[jillybean]

I hope by posting this, it will serve as a reminder, reinforcer for me.

1♣:1♠
1nt:2♣*
2♦*:3♦

Playing walsh,xyz 15-17nt

What does partner have?

[Flem72]

jillybean, on 2025-January-05, 08:59, said:

I hope by posting this, it will serve as a reminder, reinforcer for me.

1♣:1♠
1nt:2♣*
2♦*:3♦

Playing walsh,xyz 15-17nt

What does partner have?

One can distinguish this auction from 1!C-1!S-1N-3D: both invitational, one shows a good suit.

[mikeh]

That’s a very unusual sequence. Responder has shown 4 spades….and denied 5. He’s shown an invitational hand with long diamonds. It would be very strange if he had only 5 diamonds so I’d expect 4=6 in the pointed suits with around 10-11 hcp. It’s unusual because, since you opened 1C and rebid 1N, 5D is an unlikely destination. He’s hoping for you to have hearts and clubs under control and a high diamond honour, allowing for a 9 trick 3N while landing in a good partscore if you are unable to bid 3N.

[mikeh]

Flem72, on 2025-January-05, 09:11, said:

One can distinguish this auction from 1!C-1!S-1N-3D: both invitational, one shows a good suit.

The way I play your sequence is for 3D to be forcing, 5=5 or better in spades and hearts, typically with mild slam interest and a pure hand in that we have no aces or kings outside of our suits.

[awm]

I will just comment that Walsh + XYZ is not a great combination. One of the main advantages of Walsh is that you can correct to two clubs on sequences like 1♣-1♦-1♠ or 1♣-1♦-1♥ or 1♣-1♥-1♠, sure that partner will have an unbalanced hand with a minimum of 4♣ (usually 5+♣). But if you play XYZ here (such that 2♣ is now an artificial puppet) you've lost this advantage.

Of course, what's sometimes called XY-notrump or two-way NMF (applying only over notrump rebids and not in the above auctions) is fine.

[jillybean]

awm, on 2025-January-05, 10:48, said:

I will just comment that Walsh + XYZ is not a great combination. One of the main advantages of Walsh is that you can correct to two clubs on sequences like 1♣-1♦-1♠ or 1♣-1♦-1♥ or 1♣-1♥-1♠, sure that partner will have an unbalanced hand with a minimum of 4♣ (usually 5+♣). But if you play XYZ here (such that 2♣ is now an artificial puppet) you've lost this advantage.

Of course, what's sometimes called XY-notrump or two-way NMF (applying only over notrump rebids and not in the above auctions) is fine.

Thanks, I typically play what my partner wants to play. They are more experienced, or so they say!

---

Here's the hand.

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2025-January-05, 09:18, said:

The way I play your sequence is for 3D to be forcing, 5=5 or better in spades and hearts, typically with mild slam interest and a pure hand in that we have no aces or kings outside of our suits.

Me too. It makes more sense to play jumps as descriptive game forces rather than as an alternative nuance of invitational.

[pescetom]

 awm, on 2025-January-05, 10:48, said:

I will just comment that Walsh + XYZ is not a great combination. One of the main advantages of Walsh is that you can correct to two clubs on sequences like 1♣-1♦-1♠ or 1♣-1♦-1♥ or 1♣-1♥-1♠, sure that partner will have an unbalanced hand with a minimum of 4♣ (usually 5+♣). But if you play XYZ here (such that 2♣ is now an artificial puppet) you've lost this advantage.

I play XYZ but not Walsh (for lack of a willing partner), but those who play both seem happy, FWIW.

[Flem72]

mikeh, on 2025-January-05, 09:18, said:

The way I play your sequence is for 3D to be forcing, 5=5 or better in spades and hearts, typically with mild slam interest and a pure hand in that we have no aces or kings outside of our suits.

Correct, and mea culpa: I meant 1C-1S-1N-2C-3D. Not enuf coffee.

[mikeh]

awm, on 2025-January-05, 10:48, said:

I will just comment that Walsh + XYZ is not a great combination. One of the main advantages of Walsh is that you can correct to two clubs on sequences like 1♣-1♦-1♠ or 1♣-1♦-1♥ or 1♣-1♥-1♠, sure that partner will have an unbalanced hand with a minimum of 4♣ (usually 5+♣). But if you play XYZ here (such that 2♣ is now an artificial puppet) you've lost this advantage.

