[mgoetze]

jschafer, on 2010-December-17, 14:03, said:

I haven't played the 1M-3x with suit quality requirements before, so the short answer to your question is that I'm guessing as much as you are here

However, I think part of your question depends on your what your quality requirements are. If you just want to sort out the ones with no honours whatsoever in the 6+ suit invitational hands then I doubt it will make a difference to your rebids over 1NT because they will account for a very small fraction of all 1NT responses. The 1M-3x bids are rare as it is and when they do come up you will almost always have an honour in them. I did a quick check on the BBO deal source generator thing and the first 30 hands it came up with all had suits headed by the Q or better. The low frequency of the hands means you won't be losing much by putting them in 1NT and not rebidding differently, but it also means you won't be gaining much frequency-wise because they wouldn't have been in most of the original 1M-3x bids anyway. If you send these hands via 1NT to 3♣ it also means you have to give up on extremely weak hands with really long minor suits (eg. over 1♠-1NT-2♥-?), which you can no longer bid nicely (they are rare too though).

I would suspect that in order to make your invitational long suit bids worth splitting up, you want to divide them into quality criteria that actually make them worth splitting in terms of hand evaluation for partner for bidding 3NT and with regards to frequency (eg. 5+ hcps in suit vs less than 5 in suit). The more strong hands you put into 1NT though, the lighter you may have to end up rebidding over 1NT because you might be worried about missing game if your side suit is AKx in a minor. I have no idea whether your suit quality criteria would be a gain or not over the standard treatment, but it seems like it would be nice to try out

My understanding is that requiring something like KQxxxx or QJTxxx or better is standard in Polish club, but along with a truly forcing 1NT. Anyway I guess it is asking too much to have all of invite with a good long suit, invite with a bad long suit and a hand that just wants to get out in 3m if partner bids over 1NT in the system. But I think my preferred trade-off would be to force the invite with a bad long suit hand to bid like a balanced invite. Input from people who actually have experience playing this kind of stuff is definitely welcome, though.

[kgr]

mgoetze, on 2010-December-17, 11:08, said:

As I understand it, a forcing 1NT contains hands that can be subdivided into:
- Very weak raise of 1M, unsuitable for a preempt or direct raise.

jschafer, on 2010-December-17, 09:37, said:

...these hands to pass or 2M...

I included these hands in the non-forcing 1NT. It has its advantages and disadvantages

[JLOGIC]

My favorite style of semi forcing NT is one where all balanced hands pass. Since I think it is stupid to call this semi-forcing I don't say it since the same hands that bid over a NF NT bid over a semi forcing NT. The only good argument I've heard for saying semi forcing was I believe from awm when I made a similar post about this, even though the hands that opener bids on are the same, the semi-forcing 1N can have a 3 card LR or a balanced 11 or bad 12 count. I have asked directors if I should be saying it or not, and as usual they disagree.

Obviously playing this style of semi-forcing NT requires including either all 14s into your 1N opener, or opening soundish and including all ave+ 14s into 1N and GFing with 12. I am willing to play an occasional 1N with 13 opp a bad 12, or any 13 opp any 11, and think that's pretty much fine. I am willing to play 1N with a balanced 13 opposite a 3 card limit raise.

The 2 obvious advantages of this style is that you get to play 1N a lot (jdonn and some forcing NTers consider this a bad thing), and that your 2m rebid promises 4 except in the 4513 scenario. If you play this style and flannery though...

2m rebids promising 4 is a huge winner imo. It is too hard to judge what to do over a forcing NTs 2m reply to me, even playing good methods like bart etc. I don't want to always be concerned about partner being 3532 with 11.

People are often concerned with this style combined with

-3 card limit raises bidding 1N. I don't really find this to be a problem, perhaps because I play imps a lot, I could see it being a bigger problem at MP. The point is, we will make 1N with an opener opposite a 3 card limit a large amount of the time. We will probably go down more often in 3M tbh. But if you're that worried about it, add in some kind of 3 card limit raise directly to your bergen or w/e.

-Playing constructive raises. Well if you have a hand that is too weak to raise 1M to 2M, and is a balanced min opener, they have more than half the deck and they have a fit since we have a fit (ok they could have 3 7 card fits). It is unlikely to come up that they let us play the hand, and if they do and we go down it's not a disaster since they could make something. Maybe if we're vul and go down 300 it's an issue. And sometimes they make a bad lead and we wrap it up

Honestly neither of these have ever been an issue to me.

[Fluffy]

If the suit quality is bad for 3x response then it is now a 1NT->2NT hand, and same applies.

[dicklont]

I'd like to add that playing a weak NT (12-14) preempts this problem beautifully.
Any hand that would be tempted to pass the (semi-)forcing NT is already opened 1NT.

I feel that in 2/1 generally it's a big plus to have the balanced 12-14 hands out of the way.

