BBO Discussion Forums: Responding to Stayman with 4-4 majors - BBO Discussion Forums

In Precision Bidding in Acol (1974), Crowhurst wrote that for constructive purposes it doesn't matter which major you bid with both. He recommended bidding the better, in case partner was weak.

StevenG, on 2012-November-05, 02:57, said:

Well, there certainly has been such advice. iirc, in the seventies I had a new copy (it might possibly have been reprinted lots of times) of "Do you play Stayman" by Sam Stayman. It recommended spades first with both. I don't suppose one can get a much more authoritive reference than that.

FWIW, where I am (sussex/kent border), I would be very surprised if a pair that knew what they were doing had the agreement of spades first when 44M these days. However, there are great many club players who probably have no agreement and for whom the choice is possibly pretty random. There are also a lot of players older than I am who learnt bridge "back in the day" one or two of whom may be playing, unnoticed by me, a spades first policy (though whether they are playing with a partner that understands this is questionable).

It isn't actually very common to hold 44M and then find P is interested in the majors. Further, particularly in weak NT land, 4=4 major fits can go uninvestigated due to responder not having enough cards to stand an undesirable rebid. Consequently this is a question that probably escapes the radar of something needing clarification in a lot of partnerships.

Nick

NickRW, on 2012-November-05, 04:41, said:

It seems strange to regard an American author writing about American methods as an authority for how English players play this sequence. Whilst I also possessed a copy of Stayman's book, I certainly didn't regard it as a description of English methods. I learned English methods from English and English-based writers such as Reese, Dormer, Fox, Flint, Crowhurst and Cohen & Barrow.

gnasher, on 2012-November-05, 05:29, said:

Well, OK, delete "authoritive" from what I said. But the book I read was in the local library - so someone thought it was a useful enough book amongst the many titles they might have invested their cash in.

Nick

NickRW, on 2012-November-05, 04:41, said:

Marx?

StevenG, on 2012-November-05, 02:57, said:

I think you're right about it being down to changing views / preferences (fashions?). I have the 4 bridge books that Penguin published in the 1960s; of the 3 that cover bidding, both GCH Fox (Bridge: Standard Bidding) and Norman Squire (Bidding at Bridge) say to bid ♠ with both majors, whilst Terence Reese (Bridge) treated Stayman as a sideline detail and doesn't cover it to that extent. These books would have been likely texts for British players learning at the time.

However, by the time of Reese & Dormer's 1973 The Complete Book of Bridge, whilst again the point isn't explicitly addressed, the example cited shows responder bidding 2♥ with both. The much later (1996) Dormer & Klinger edition make this explicit.

In all these cases, the context is that the Stayman bid is essentially promissory.

Interestingly, Reese's & Dormer's earlier (1961) The Acol System Today states "On the rare occasions (rare because there is generally a better opening bid) when the no-trump bidder has four cards in both majors we recommend that opener should bid Two Hearts ... but in general he should not take Two Clubs to guarantee a major suit in partner's hand".

I play a fair bit of bridge in English clubs / congresses, and have the impression that a significant majority of opponents would bid 2♥ with both (as my partner and I do). But I wouldn't assume that an unalerted 2♠ was automatically ruling out 4 ♥s, and, though I think that alerting it if it doesn't is good practice, I don't think that it's obviously required by the OB regulation as it stands. Similarly, if a 2♥ response denies 4 ♠s - and I've encountered both 2♦ and 2NT as the system response with both majors - I think it better to alert it, though again it's not obvious to me that the regulations require it.

I look at it this way: whatever the regulations may in fact be held to require, in neither case would I want to rely on getting a ruling that I was damaged by a failure to alert and my consequential assumption about the bid; so if I really needed to know I would have to ask, UI consequences notwithstanding. I'd prefer it if we didn't have the grey areas of "potentially unexpected meaning", but while we do it seems the most practical approach.

PeterAlan, on 2012-November-05, 09:15, said:

That is entirely reasonable - for you.

However, there are also players - like me - who have (up to now, in this thread) never heard that someone might bid 2♠ while holding four hearts. These players think that this is so obviously true, that they wouldn't know that they should ask. After all, if you start asking about something as obvious as this, you could well start asking about every bid.

And then I am not even talking about the implications of someone asking: "This unalerted 2♠ bid... does that deny four hearts?"

Rik

Trinidad, on 2012-November-05, 10:50, said:

This is my problem as well.

Do we really want the game bogged down with having to explain every nuance of every bid? How is someone to know whether their particular treatment is the alertable or non-alertable variant. It seems like we'd need a document comparable to BWS to define the "standard" meaning of everything, and every deviation from this would have to be alerted. And when just about everything is alerted, we run into the problem that EBU had when they required all artificial bids to be alerted -- the opponents don't know whether it's one of the common alerts (which they won't bother asking about) or something really unusual.

