[Trinidad]

There is so much confusion about who thinks what in the "another alert question and oops" thread that I decided to make a poll out of it.

Suppose you play that a 3♣ response to a 2NT opening asks for the majors with the following rebids by opener:

3♦: One or two four card majors
3♥: Five hearts
3♠: Five spades
3NT: At most three cards in each major

The auction starts:

---

You alert / announce / don't alert the 3♣ bid according to your local alert regulations and your RHO asks what 3♣ means. What are you going to tell him?

Rik

[RMB1]

 Trinidad, on 2012-February-28, 07:10, said:

What are you going to tell him?

Round these parts I would say "5 card stayman"
but the poll asks what I should say, so I replied "Asks for 4/5 card majors"

[gwnn]

Niemeijer?

[gnasher]

I voted for "Asks for 4 or 5 card major", but perhaps I should have voted for the last one.

I am supposed to tell the opponents what information is conveyed by the bid. A correct explanation would be "It shows a hand where the benefits of finding out whether I have a 4- or 5-card major outweigh the costs."

[gwnn]

 gnasher, on 2012-February-28, 08:00, said:

I voted for "Asks for 4 or 5 card major", but perhaps I should have voted for the last one.

I am supposed to tell the opponents what information is conveyed by the bid. A correct explanation would be "It shows a hand where the benefits of finding out whether I have a 4- or 5-card major outweigh the costs."

Or, "It shows a hand where my partner thinks that the benefits of finding out whether I have a 4- or 5-card major outweigh the costs"? Maybe that goes without saying, though. What of 2♥-p-4♥, then? It shows that partner thinks that bidding 4♥ will lead to a better score than making any other bid? Or are we making something convoluted which really should not be. Asking bids are asking bids. My partner thinks that it was a good time to ask now, so he asked.

[Trinidad]

I should actually log the poll results as a function of time. The resulting graph might show us when the ACBL people are waking up.

Rik

[hrothgar]

Hey there

My answer depends on who I am playing against and how well I know them.

If I know that they know what puppet stayman means, I'll be lazy and say "Puppet Stayman".

Otherwise, I'd say "Asks me to show a five card major"

[Zelandakh]

"Game-forcing showing either a hand with a 3 or 4 card major, or interest in a minor suit slam without a 6 card suit" for example. You need to tell us which hand types are included in this version of Puppet to be able to answer the question accurately.

[jillybean]

Very easy "asks for a 4 or 5 card major" nothing more, nothing less.

[Cyberyeti]

5 card puppet gets announced a fair bit for this sort of thing assuming you puppet over 3♦.

But of the choices you gave, asks for 4M/5M.

[ArtK78]

Agree with asks for 4 and 5 card majors.

[mjj29]

I would say, in this case, "Asks for majors". Maybe "4 or 5", maybe "it's 5 card puppet stayman" depending on what I thought would be understood and how verbose I was feeling. Because I think it's relevant here, if I were playing my normal system, where 2C asks for 4 or 5 card majors, but could also be a weak takeout to 2D or 3C/D depending on the responses and the hand, I describe it as "Asks for 5 card majors, but could be a weak takeout in either minor".

I think the issue here is that some bids show something about the hand, some merely ask a question - but in asking the question imply something about the hand, and some are forced.

Where the bid shows something about the hand making the bid (or might do) those things are clearly disclosable. Where the bid just asks a question, it should clearly have all the inferences about the hand explained. One of the inferences is that the hand is one for which the responses are suitable. This requires the oppo to know what is being asked for (Majors, aces, etc). It doesn't need for them to know the precise response structure. The other inference is one about strength. Everyone knows that 'stayman' in some partnerships may be weak and they should ask follow-up questions if they need to know. Equally, it's obvious that bidding blackwood shows strength suitable for slam. In other cases, this may be disclosable.

I think "Asks for X" implies "Shows a hand where asking for X is a sensible thing to do". If it's more specific than that, then be more specific than that.

