[dickiegera]

---

Is 3♣ forcing,invitational, or to play?

[wyman]

3c wouldve been inv last rd. so this sequence, regardless of how you play 2d, should be forcing imo

[aguahombre]

wyman, on 2013-August-13, 20:50, said:

3c wouldve been inv last rd. so this sequence, regardless of how you play 2d, should be forcing imo

I am not so sure that we can use that reasoning to answer the question. It might be that responder was invitational AND checking for a 5-3 heart fit, which he couldn't do by simply raising clubs on the previous round.

I think we have to do something else now, after 2NT, to set Clubs as trump and force. Maybe 3S?

[MrAce]

I agree with Wyman.

I used to think like Aguaman and used to play it as he suggests. Years told me that we do not have this luxury with standard methods. I would bid 3♣ with 5♥ and clubs and an inv hand. We should keep in mind that some of the hands where pd has 3 card ♥ he could have raised directly (not neccessarily though ) This may not be perfect but this is the only way to create a forcing auction when we hold hearts+clubs. It also makes things much more simple without compromising from your natural bids, and decent enough for I/A levels.

If we want to go deeper and make custom agreements to avoid this problem, we can of course. But as i said everything comes with a price and we will be compromising from our natural bids. But if we are so obsessed with that kind of inv hands, i can make up here that comes to my mind;

1♣--1♥
2♣--2♠ we can use this for the hand type that concerns Aguaman. 2♠ would not be natural at this point anyway (since opener denied spades) unless repeated again to show 6-5. And we can sue 2♦ as a gate which makes all following bids forcing.

OR

1♣--1♥
2♣--2♦
2♠
2NT

we can add custom meanings to those, such as one of them says i have no 3 card or Hx ♥ other one says i do. Or one of them says i will not accept inv bids, other one says i will etc etc.

[Free]

I don't see a reason why this should be forcing because another path would've been NF. Partner can be INV and looking for the best spot to play: ♥, ♦ or ♣. Not forcing for me.

[PhilKing]

"2/1 ACBL"??? No one bid two over one, and what has ACBL got to do with it.

Anyway, I think this should be forcing, wherever you come from.

[mike777]

yes forcing.

btw it is common to play 2d here over 2c as an art gf.
given 1c then 2c rebid can be quite a large range it helps at some point to set up a gf auction.

[jillybean]

PhilKing, on 2013-August-14, 03:22, said:

"2/1 ACBL"??? No one bid two over one, and what has ACBL got to do with it.

Anyway, I think this should be forcing, wherever you come from.

"2/1 ACBL" is at best helpful and at worst irrelevant, it tells us what basic system is being played and that its North America based.
??? is not so helpful, let's focus on the question.

[Phil]

It's forcing. The auction is akin to:

1♣ 1♥
1N 2♦*
2N 3♣

*New minor forcing.

[aguahombre]

Jilly's admonition to focus on the question made me realize that many of us were not doing so.

The question was whether it is forcing. Most of us have been debating whether it should be forcing. I stand by my argument that this particular sequence should not be forcing, but agree it probably is forcing for the majority of pairs.

[mike777]

dup

[mike777]

with an inv hand and 5h, you would just rebid 2s or 2nt or 3c as options.
The trade off is to just not have so many inv type bids

[ggwhiz]

Not forcing. Do you pass 2nt with a 1-5-4-3 hand with modest values or park it in a club contract? Passing 2nt has to be worse than those two.

[akwoo]

Forcing. An invitational 1-5-4-3 hand responds 3♣ over 2♣, and a partner with 3 hearts and enough strength to accept the invitation should bid 3♥ over 3♣.

[mike777]

As Ace brought up it is important to agree what 2s compared to 3c or 2nt might show:

1c=1h
2c=2s or 2nt or 3c?

I just think it is more important to show gf hand types rather than add yet one more inv hand type.

[gszes]

hard to imagine a hand for responder with 5H and enough distribution
to fear 2n that doesn't have at least a fair chance of making 4c. It just
seems like too tiny of a target to assume 2n is wrong and exactly 3c
is right. While I understand the desire to never bid an ounce higher than
necessary to get to the right partial, it seems wrong here to assume
these combined hand belong in exactly 3 clubs.

IMO lho is trying to pattern out to warn p of the dangers of 3n (due to their
short spade and probable 5 card heart suit). If rho has spades well stopped
3n should be an easy bid if the stop was speculative Qxx for ex 5c may be
a much better place to play (maybe even 4h on a 52 fit)

Another consideration is how much jumping around does a strong responder
have to do if they are interested in slam search??? going through 2d followed
by 3c could easily be setting the table for slam exploration w/o wasting huge
amounts of space in order to play exactly 3c.



3c=forcing

[mike777]

AXX...Axxxx..Ax..Axx

KQx..x....Kxx...KQxxxx


1c=1h
2c=2d
2nt=3c

[Codo]

Forcing, I could have passed 1 club, 2 club or 2 NT, or bid 2♥ instead 2♦ with weaker hands. Yes this does not cover all bases, but if you need to force with 3 and 4 suit to show a gf raise in clubs, you will not get happy either.

[aguahombre]

Phil, on 2013-August-14, 08:42, said:

It's forcing. The auction is akin to:

1♣ 1♥
1N 2♦*
2N 3♣

*New minor forcing.

That one, for us, is forcing but not analogous. Because the 1NT rebid denied spades and freed up 2S to show a very weak opening bid with only 2 hearts, the 2NT bid itself created the game force.

1C-1H
2C-2D
2N...did not narrow the 11-14 range for the opening bid, so responder must be the one to show invite vs g.f.

The whole debate on whether 3C should be forcing seems to be between "You can't have everything, so you must decide to just raise to 3C with the 5 hearts invites." AND "We can have all three ways by being creative with the idle 3S bid."

[ggwhiz]

I surmise that both methods are playable so this is an auction to ask a new partner about to make sure you are on the same wavelength before playing.

I imagine the forcing camp may win on game auctions, more suited to imps where the non-forcing side may win more often at mp's by choosing the best partscore but I can't recall any missed games from playing it non-forcing so it's what works for me.