I don't think there's a single solution to this that works in all contexts. Different players need different kinds of information: beginners need almost everything explained (I was playing in a stratified Swiss last week, and made an Unusual 2NT call, and won a board because one of the opponents didn't know what it was and didn't know enough to ask -- her partner explained it to her when dummy came down), experienced players just need special conventions and some unusual treatments alerted, and experts probably only need special conventions alerted.

barmar, on 2012-November-05, 14:52, said:

It seems that in this case the "standard" treatment has been pretty well established.

What do people do in this situation where you play?

Vampyr, on 2012-November-04, 13:08, said:

In a thread full of deep-fried Mars bars and what constitutes the midlands I am surprised it was my post you found irrelevant.

A pair who have learned the responses to basic Stayman and correctly deduced that it doesn't matter which major they bid when holding both (aside from deciding which to play in with two 4-4 fits) may not be aware of the inferences of a pair who play non-promisory Stayman and are constrained to bid hearts first. I see no reason why they should be less entitled to an alert than a pair in the premier league playing against a known system geek who happens to play a variation which constrains him to bid spades first.

This suggests that everything should be alerted in all but the most familiar circumstances, but as Barmar says, this is self-defeating. So it follows that neither variation should be alertable: the pair playing basic Stayman must learn to enquire about the nuances of the opponents system, whereas the premier league pair should have already done so.

Trinidad, on 2012-November-05, 10:50, said:

Let me take you on one side and whisper a little secret - not everyone responds the same way to a RKCB 4NT enquiry. Some use 5♣ to show 0 keycards or 3, but others use it to show 1 or 4. Can you believe it?

Bidding's full of systems that do different things in reponse to the same enquiry, and it's a bit naive, if I may say so, if the possiblility never crosses one's mind that with 4 ♠s and 4 ♥s there might, just might, be systems out there that respond in either of these same-length majors. After all, we might also entertain the possibility that they don't employ Stayman on all the same hands so any constraints and related considerations might be different.

What's more unexpected
- that someone might respond 2♠ when they have 4 ♠s in their hand, or
- that it never occurs to another bridge player that they might?

I'm all for using alerts to highlight departures from well-established norms, but that's not what you're arguing here.

PeterAlan, on 2012-November-05, 18:28, said:

I expect Trinidad can believe that because he's encountered both methods. Here we are discussing a situation where he has only ever encountered one method, and it would not occur to him that someone might play a different method.

Quote

That's exactly what Trinidad and others are arguing. It's a well-established norm where Trinidad plays his bridge, and it's a well-established norm where I play my bridge.

I don't think there's any good answer to this. We have to have a rule that says "alert anything unusual", but the interpretation of that will always depend on individual experience.

Trinidad, on 2012-November-05, 10:50, said:

gnasher, on 2012-November-06, 01:50, said:

My point was that perhaps it should. I can remember when I first learned the game, as a teenager many years ago, asking myself "what do you do if you have both?" and considering various possibilities. One of the most basic aspects of the game is that not everyone plays exactly the same system, and surely it displays a certain lack of imagination not even to conceive of the possibility that the 2♠ response when opener holds 4 ♠s might also be used by some pairs to embrace the case where opener holds 4 ♥s as well.

gnasher, on 2012-November-06, 01:50, said:

But that wasn't what Trinidad was actually arguing - what he was saying was "I've never dreamed you could play it that way, so it should be alerted." That's no basis for an alert rule.

As to "well-established norms", I was using it to mean something more than local custom and practice (see below). Let's not forget that Stayman is used in very different ways and on very different sets of hands by different partnerships and, in particular, that the EBU regulation is that the same announcement is used even when the methods differ in such a basic matter as whether or not it is promissory. The context is one where a fair degree of lattitude applies, and it is, in my view, unrealistic to expect that, within such a broad context, this kind of specific detail should suddenly become an alertable matter, especially when the two responses are of essentially the same character and there's little reason, on the surface, to prefer the one to the other.

gnasher, on 2012-November-06, 01:50, said:

Agreed, but I suspect that the best answer is a culture that encourages players to be prepared to protect themselves appropriately rather than expecting to be spoonfed protection in every circumstance.

By way of a different example, my partner and I play that reverses do not necessarily show additional values. At congresses, we typically make this clear to opponents at the start of each round, and it's on the front of our card as well, but we do not alert it thereafter. There was a recent L&E discussion of this, which concluded that

"It was agreed that it was not [alertable], although players should be encouraged to disclose that their method was unusual (although it was recognised that many may not know, if that is how they have been taught)."

