TylerE, on 2013-August-15, 19:56, said:
So what do I have to have to bid 2♣ in your opinion? AKQJx?
Personally, and I know this is not the "modern" trendy thing to do, but I *hate* 2♠ here. Life is so much easier on a bread and butter auction like 1m-1M-2M if responder is guaranteed an 8 card fit at least 99.9% of the time. I rebid 2♣ on these cards and don't feel the least bit guilty about it.
Personally, and I know this is not the "modern" trendy thing to do, but I *hate* 2♠ here. Life is so much easier on a bread and butter auction like 1m-1M-2M if responder is guaranteed an 8 card fit at least 99.9% of the time. I rebid 2♣ on these cards and don't feel the least bit guilty about it.
Your style is not a problem at all.
You are correct; the "modern" thing to do -- which is modern, incidentally, because people have thought about it and have agreed, by-and-large, that it works -- is to raise to 2S. I hinted earlier, and later in the thread others have made it explicit, that a modern standard system will have a way for responder to check-back and see what opener really has going on with his raise to 2S. We can discuss these sequences and their merits/disadvantages in I/A. But even without a checkback, a flat game-forcing responder with 4 spades should bid a natural (!) 3N to cater to a flat opener and to an opener with a 3-card raise (even if this only happens, as you suggest, 0.1% of the time).
As to why I choose not to bid 2C with this hand: For many (especially "modern") partnerships, responder does not have many non-GF responses after 1C-1S-2C. For my partnerships in particular, even 2D and 2H are GF. So 2C will/should be passed an awful lot by responders who don't hold a lot of extras. And AKJxx opposite x is just not likely to be the right spot.
If you have many invitational (NF or F1) bids after 2C, it is considerably more palatable to bid 2C on these cards. However, there are disadvantages here as well. With Kxxxx / xxxx / Kxx / x, is responder now supposed to rebid 2S to play? I'm imagining now an opener who is x / xx / QJxx / AKJxxx. Wouldn't we just rather be playing in 2C here with the misfit? Obviously this is cherry-picked, but this kind of situation is why the 2C rebid tends to show a "real" club suit -- responder can pass with nothing (and in modern systems, where responder may respond very light, as opposed to the traditional must-have-6HCP-to-respond philosophy, there is real value in getting out very cheaply and somewhat safely).
eagles has been around enough that I don't feel bad distinguishing between what he might do in his system and what most of us would do playing a basic BBOF-standard 2/1, though perhaps I could have been more clear about the system assumptions I was making in my last post.
To your point about clarifying bread-and-butter auctions, however, I lost a Swiss match in Atlanta to barnets (who ended up leading the open Swiss after d1) by a few imps when partner assumed I had 4 cards for my raise to 2S (after 1H-1S-2S). We played the wrong game, and it was enough of a disaster to swing the match. So I'm very sympathetic to your point. But we do have methods to untangle this; one just needs to be comfortable enough (and remember) to use them.
edit: and yes, for me AKQJx is a fine 2C rebid. AKQxx may be ok; I don't know that I've ever defined the worst suit/hand with which I'd bid 2C. But I really stretch to not rebid my minor unless it's a real feature of my hand.