Of course, what's sometimes called XY-notrump or two-way NMF (applying only over notrump rebids and not in the above auctions) is fine.

Your points are valid. However, in my main partnership we decided to try xyz even in the context of transfer Walsh Thus 1C 1D 1S, showing 4+ spades and longer clubs, we play 2C puppet to 2D. We have to bid 2N over 1S in order to get out in 3C. This is definitely going to cost us at some point but it hasn’t yet arisen….we’ve played fewer than 1000 hands since this system change and it simply hasn’t come up.

What has come up is responder having an invitational hand, and our experience has been that we gain on those. Now that’s because we play 4SF as gf. If 1C 1H 1S (ignoring T-Walsh, but it’s an equivalent auction to the T-Walsh one) 2D is gf, the only invitational bids are jump rebids of hearts, or notrump or 3C/S, all of which are fine if our hand merits that, but say I have 3=5=3=2 with no diamond card. I simply don’t have a natural invite available. And sometimes my 6 card heart suit lacks the texture for 3H. Even when we have a spade fit, it’s better to be able to bid 2C then 2S than it is to jump to 3S….sometimes 3S fails when 2S makes. And we have game tries available over the xyz sequence to 2S while opener has to guess over an immediate jump to 3S by responder.

Do these benefits from xyz outweigh the clear costs? Well, so far they do, but I suspect we’ve been lucky in that we’ve yet to have a hand where we played 3C rather than 2C. Also, our methods are designed for imps, so we focus much more on sequences involving game decisions than on finding 2C rather than 3C.

[mike777]

 Flem72, on 2025-January-06, 08:09, said:

Correct, and mea culpa: I meant 1C-1S-1N-2C-3D. Not enuf coffee.

Unfortunately this must be a typo.
Auction could not exist.
Please post the exact hand you are concerned with.

[pescetom]

 mikeh, on 2025-January-06, 08:51, said:

We have to bid 2N over 1S in order to get out in 3C. This is definitely going to cost us at some point but it hasn’t yet arisen….we’ve played fewer than 1000 hands since this system change and it simply hasn’t come up.

What has come up is responder having an invitational hand, and our experience has been that we gain on those.

Essentially the same experience without any Walsh. I must have played well over 10K hands with XYZ, bailing out in 3C rather than 2C happened very few times and never cost and the invitational/game force structure is a clear winner.
Occasional forgets constitute by far the biggest downside.

[mike777]

One of the more common versions of XYZ to get out in 3C is
1X.. 1Y..1Z.. 3C= weak hand, long clubs.
However
1X..1Y..1Z...3D or 3H or 3S are natural and slam tries.

Speaking of forgetting... There are so many possible combinations, I don't recommend trying to differentiate every possible bid to accommodate every possible holding.

[pescetom]

 mike777, on 2025-January-06, 10:54, said:

One of the more common versions of XYZ to get out in 3C is
1X.. 1Y..1Z.. 3C=long weak clubs.
However
1X..1Y..1Z...3D or 3H or 3S are natural and slam tries.

I prefer to play the 3C sequence the same way as the others.

We play that
1X 1Y 1Z 2N forces 3C...
Now Responder can pass with weak clubs or bid a slammish two suiter.

[mycroft]

We play - because it is easier to remember, and because we've never yet had the 3x hand - 2NT is INV 4cM, and 2♣...2NT as INV with 5.

Not saying it's right or best. Just that it works, and frankly it's come up much more often (and been more useful when it does) than 3♣, no matter its meaning.

Having said that, we play xyz by passed hand (because partner's most common minor opening is a 15-17 balanced hand), so we get twice as many opportunities to do it, and "slam interest" on half of them is basically nonexistent. This might colour our experience somewhat.

[pescetom]

 mycroft, on 2025-January-06, 12:07, said:

We play - because it is easier to remember, and because we've never yet had the 3x hand - 2NT is INV 4cM, and 2♣...2NT as INV with 5.

Not saying it's right or best. Just that it works, and frankly it's come up much more often (and been more useful when it does) than 3♣, no matter its meaning.

Game forcing in a minor after XYZ is pretty rare, agreed, but it doesn't cost much to have it available and it's always better to have things consistent.
But 2NT to differentiate a slammish two-suiter is almost no cost (never felt the urge to spell out that my invite has 5 clubs and doubt about NT) and offers an important advantage, especially at IMPs.