In the (I think?) original case that brought this up, I suppose the correct description of 'Ogust' would be "asks about the quality of the weak 2" and the correct description of feature-asks would be "Asks for features", possibly "and strength" if it's always shown by the responses.

[aguahombre]

Among the reasons for not "naming" in the explanation are:

--Different people have different understandings how a named convention is used.
--There must must be reasons such naming is discourage on-line.
--We don't need to impress others with our knowledge of names.
--It wastes time, since if someone tells me "Puppet" I again ask what the club bid shows.

Edit: actually that last one is only true of other named conventions. It would never occur to me to ask anything about a club response to NT unless it was alerted (because it wasn't a form of Stayman at all).

[WellSpyder]

 mjj29, on 2012-February-28, 09:15, said:

One of the inferences is that the hand is one for which the responses are suitable. This requires the oppo to know what is being asked for (4-card Majors, 5-card Majors, aces, etc).

FYP. Without the edit, it seems to me that you have gone to the heart of the issue, without drawing the logical conclusion.

[hrothgar]

 ArtK78, on 2012-February-28, 09:07, said:

Agree with asks for 4 and 5 card majors.

here's the rub

How is this any different that normal Stayman?

Lets assume that you open 2NT with a 3=5=3=2 hand.
Partner bids 3♣ ("normal" Stayman)
I don't know about you, but I bid 3♥
NORMAL stayman asks you to show a 4+ card major.

What distinguishes Puppet Stayman is 3M responses that specifically show 5 card majors.
That is what needs to be disclosed...

[TimG]

 jillybean, on 2012-February-28, 09:01, said:

Very easy "asks for a 4 or 5 card major" nothing more, nothing less.

I think a complete explanation would include "artificial".

[gnasher]

 TimG, on 2012-February-28, 11:20, said:

I think a complete explanation would include "artificial".

And "forcing"

[ArtK78]

I believe that there are treatments out there for anal retention.

Geez.

[barmar]

 hrothgar, on 2012-February-28, 10:54, said:

here's the rub

How is this any different that normal Stayman?

Lets assume that you open 2NT with a 3=5=3=2 hand.
Partner bids 3♣ ("normal" Stayman)
I don't know about you, but I bid 3♥
NORMAL stayman asks you to show a 4+ card major.

What distinguishes Puppet Stayman is 3M responses that specifically show 5 card majors.
That is what needs to be disclosed...

I think everyone just understands that when you explain "4 or 5 card major", that it means that the responses will distinguish the cases. Normally, mentions of suit lengths includes longer lengths (e.g. "5-card majors" allows opening a 6-card suit), so there must be a reason you specifically mentioned it.

The nice thing about talking to people, rather than automata, is that you can expect them to make inferences from the way you answer a question. It's a normal part of human use of language, so we don't have to explain everything in detail all the time.

This is also why it's adequate to explain "asks for XXX" rather than "has a hand where it would be useful to know if you have XXX". It's obvious that someone asks a question because they need to know the answer. And it's general bridge knowledge what types of hands would find the information useful (unless your partnership has special agreements about when they ask certain questions).

If the opponent needs more clarification, they can always ask further questions. But I don't think it's necessary to go into this in the initial explanation.

[bluejak]

 hrothgar, on 2012-February-28, 10:54, said:

here's the rub

How is this any different that normal Stayman?

Lets assume that you open 2NT with a 3=5=3=2 hand.
Partner bids 3♣ ("normal" Stayman)
I don't know about you, but I bid 3♥
NORMAL stayman asks you to show a 4+ card major.

What distinguishes Puppet Stayman is 3M responses that specifically show 5 card majors.
That is what needs to be disclosed...

The idea of answering questions is to be helpful. If you answer "asks for 4 or 5-card majors" only a complete idiot thinks this is four-card Stayman. There are a few posts here which remind me of the bad old days of BLML.

There are several other posts here with the same lack of helpfulness, like the ones that suggest you need to tell people that a player who asks for 4 or 5-card majors shows a hand which needs to find out about 4 or 5-card majors [and, of course, it is often not true dependent on the rebids].

Now, let's assume you are playing a game of bridge with real people, ok?