[gwnn]

dicklont, on 2010-December-18, 09:58, said:

I'd like to add that playing a weak NT (12-14) preempts this problem beautifully.
Any hand that would be tempted to pass the (semi-)forcing NT is already opened 1NT.

Except 4♠-5♥ hands

[JLOGIC]

dicklont, on 2010-December-18, 09:58, said:

I'd like to add that playing a weak NT (12-14) preempts this problem beautifully.
Any hand that would be tempted to pass the (semi-)forcing NT is already opened 1NT.

I feel the exact opposite, when I'm playing weak NT I hate it because I have to bid 3 card minors all the time over 1N and effectively play forcing NT now.

[the hog]

mgoetze, on 2010-December-17, 06:12, said:

Wikipedia: "...except that the opener is allowed to pass with a 5-3-3-2 minimum..."

Karen McCallum: "[O]pener can pass with a balanced 12 or 13 pts."

Larry Cohen: "Note: If you prefer, treat 1NT as 'semi-forcing.' This still means 6-12, but opener is allowed to pass if he has a flat minimum (5-3-3-2)."

Many others...

Your post makes no sense. Firstly Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Any idiot can post there.
Secondly, the McCallum and the Cohen links talk about FNT, not the oxymoronic SFNT. Therefore these links are totally irrelevant to your question. True Cohen mentions SFNT almost as a throwaway comment. I would not pay any attention to the fact that he only mentioned a 5332 shape.

[gnasher]

mgoetze, on 2010-December-17, 07:16, said:

I'd appreciate it if someone could explain the advantages of this style to me.

The main reason I do this is that it seems to work - I find that 2C, 2D or 2H is usually a better contract than 1NT with this type of hand. When neither opponent has bid, the suits tend to break, so a suit contract plays OK even when it's only a 7-card fit. In 1NT it is harder to exploit that, because the communications are awkward.

To see whether I was right about this, I generated 30 deals, with North having any hand in the 5-10 range with 3=2 or shorter in the majors, then removed any deals where I thought the bidding would have started differently^*. That left 13 deals. These, together with my (fairly superficial) analysis are below. In summary, there were 7 deals where 2♣ seemed to gain, 2 deals where pass seemed to gain, and 4 where nothing makes. (For these four, I didn't consider which contract was likely to go down more.) I assumed responder would never give false preference with 2=4 and two low hearts. Some of the deals were hands where you might not respond 1NT, depending on your system.

Looking at the hands, it seems that 2♣ tends to work because:
- We may find a 5-3 club fit
- Even a 4-3 club fit often plays better because we can ruff diamonds
- When partner has only three clubs, he sometimes has six diamonds, which make a playable trump suit but will be hard to set up in 1NT.

I realise that I may not have analysed enough hands to draw a reliable conclusion. Still, I'm happy.

^*If anyone wants to see the hands that I removed, I still have them.

--------------------------
      	S: AT
      	H: 6
      	D: QT543
      	C: A9653
 S: Q5 			S: K7432
 H: AQT94      	H: 72
 D: K72        	D: J986
 C: T82        	C: K7
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2C probably gets us too high; 1NT makes
--------------------------
      	S: Q43
      	H: 94
      	D: QT542
      	C: KT2
 S: 752        	S: AKT
 H: QT7        	H: A62
 D: KJ876      	D: 93
 C: A5 			C: 98763
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
Nothing makes      	
--------------------------
      	S: K42
      	H: 6
      	D: KQJ9854
      	C: 82
 S: T53        	S: AQ7
 H: AQ974      	H: T2
 D: 3          	D: T762
 C: K953   		C: AT76
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2D makes; 1NT goes down
--------------------------
      	S: Q2
      	H: 76
      	D: KJT874
      	C: 863
 S: KT73   		S: A54
 H: AT2        	H: Q94
 D: Q95        	D: 632
 C: AT9        	C: K752
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
Nothing makes      	
--------------------------
      	S: 743
      	H: 76
      	D: KJ9853
      	C: A3
 S: AT 			S: KQ52
 H: AQ 			H: T942
 D: QT7642 		D: ---
 C: 852        	C: KT976
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
Nothing makes      	
--------------------------
      	S: 4
      	H: 76
      	D: Q7542
      	C: KT753
 S: AK73   		S: QT52
 H: T92        	H: AQ4
 D: JT3        	D: K986
 C: A82        	C: 96
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2C makes (probably get pushed to 3C, but that makes too); 1NT goes down
--------------------------
      	S: 32
      	H: A9
      	D: 8764
      	C: K9632
 S: AKT4   		S: Q75
 H: QT76   		H: 42
 D: KJ 			D: QT9532
 C: T85        	C: A7
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2C makes (probably get pushed to 3C, but that makes too); 1NT goes down
--------------------------
      	S: 742
      	H: ---
      	D: KQJ862
      	C: 8652
 S: KQ3        	S: AT5
 H: Q976   		H: AT42
 D: T743   		D: 95
 C: T7 			C: AK93
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2D makes; 1NT goes down
--------------------------
      	S: T
      	H: Q9
      	D: KJT97652
      	C: T9
 S: KQ43   		S: A752
 H: A74        	H: T62
 D: Q43        	D: 8
 C: K65        	C: A8732
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2D makes; 1NT goes down
--------------------------
      	S: T2
      	H: 7
      	D: KJT92
      	C: KT983
 S: A3 			S: KQ754
 H: Q9642      	H: AT
 D: 865        	D: Q743
 C: A76        	C: 52
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2C makes (probably get pushed to 3C, but that makes too); 1NT goes down
--------------------------
      	S: K73
      	H: 94
      	D: 9742
      	C: KT98
 S: A42        	S: QT5
 H: Q7 			H: AT62
 D: K8653      	D: QJT
 C: A52        	C: 763
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
Nothing makes
--------------------------
      	S: AK7
      	H: 62
      	D: QJ3
      	C: T9752
 S: QT32   		S: 54
 H: AT9        	H: Q74
 D: KT96   		D: 87542
 C: K3 			C: A86
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2C makes (probably get pushed to 3C, but that makes too); 1NT makes too.
--------------------------
      	S: KT
      	H: 74
      	D: Q7632
      	C: AT97
 S: AQ74   		S: 532
 H: QT 			H: A962
 D: T94        	D: KJ85
 C: K532   		C: 86
      	S: J986
      	H: KJ853
      	D: A
      	C: QJ4
2C probably goes down; 1NT probably makes.

