mw64ahw, on 2023-November-13, 03:32, said:
It looks too light for 4♣ and i would be accepting the slam try with South's hand and 2 keycards
I hope not, even the traditional Namyats didn't promise 10 tricks in hand. Your desire to punish partner will end up costing quite a bit.
In addition to the above I don't see the point in waiting for such a fat hand before opening 4
♣. Not only can you gain a lot by bidding strong hands slowly (even the dreaded strong 2
♣ patterns out lower than the 4
♣ opening), also this requirement kills the frequency of the agreement. If you do wish to have a stronger way to artificially bid 4M I think it makes a lot more sense to reserve this to shapely hands in the 11-15 HCP range. No particular suit requirement, just 'a hand that wants to bid 4M solo and has too much defence for a preemptive opening'. You can put this in 4m, 1M-then-4M or even 3NT (my personal favourite). As this thread shows that hand type can be a problem otherwise, especially if we have hearts and there is a significant fear of having to make our rebid over their 4
♠.
Absent these gadgets, as the thread stipulated, I lean towards opening 4
♥. I used to bid 1M-then-4M with these hands and most of the time it worked well, but so does opening 4M. There's really not much of a concern of missing slam - people are allowed to theorise about perfect minima opposite all day, at the table partner seems to always have something else. The competitive considerations dwarf the slam concerns at any form of scoring. My main concern would be that I don't like having to pass out their 4
♠ if they bid it, partner may well have been able to penalise them on a slower auction. In return we gain all the times the opponents fail to find the perfect bids, or slip up on defence.
pescetom, on 2023-November-12, 15:31, said:
Bidding 4♥ with this hand is particularly bad as it strongly invites the opponents to bid 4♠ which here we have no good reason to imagine will not make.
Bidding 1♥ is a bit of a handwave as partner cannot have fit and it gives opponents a motorway to locate the right level of spades.
Bidding 2♣ is not terrible if you have agreements that allow you to discuss controls and your regulations allow it.
I think this is exactly backwards.