Thursday, January 17, 2013

Hitting a seam in 2/1

In a pajama game (all tops and bottoms), this hand was one of the bottoms.  It hit a seam in the 2/1 system that we are playing. I held:
W
West
1073
84
AK104
A1094

and this was the auction:
East
Me (West)
1
1NT1
22
?
(1) forcing one round
(2) 3+, usually 4; Typically 12-14 balanced

What is your call?  What does 2NT in this sequence mean? Would you bid it without spades partially stopped? Is the hand good enough to bid 3D?

Spades were 4-3 and diamonds 3-3.  Partner held the heart Ace, diamond queen and KJ of clubs tight. After they took their four spade tricks, East-West had 9 tricks in  NT.

So, this is how the matchpoints pay out:
3NT         100%
1NT           65%
3D              35%
Going down 0%

In other words, this board was lost when we decided to play a forcing 1NT.


4 comments:

  1. In my experience the forcing notrump response is less popular with European 2/1 pairs, where they will find another way to show the three-card limit raise and play one notrump as semi-forcing.

    Personally I've found that the value of distinguishing between a three- and four-card limit raise is less than the value of playing one notrump as semi-forcing, so we lump the limit raises into one bid.

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  3. Laks, I'm not following what the difficulty here was. The majority of 2/1 partnerships play the "impossible" 2S bid here as a balanced version of raising the minor (2NT on the other hand would tend to deny interest in playing in the minor). With your partner's 3532 hand, depending on his HCP and spots, he would place you in 2NT or 3NT.

    This is a harder decision if your partner had opened 1S and your majors were reversed.

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  4. I was going to mention the impossible 2S bid, but Prashanth beat me to it.

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