[mike777]

1nt sf for me means you pass about 20% and bid other

80% or other responder rebids something..

so you play 1nt 20% assuming opp pass...less


wtp?


------------------

pard opens on one level with crap often....


opp silent........less so


etc.....

[bill1157]

gwnn, on 2010-December-18, 10:05, said:

Except 4♠-5♥ hands

4=5=2=2 is ok to open 1NT

Bill

[ewleongusa]

mgoetze, on 2010-December-16, 17:12, said:

Let's say I start off playing standard 2/1, whatever that is. Then someone shows me some neat gadget for handling a 3-card limit raise of 1M, say by stuffing it into 2♣. Then someone tells me I can switch to a "semi-forcing" 1NT if I play jump shifts as natural and invitational. I ask what this semi-forcing 1NT is and it is explained to me that it is like a forcing 1NT except that I can pass if I have a balanced minimum. I take this to mean 5332 shape with less than an opening 1NT.

The story could end here. But let's talk about it some more. Say I hold

---

and decide to open 1♥. Partner bids 1NT, "semiforcing". I don't have a balanced hand, so I'm supposed to bid something. 2♠ is obviously out of the question. Some people, it's rumoured, would rebid 2♣. They probably aren't playing Gazzilli. I even suspect they're not playing matchpoints. That leaves 2♥. Will I be able to say "Thank you, partner," if he tables a 3154 hand?

So I pass. An extreme example, you say. It wasn't systemic, it was a "tactical bid", I was applying "judgement". I guess they're saying I shouldn't do it again when I hold a small diamond and the Ace of spades?

Playing the aforementioned Gazzilli convention, what if I hold

---

Sure, my clubs are decent. I could call this "clubs or strong". But really... why should I? 1NT is a great contract. Everyone loves 1NT. Especially at matchpoints!

My question is, which hands does the so-called "semiforcing 1NT" still contain which are not in a standard non-forcing 1NT. Obviously there are some invitational hands in there which don't have a good enough suit for a jump shift. But if they plan to invite me, they will do so in vain, for I will not be accepting with the aforementioned hands.

When your partner responds 1NT he is showing six to a bad 12 in hcp. You decide if you should bid on or not. If you decide to bid on it may be with a three card minor. Typically, if you are 5-3-3-2 minimum and you would reject any game try then you might as well pass now. Partner might have a three card limit raise but if you were going to pass being on the one level instead of the three level has something going for it.

Eric Leong

[MickyB]

Agree with JLOGIC, except that playing weak NT and 2/1 I think you have to rebid 2C on 5=3=3=2 and 3=5=3=2.

[han]

I think that passing 1NT with J10 KQxxx 9x AQ10x is really bad mgoetze.

[mgoetze]

han, on 2010-December-21, 07:02, said:

I think that passing 1NT with J10 KQxxx 9x AQ10x is really bad mgoetze.

Great! Can you also give examples of hands where you would consider it "bad (but not really bad)", "borderline", "acceptable", "reasonable", "good" and "really good"?

[han]

If you did it it would merely be bad, not really bad. And if you had bad suits and good doubletons it would be reasonable.