BBO Discussion Forums: inverted minor - HCP?? - BBO Discussion Forums

Today we were playing at the club and our opponents for this particular hand are considerably stronger players than us. I opened 1 Diamond, and my partner raised to 2 Diamonds. There were no competitive bids before the 2D raise. I alerted because we play inverted minors. The opps then bid and I passed, and my partner raised to 3d - where we played making 4diamonds.

When my partner's hand came down - i saw his hand to have 5 diamonds, but only 8 HCP and a very distributional hand.


It had always been my understanding that inverted minors usually have a goal of playing 3 nt, and you would not count support points in arriving at the 10 point minimum to go to 2 diamonds. Our opps said they value the responder hand using support points so they would have also bid 2D.

How do you play inverted minors. Do you only count HCP since you are really trying to get to 3N - where shortness would be far from an asset - or do you include support points.

Thanks in advance.

Playing weak NT, 8 nt is about enough. Invitational or stronger opposite a 15-17 balanced opener.

Playing strong NT, I would expect about 11 HCPs for the same reason.

 phoenixmj, on 2020-January-30, 21:51, said:

Yes, that is a goal, but you mustn't lose sight that playing in your minor suit is also an option. In 2/1 my understanding is inverted minor raises are game forcing, whereas with SAYC they are not. (Please don't ask me how that option has been arrived at as I don't know.)

It would be helpful if you had posted the hand that partner had, but it shouldn't contain a 4 card major as bidding that at the one level takes preference over raising the minor suit.

With 5-9 HCPs and 5 card support it is usually right to raise to the three level of the minor, not two as in this instance. I wouldn't count support/distributional points here myself as raising the minor already hints at a (usually) distributional raise, and with many players opener's minor could be just 2♣s or 3♦s only, though I realise that other players do stipulate a minimum of 4♦s to open 1♦.

That is my agreement with my regular partner though other players may play this differently. Also there are other options such as Criss Cross Minors that can be incorporated in the bidding structure.

 FelicityR, on 2020-January-31, 02:02, said:

This is incorrect.

SAYC does not have inverted minors at all if played as published, by default. (Having no forcing minor raise is one of SAYC's major holes). In SAYC, 1m-2m is NF 6-9 hcp, 1m-3m is invitational ~10-12. If you happen to pick up a GF minor raise hand you generally have to fake a bid, usually in the other minor, and contrive to force to game later. Or just bid 2nt/3nt right away if that isn't ridiculous. (SAYC has the old fashioned 2nt response= 13-15 GF, but random people who often have not read the booklet may often not know this and think it invitational, so this is dangerous in a pickup partnership).

One could play SAYC modified by partnership agreement to include inverted minors.


Then, in either 2/1 (where most would assume inverted minor raises on if not discussed) or SAYC modified to include inverted minors, without discussion 1m-2m is usually played as only invitational+. To play it as GF, you need additional agreements to shovel the invitational raises into some other bid. Most frequently this is a jump in the other minor (aka "criss-cross").

 Stephen Tu, on 2020-January-31, 05:18, said:

I'm not disagreeing with you Stephen, and yes, SAYC in its purest form treats raises of minors in the same way as Acol, but the difference in Acol does not used a prepared (less than 4 cards) minor suit opening as the NT range is 12-14.

That's why SAYC players have incorporated an inverted minor raise by agreement because like 2/1 the 1NT opener is 15-17 (14-16).

As you correctly say, pure SAYC has no forcing minor raise, so all bids are invitational only.

My apologies for commenting incorrectly: I have played SAYC and 2/1 for quite a few years with inverted minors. That's a partnership choice as you rightly say.

As requested- this is partner's hand. No major. 2 five card minors so a very distributional hand. 1NT is not forcing for us over a minor - so had he said 1NT - there is a serious risk of a pass. We do not play inverted minor 2level raises as game force. We play them is 100 percent forcing 1 round. So, I see the value in that this hand is too strong to reply 3D - and going through 1NT to show the intermediate values with diamonds could cause a disaster.

I had just never heard of counting short points in inverted minors and would like to know which is better. Partnership agreement could go either way. I am forced to bid so we will be at the 3 level at least - as I feel that partner should retreat from NT if I were to bid it. I typically have 4 diamonds, but with certain shapes I can have 3. We open better minor but if I have 3 d and 2c, I would open diamonds. In that case - opposite this hand, we would probably want NT.

This looks like an easy 2♦ - it is clearly "invitational", which would be my criteria rather than an arbitrary point count. A balanced invite is likely to be 11-12 HCPs, but with shape this looks a perfectly reasonable 2♦ bid.

System does make a difference and we play a weak NT a four-card majors. Partner will have at least a four-card diamond suit and often it will be a five-card suit (or strong no trump strength). It is less clear cut playing Strong & Five, but I would still be happy with a raise to 2♦ (but happy to be corrected by someone who knows the system better).

