[bluenikki]

Blue Team 2♦ opening handles strong 3-suiters, but at the cost of wasting a fairly low bid on a rare holding.

Does anyone have a systemic way of handling them that has an at-the-table record?

By the way, how did Culbertson handle them? I have many of his books but I can't recall it ever coming up. That ol' black magic?

[hrothgar]

Just pretend that they are 4432

[johnu]

bluenikki, on 2025-April-09, 17:31, said:

Blue Team 2♦ opening handles strong 3-suiters, but at the cost of wasting a fairly low bid on a rare holding.

AFAIK, only Garozzo and Forquet used that 2♦ convention among top experts. This was a Garozzo only creation and had a memory intensive set of responses. There's a story that when a chance to open this bid came up in a major tournament, Forquet opened 1♣. After the hand was over, Forquet is credited as telling Garozzo "I forgot".

As far as systemically having a bid for this, treat the hand as the least misleading distribution based on suit strength and the value of the singleton.

[mw64ahw]

I'm aware of 4 methods

• 2♦ as above
• via a Multi 2♦ link
• via 2♣ method a) previously posted
• via 2♣ method b) link

I've played 2 & 3, but its not something that comes up too often

[bluenikki]

johnu, on 2025-April-10, 01:12, said:

AFAIK, only Garozzo and Forquet used that 2♦ convention among top experts. This was a Garozzo only creation and had a memory intensive set of responses. There's a story that when a chance to open this bid came up in a major tournament, Forquet opened 1♣. After the hand was over, Forquet is credited as telling Garozzo "I forgot".

As far as systemically having a bid for this, treat the hand as the least misleading distribution based on suit strength and the value of the singleton.

In Kelsey's 1970 book "Slam Bidding," he called the 2♦ opening essential. I infer it was widely played in UK.

[bluenikki]

hrothgar, on 2025-April-09, 18:46, said:

Just pretend that they are 4432

Does that actually work after a 2N opening or rebid?

[hrothgar]

bluenikki, on 2025-April-10, 03:21, said:

Does that actually work after a 2N opening or rebid?

Sometimes?

Bridge is full of tradeoffs. This is what I prefer...

Note, on some occasion, I will prefer some other misrepresentation such as opening a four card major.
It is rare that I would fake the right distribution for a reverse

[hrothgar]

bluenikki, on 2025-April-10, 03:21, said:

Does that actually work after a 2N opening or rebid?

Sometimes?

Bridge is full of tradeoffs. This is what I prefer...

Note, on some occasion, I will prefer some other misrepresentation such as opening a four card major.
It is rare that I would fake the right distribution for a reverse

[mw64ahw]

hrothgar, on 2025-April-10, 03:49, said:

Sometimes?

Bridge is full of tradeoffs. This is what I prefer...

Note, on some occasion, I will prefer some other misrepresentation such as opening a four card major.
It is rare that I would fake the right distribution for a reverse

Shame if they have a 6M hand going for game/slam and the shortage is an issue

[helene_t]

David and I rebid 1M forcing unbalanced. I don't think we will be able to show specically (4441) but especially with 44(41) it works ok we look for a major suit fit and otherwise we can bid the minor suit. There will be some ambiguity but that is true for many shapes so if we wanted to make our 1c structure more sofisticated , other issues may be more important.
And after a positive response opener takes captaincy.

[Cyberyeti]

bluenikki, on 2025-April-10, 03:16, said:

In Kelsey's 1970 book "Slam Bidding," he called the 2♦ opening essential. I infer it was widely played in UK.

I wouldn't say it was widely played.

It was quite common to throw it into a multi 2♦.

We take an odd approach, as we have a different way of bidding hands with a long strong suit that many people would bid 1x-1y-3N, we use this for 4441 WITH support, meaning the GF unbal 1x-1y-2N always shows 5+ of the first suit.

Without support, up to 19 we rebid 1N, 23+ we open 2♣, so there is only an issue with 20-22 where we have to make something up.

[johnu]

bluenikki, on 2025-April-10, 03:16, said:

In Kelsey's 1970 book "Slam Bidding," he called the 2♦ opening essential. I infer it was widely played in UK.

I agree that 4441 strong 2♦ could be very nice to have on your convention card if it comes up.

What are the chances of getting a 17-24+ 4441 hand?

4441 hands are about 3% of all hand distributions. Only 6.45% of hands have 17+ HCP. A rough approximation is that 3% x 6.45% = .2% (2 out of 1000) of hands fall into that category. At say 26 boards a session, that's around one occurrence every 20 rounds, but that opening is diluted because some of the time another player will open the bidding.


IMO, there are a lot of alternative meanings that occur with a lot greater frequency, and I would expect to get to the right contract most of the time opening with 1 of a suit or even a strong 2♣.