 2♣ that would now have any desire to naturally rebid their suit). With stricter requirements on the 2H bid, who knows? Maybe 4H now is still a cue, but it's going to stuff your natural bidding up more.

So this is mainly about the 2C 2H sequence, but it occurs to me that the thoughts are analogous in any sequence where you'd have respectable support if the suit(s) you're bypassing turn out to be partner's primary suit. Compare something like 1) Qxxxx xxx x Kxxx and 2) Qxxxx x xxx Kxxx, and hear P's 2C opening. If you respond 2D on either, he'll be in a similar quandary over your 3S continuation (and you can swap the minors and hear a 3C rebid and I don't think things look much better). On hand 2, too bad - you can't afford to bid 2S and hear 3H, leaving you still with no idea about the best strain. But on hand 1, if partner has hearts you can raise him directly, and if he has any other suit you haven't lost any space with your 2S bid. The sequence 2C 2S / 3H 4H isn't exactly great, since P may well have slam interest and no five level safety, but you could probably play 4C as a cue (you don't want to argue your two suiters against his, let alone against his single suiters), and even if not, I'd prefer to know we're in a sane game with some slam-finding difficulty than to wonder whether to raise P's 3S on such as KQx, with little confidence of whether we'll miss a 9-card fit if I don't, or play in 4♠ opposite xxxx if I do.

3m responses to 2C seem like they need a lot more definition, since they rob you of the hugely descriptive 2N rebid. But still, it doesn't seem crazy to contemplate bidding 3C way more optimistically on 3316 hands than on (13)36 ones.

[helene_t]

Yes, I agree, the 2♥ response should be allowed with a much bigger variety of hands.

If one is concerned about wrong-siding, one could play transfers. For example:
2♣-2♥*
2♠**

*=spades
**=hearts

[dokoko]

I very much prefer 2♥ to show a weak hand (0-3 without a king) and show a suit only when it's worthwile (KQxxxx or better). With all other hands I respond 2♦. So later raises of opener's suit show some help while with good help I might temporize with an advance cuebid.

[pescetom]

Jinksy, on 2018-July-22, 12:31, said:

Here's the hand that got me thinking about this:

x
AQJ
AKQ9x
AKQx

As someone who avoids 2♣ openings at any excuse, in standard bidding, at pretty much any colour or form of scoring I think you just have to do it on this hand (agree?). It got predictably unpleasant:
2C 2D
3D 3H
?

Assuming you don't have any fancy conventions to help you out that this point, you seem pretty much screwed. Would P bid 3♥ with such as Qxx xxxx x xxxxx, or a balanced Yarborough? Or do all hands that can't muster a pure 3M bid now or a diamond raise have to bid 3N? Either way there's a huge grey area that leaves you with what seems to me an impossible next step - do you raise hearts, or bid clubs, either of which could land you in a doomed Moyesian with 6 cold in the other suit. Or do you bid 3N and go off when they run spades when you had a slam in *either* round suit?

If you frequently get problem hands like this, maybe you should be playing poker for money rather than bridge
Even so, what is so bad about 4C? If partner has spades stopped you should be fine in 4NT, if not he can't go far wrong playing 4H or putting you into 5C. The important thing is to agree that bidding can converge naturally on 4NT is case of misfit over a 3-level minor opening.

[pescetom]

helene_t, on 2018-July-22, 16:28, said:

If one is concerned about wrong-siding, one could play transfers. For example:
2♣-2♥*
2♠**

*=spades
**=hearts

I'm more concerned about wrong-siding than about responder strength, and play just that with my main partner (it's coherent with what we do in Stayman too).
Plus 2NT as showing both minors.

[TylerE]

This is why I generally prefer a system where 2♥ is an immediate negative, and all non-broke responder hands start with 2♦. Give the 'hard' hand all the bidding room.

[Jinksy]

pescetom, on 2018-July-23, 09:02, said:

If you frequently get problem hands like this, maybe you should be playing poker for money rather than bridge
Even so, what is so bad about 4C? If partner has spades stopped you should be fine in 4NT, if not he can't go far wrong playing 4H or putting you into 5C. The important thing is to agree that bidding can converge naturally on 4NT is case of misfit over a 3-level minor opening.

For one thing, many of my partners would have no idea if we were playing in Blackwood on such a sequence. As for not going far wrong over 4♣, what can P then do over 4♣ with such as xxx Kxxxxx x xxx? Rebid that junk and find you with Ax x AKQxx AKQxx? Or raise you to 5♣? - which on the actual hand might go several off with 6♥ almost laydown.

I'm not proposing that changing the way we respond 2♥ would give us the optimal way of bidding such hands, but that if we just changed the default understanding, it would help a lot of people who didn't have detailed partnership agreements.

[Jinksy]

pescetom, on 2018-July-23, 09:02, said:

If you frequently get problem hands like this, maybe you should be playing poker for money rather than bridge
Even so, what is so bad about 4C? If partner has spades stopped you should be fine in 4NT, if not he can't go far wrong playing 4H or putting you into 5C. The important thing is to agree that bidding can converge naturally on 4NT is case of misfit over a 3-level minor opening.

For one thing, many of my partners would have no idea if we were playing in Blackwood on such a sequence. Even assuming good partnership understanding, what does P then do over 4♣ with such as xxx Kxxxxx x xxx? Rebid that junk and find you with xx A AKQxx AKQxx? Or raise you to 5♣? - which on the actual hand might go several off with 6♥ almost laydown.

I'm not proposing that changing the way we respond 2♥ would give us the optimal way of bidding such hands, but that if we just changed the default understanding, it would help a lot of people who didn't have detailed partnership agreements.

[pescetom]

Jinksy, on 2018-July-23, 16:42, said:

For one thing, many of my partners would have no idea if we were playing in Blackwood on such a sequence. Even assuming good partnership understanding, what does P then do over 4♣ with such as xxx Kxxxxx x xxx? Rebid that junk and find you with xx A AKQxx AKQxx? Or raise you to 5♣? - which on the actual hand might go several off with 6♥ almost laydown.

I'm not proposing that changing the way we respond 2♥ would give us the optimal way of bidding such hands, but that if we just changed the default understanding, it would help a lot of people who didn't have detailed partnership agreements.

Your proposed change might well be right, but I'm not that convinced it is important. Defaults are useful with pickup partners on BBO, but at a real world table I think the important thing is to have reasonably detailed (not necessarily complex) agreement about what your bids mean and how certain situations can evolve (for example after a 3m opening). This takes some discussion and even then things will occasionally turn pear shape. On the other hand such extreme distributions are pretty rare and so it doesn't make sense to dedicate huge amounts of mindspace to handling them, especially if you are going to be playing matchpoints against a field of average players where just bidding the least worrying game or missing the fluke slam is not going to cost you a bottom or anywhere near.

Your renewed example above for example is a pretty unlucky state of affairs, if you don't have a conventional way to show both minors. Even so if partner rebids 4♥ then trusting him and passing is not going to be a disaster. I'd be much more worried if our methods did not allow us to find 6♥ when it was genuinely laydown, which is the case of many of our rivals.