[Shugart23]

What is the downside of using (reverse) lebensohl where you open 1 of a suit, say 1S, and are overcalled at the 2 level ?

[P_Marlowe]

Shugart23, on 2024-May-01, 07:13, said:

What is the downside of using (reverse) lebensohl where you open 1 of a suit, say 1S, and are overcalled at the 2 level ?

It is called Good-Bad 2NT. And quite powerful.

It is a tool to make Non forcing Free Bids work (not only NFB), most useful after a WJO, say, you open 1C and they over call 2S.

[Shugart23]

The structure I am thinking goes something like this. Say bidding has gone 1h- 2c by opponents -? Any 2level suit bid is to play. And but 2Nt through 3hearts is a transfer and could be to play. But 2Nt is a relay/ transfer to clubs possibly preparing to invite. Fast and slow 3NT show stop or no stop. Slow and fast transfers into opponents suit show other major and with I or without a stop

[P_Marlowe]

Shugart23, on 2024-May-01, 09:39, said:

The structure I am thinking goes something like this. Say bidding has gone 1h- 2c by opponents -? Any 2level suit bid is to play. And but 2Nt through 3hearts is a transfer and could be to play. But 2Nt is a relay/ transfer to clubs possibly preparing to invite. Fast and slow 3NT show stop or no stop. Slow and fast transfers into opponents suit show other major and with I or without a stop

Works as well, now it is called Rubens Advances.
https://www.bridgeha...ns_Advances.htm

[DavidKok]

P_Marlowe, on 2024-May-01, 09:24, said:

It is called Good-Bad 2NT. And quite powerful.

It is a tool to make Non forcing Free Bids work (not only NFB), most useful after a WJO, say, you open 1C and they over call 2S.

There are many different versions of Good/Bad 2NT, but I don't think this is a typical example. Normally Good/Bad refers to a rebid by opener, e.g. on the auction 1m-(1♠)-X-(2♠); ?. Now we would like to distinguish competitive from constructive from game forcing hands (the weak ones pass, of course). That being said it's just semantics, using 2NT to distinguish good from bad hands here is a decent idea regardless of what name you attach to it. However, I would caution against trying to play non-forcing 2/2 bids here. Stopping in a new suit at the 2-level is often not great, especially if this means you have to go to the 3-level to show a stronger hand.

Shugart23, on 2024-May-01, 09:39, said:

The structure I am thinking goes something like this. Say bidding has gone 1h- 2c by opponents -? Any 2level suit bid is to play. And but 2Nt through 3hearts is a transfer and could be to play. But 2Nt is a relay/ transfer to clubs possibly preparing to invite. Fast and slow 3NT show stop or no stop. Slow and fast transfers into opponents suit show other major and with I or without a stop

For the reasons mentioned above I think this is a poor idea. In particular, if you are going to be using artificial bids on this auction, it really does not make much sense to use 2♦ for "a hand that might wish to contract for 8 tricks in diamonds". To support this point consider:

• 2♦ doesn't score that well, and is a priori unlikely to be the best spot.
  
• If we have tolerance for hearts we likely belong in partner's major suit instead.
  
• If partner has support for diamonds we likely end up needing to go to 3♦ anyway, or might voluntarily go there to investigate a game.
  
• 2♦ is the cheapest bid, and can artififcially be used to investigate our degree of major suit fit, in particular the other major.
  
• On a competitive auction like this one we need extra raises more than extra transfers to the 3-level 'can be to play'.

I think it's a nice idea to look into artificial bids in competition, but between the natural non-forcing changes of suit and the transfers starting at 2NT there's no individual bid I like of this suggestion.

Instead I would recommend e.g. Switch as an exploration of useful artificial competitive treatments, along with fitjumps and 2NT and the cue as good raises.

[P_Marlowe]

Also one could play (nearly) all responses at the 2-level as transfers, ..., which allowes you to play NFB,
xfer side step some of the issues, that come with NFB,
at least to a certain degree, and it works, not perfect, but reasonable.

There are schemes out there, ..., but you need to do some work on defining the bids, if you also like to play
fit jumps.
The major issue is, that some seq. come up (very) rarely, depending how much you play.

[mikeh]

P_Marlowe, on 2024-May-01, 09:42, said:

Works as well, now it is called Rubens Advances.
https://www.bridgeha...ns_Advances.htm

You've misunderstood Rubens. His idea is about action by advancer, not responder. Advancer is the partner of the overcaller, while responder is the partner of the opener. Many pairs use some version of this idea...I play 'transfer advances of overcalls' in my serious partnerships and find them to be very useful...not only can one introduce a long suit, with limited values, safely but one can also differentiate between raises of partner's suit. Thus (1D) 1S (P) 2H is a good raise to 2S while 2S is weaker. On the same beginning, (1D) 1S (P) 2D shows hearts and one can bid it with xx KQxxxx xxx xx (passing 2H by partner) or Kx AQJxx xxx xxx (bidding 2S over 2H) or Kx AKQxxx Axx xx (cuebidding after 2H) etc. Overcaller will usually accept the transfer...I always say 'bid as overcaller as if partner is showing a weak 2 in his suit', which means one doesn't accept only when holding an unusual hand (of course one can jump accept if advancer has hit a home run with his 'weak two'.

As for applying this after an opp has made a 2 level overcall, I really, really don't like it. Maybe at mps...where getting to compete, non-forcing, at the 2-level may work well for partscore hands....but at imps, where game and (even sometimes after an overcall) slams dominate scoring on 'size of gain as opposed to frequency of gain' principles, having to go to the 3 level before establishing fit and even strength (either or both partners may have extras) or even playability in notrump (with the added cost of sometimes wrongsiding notrump due to using 2N as a transfer) leaves me cold.

Btw, should pescetom read this, I didn’t ignore your pm. Whatever bug screws up my posting seems also to prevent me replying to pm’s. My answer was going to be long (what else?) but in short I’d (a) never run the 8 as declarer and (b) never cover the 8 as defender and © not play for 4-1 trump (I hate losing three trump tricks to Q9 offside or A9 offside.

[P_Marlowe]

mikeh, on 2024-May-01, 11:28, said:

You've misunderstood Rubens. His idea is about action by advancer, not responder.

Quite Likely, ..., I just wanted to point toward a side, that showed, that the idea
is valid, and giving pointers for search.

We play a simple homegrown method, that works in a reasonable way, and is not too taxing
on memory.

[pescetom]

mikeh, on 2024-May-01, 11:28, said:

Btw, should pescetom read this, I didn’t ignore your pm. Whatever bug screws up my posting seems also to prevent me replying to pm’s. My answer was going to be long (what else?) but in short I’d (a) never run the 8 as declarer and (b) never cover the 8 as defender and © not play for 4-1 trump (I hate losing three trump tricks to Q9 offside or A9 offside.

Thanks I would appreciate in another lifetime/forum/beer encounter the long version of (b), the others are well understood.

Apologies to others for the OT.

[johnu]

Shugart23, on 2024-May-01, 09:39, said:

The structure I am thinking goes something like this. Say bidding has gone 1h- 2c by opponents -? Any 2level suit bid is to play. And but 2Nt through 3hearts is a transfer and could be to play. But 2Nt is a relay/ transfer to clubs possibly preparing to invite. Fast and slow 3NT show stop or no stop. Slow and fast transfers into opponents suit show other major and with I or without a stop

So basically negative free bids with some transfers.