As it happens, we play that way because we choose to, not because we were taught it, so are aware that it is uncommon, but that's not the same for everyone as L&E recognises. Similarly with a 2♠ Stayman response that can show both majors. These both fall into a category of bids that are perfectly natural in themselves, but are commonly not played because players prefer to avoid certain consequences that may follow. I suggest that this category of bids should not come under a blanket "potentially unexpected meaning" alert rule just because a large proportion of players don't play that way, if only because of the awareness problem that L&E highlights and this topic illustrates - opponents just need to be more aware of the possibility that what they take for granted as normal may not apply to everyone else. Instead, the line should be drawn, as it broadly is in the examples in OB 5G2, to ensure the alerting of bids that contain specific information that is additional to the information conveyed naturally by the bid itself.

PeterAlan, on 2012-November-06, 06:24, said:

If Trinidad's peers' experience and expectation is the same as his, this is exactly the basis for an alert.

Quote

I don't think that players can be expected to protect themselves in a situation where it would never occur to them to ask.

PeterAlan, on 2012-November-06, 06:24, said:

Are you saying that this is not how the alert rules should be interpreted, or that the alert rules should be changed? Because it seems precisely what alert rules like ACBL's "highly unusual or unexpected meaning" refer to.

However, I would be very surprised if someone would use that "never dreamed" claim regarding these Stayman responses. While one may not be directly familiar with the style of responding differently from how they respond, it hardly seems like they would consider it unimaginable -- it would just seem a little weird. Contrast this to the first time you hear of a big club system, if all you'd ever known was natural bidding -- that's something you might never have dreamed of. Or the Unusual 2NT example I mentioned above (to a novice it probably sounded more like a misbid than a convention, since it wasn't alerted).

PeterAlan, on 2012-November-05, 18:28, said:

Peter, don't worry. I have seen weirder responses to RKCB than that. And there is no need to whisper. After all, the thread is about full disclosure, not about keeping secrets.

Since I have lived in a different countries -one very liberal in its systems policy- I have seen quite a few variations to most conventions, including the responses to Stayman. Most notably, bidding 2♠ with hands that contain 4-4 in the majors is not one of them. That makes it "a meaning that your opponents will not expect" which in many jurisdictions is beyond the criterion for an alert.

What do you want me to do? The next time my opponents bid 1♦-Pass-1♠ can I then assume that the response basically denies 4-4 in the majors, or do I need to ask?

Rik

I wonder if this rathole is the reason ACBL generally does NOT require alerting just due to negative inferences. Trying to figure out all the negative inferences that might be unfamiliar to the opponents could drive you crazy.

Vampyr, on 2012-November-06, 13:33, said:

You're missing the point - it never occurs to the bidders either that Trinidad et al could be so closed-minded, as they would see it. No-one's recognising the other's point of view. Alerting doesn't work when there's a stand-off of mutual incomprehension.

PeterAlan, on 2012-November-06, 17:39, said:

I'll ignore the insult. And I am perfectly willing to recognize the other's point of view. My point of view is: You follow the alert regulations. In most jurisdictions the rule is that you alert whatever the opponents might not expect. It is not expected that a 2♠ rebid can have 4 hearts, hence you have to alert such an agreement in these jurisdictions.

Your point of view is: Don't assume an agreement, just ask.

That is an entirely reasonable point of view...unless you have seen a thousand of Stayman 2♠ responses that all had one thing in common: they deny four hearts. What do you think the reply will be to your question about a not alerted 2♠ rebid?

"Well err.. it's natural."
- "I know it is natural, otherwise PeterAlan would have told you to alert it. But what does it mean?"
"Well err.. he has four spades. ... or five, of course."
- "Is there anything else you know about his hand?"
"No err.. No. He can be minimal or maximal. But he has four or five spades. err if he has five, his hand will be rather notrumpy."
- "Are you sure you don't know more about his distribution?"
"Well, he is balanced, 4333, 4432 or 5332"
- "Can he have four hearts?"
"No, of course not. Then he would have bid 2♥*. .... Director please!"


- - "How may I help you?"
"This gentleman here is asking very suggestive questions about Stayman."
- - "Is that true?"
"I merely wanted to know whether the 2♠ bidder could have four hearts. He didn't tell about the hearts and since I wanted to know, I finally asked whether he could have four hearts."
- - "Don't be ridiculous!! Everybody knows that a 2♠ rebid denies four hearts. Your partner has UI and should bend over backwards not to use it in the auction and play."
"But PeterAlan said..."
- - "Peter Who?!?!?"
"Never mind."

Rik

* or 2NT or 3♣, depending on the actual agreement what to bid with 4-4 in the majors