 FelicityR, on 2020-January-31, 02:02, said:

I would never, ever, assume this without explicit discussion. One round force only. Shows 10+

In fact, I'd go so far as to say a GF inv. minor raise is unplayable without some sort of supplementary structure (e.g. JS in other minor as exactly an inv. raise)

 FelicityR, on 2020-January-31, 06:32, said:

No, 3cd minors is not the reasoning behind inverted minor raises. That's just an incorrect idea. Inverted minor raises came around because not having a forcing minor raise sucks when you have a good hand and want to explore best game or slam without doing awkward things. And preemptive raises are useful in shutting out the opponents. Plenty of Acol players also use inverted minors. If anything inverted minors work better facing an Acol opening.

As for phoenixmj's hand --

This hand illustrates a borderline hand and one of the weaknesses of inverted minors without additional gadgets -- the possibly wide range of 1d-3d. If one wants to bid 3d on both this hand (or maybe +1 HCP), and similar hand minus the club ace, partner with a goodish unbalanced hand (18-19 balanced will generally try to get to 3nt, possibly via http://www.jeff-gold...grantshack.html by agreement) has a hard time knowing whether to take a shot at 3nt or not.

So without additional gadgets, it is basically a judgment call if one will cause too many overbids with starting with 2d (partner with some unbal 15 gets you into 3nt, it doesn't fetch), or 3d misses too many games (some 15-16 unbal passes your 3d, but this time the hand has a better stopper layout to allow 3nt to make).
If one wants to plug the hole, generally you need to add gadgets, e.g. using jump shift to 2H as multi-way, either balanced invite/constructive raise/strong jump shift, giving you a way to differentiate the good constructive, 8-9 hcp close to an invite hands, from the weaker preempts.

Of course this removes the possibility to use this bid for something else. Most players probably don't bother because the sequence comes up rarely (you need no 4 cd major, plus your opponents not bidding), and guessing 2d/3d often works out anyway when partner has more clearcut decisions and not an also borderline hand that can end up guessing wrong for going low/bidding game.


Personally I wouldn't be too upset with a partner who bid either 2d or 3d on the given hand, playing simple inverted, it doesn't seem a no-brainer to me.

I can understand why some would bid 2♦, but it's not for me - which means I'm bidding 1NT, definitely not 3♦ which could be on a 0 count (see the last section here).

If 1NT gets passed out I can't really see it being a disaster.

 smerriman, on 2020-January-31, 13:48, said:

Disaster is a bit of an overstatement. But, the fact that east is playing it and my tenuous stoppers in the majors can be led through - presents a problem. We would have been down 2 non-vulnerable. But, we can make 4d and did so that was better clearly.

 phoenixmj, on 2020-January-31, 16:31, said:

But would you be playing it? If the opponents have that many cards in the majors, wouldn't they be bidding over 1NT like they did over 2♦?

And as soon as they bid, East gets to show his real hand by reverting back to diamonds.

Ugh, IMO 1nt is terrible compared to either 2d or 3d. I'd much rather bid 3d, it rates to be a better partial the vast, vast majority of the time, and if partner tries 3nt anyway you'd much rather play it from his side. I'd rather miss a few games (and I don't think a 1nt call really reaches many more games than 3d does) and get to the right partial and obstruct the opponents more.

 Stephen Tu, on 2020-January-31, 05:18, said:

Sir,yours is the most ((in my personal opinion) accurate description when playing SAYC (as described )I fully agree . Thanks.

 Stephen Tu, on 2020-January-31, 11:56, said:

I have been wondering how it should work in Acol. It is of course nice that you know you have a fit so you could play it as forcing to 3m. And you don't have to respond 1NT with hands that have a fit but no 3-level safety.

On the other hand, playing weak nt, 3m is presumably to play opposite a balanced 19. Otherwise it would have to be quite tightly defined to opener knows what to do with 16-18 points. It is playable for 2m to be 6+ points? You have quite a lot of bidding space but maybe not enough, especially if opps interfere. So you would probably need some kind of additional raise, say the 2♥ bid as you suggest.

At my club in Lancaster people played 3m as 6-8 and then opener just has to decide.

The actual hand is on the seams between bids, playing a standard form of inverted minor, in which 2D is limit+.

In my serious partnerships we play 2S over 1m as a mixed raise. Constructive hcp, less than limit, with shape, so as to be too good for a preempt. This would work well here. We play 2H as a balanced invite. We don’t miss having natural 2M bids available other than losing meckwell, in which 2H shows 5+ spades and 4+ hearts, weak hand. We can handle that over 1C since we use 2D.

All goes to show that when one chooses a gadget, such as inverted minors, there can be and should, in a well-designed method, be multiple ripple effects.