[mike777]

When do you refuse a long suit game try?
Please try and be as specific as possible. For example with a stiff x or xx in help suit, poor trumps, rock bottom minimum overall but help in help suit, etc?

[luke warm]

i decline with xx or xxx, maybe Qxx or Jxx, but accept with xxxx(x) or better, x or void

[dogsbreath]

hi
ALWAYS accept if y have what p asked you for ..otherwise you'll be looking for a new p sooner than you had planned.
I dont like xxxx in the trial suit and xxx even Jxx is also a weak holding. In marginal situations holding a 4th trump is a very strong indication to accept the invite.

Rgds Dog

[1eyedjack]

dogsbreath, on Jul 21 2006, 11:48 PM, said:

ALWAYS accept if y have what p asked you for ..otherwise you'll be looking for a new p    sooner than you had planned.

I think I would be more than happy to start looking for a new partner if existing one expects me to stop using my brain in favour of following dogmatic rules. You need to agree at the outset whether a long suit trial (or any trial for that matter) is a question solely about the indicated suit. The alternative is that it says "I have enough to try for game, but not enough to commit, and this the suit I am most concerned about. In light of that knowledge, how do you like your hand?". So I may have less than perfect holding in that suit but compensation elsewhere may make up for it. Sure you have to apply a greater weight to the holding in the trial suit, but a 100% weighting to that suit and 0% weighting elsewhere may be excessive.

[Flame]

Give weight to the overall strengh of the hand not only to the suit, always accept with maximum value always decline with minimum.

[luke warm]

Flame, on Jul 22 2006, 07:29 AM, said:

Give weight to the overall strengh of the hand not only to the suit, always accept with maximum value always decline with minimum.

on the assumption that i had my bid for my first response, i disagree with this... if partner opens 1S and i bid 2S and he then bids 3D as a long suit try, i look at diamonds only... if i can't accept based on his question, but would have accepted a heart try, i might bid 3H as a counter offer

[1eyedjack]

luke warm, on Jul 22 2006, 08:41 PM, said:

Flame, on Jul 22 2006, 07:29 AM, said:

Give weight to the overall strengh of the hand not only to the suit, always accept with maximum value always decline with minimum.

on the assumption that i had my bid for my first response, i disagree with this... if partner opens 1S and i bid 2S and he then bids 3D as a long suit try, i look at diamonds only... if i can't accept based on his question, but would have accepted a heart try, i might bid 3H as a counter offer

It depends a lot on how wide a range you have for your raise to 2. This is a point on which partnerships differ, and indeed some partnerships split the range of raises to 2. The narrower the range of the raise, the greater is the weighting applied to the specific suit of enquiry.

[temp3600]

I like long suit game tries to ask for fitting honors only. I much prefer this restrictive, precise meaning to the vague standard one. Also, these game tries can be used as slam tries, again very efficiently.
Playing this way, responder focuses mainly on his holding in the game try suit. With a good holding (KTx for example), he bids game no matter how weak he is or how bad the rest of the hand is. With no honor, he rejects the game try, again no matter how great the rest of the hand is. Only with an inbetween holding (Jxx) do trump quality and outside controls influence the reponse.

[zasanya]

An excerpt (slightly edited ) from the thread :"Bobs lesson notes and other ramblings"

...... You ask yourself, after a long suit game try, "Do I still have a decent 1-to-2 raise, having turned the KQJ of both unbid suits face down?" Note that I said decent, not great. If the answer is yes, bid the game, if no, don't bid the game. Yes, it is really that easy. It's so simple, most of us will have to see it in action to believe it........

Simple and effective?

[Codo]

I strongly agree with DOG. If pd wants to know my overall strtength, he can surely ask for that. I doubt, that a question like: I ask for diamonds, but actually I want to know "I have enough to try for game, but not enough to commit, and this the suit I am most concerned about. In light of that knowledge, how do you like your hand?" is better then having one question for the overall strength and one for specific suits.

[1eyedjack]

As I see it there are two extreme ends of a spectrum that might be contained in a game try: At one extreme, (type 1) trial bidder has no interest in any of your values other then the extent of their concentration in one specific suit. At the other extreme (type 2), trial bidder couldn't give a toss where your values are as long as you have as many of them as possible. The reality will be that trial bidder's hand normally falls somewhere between those extremes. Codo would lump all of the hands other than the extreme type 1 into a general, scattered values game try. I reserve a specific bid for extreme type 2 but lump all the others into a long suit trial (unless I have a short suit trial available). Well, Codo and I will not agree on which is better, suffice it to say that I have yet to see a convincing argument to change my mind. That argument is likely to hinge on the frequency of extreme type 1 hands arising. Personally I do not reckon that they are sufficiently frequent to justify devoting all of the several available long suit trials to showing that extreme.

[mikeh]

A meaningful answer can only be given after we have defined opener's tendencies.

It is increasingly common, especially at imps, for opener to tend to blast to game without revealing information to the defence. If playing this style, then opener, for making a game-try probably needs both real help in the suit and at least an average overall hand. If he can make game opposite a top-of the range response or a fitting minimum, or some luck arising from concealment, the tendency seems to be to just bid game.

So we need to know whether opener is in this school, which will tell us if the game try asks for both non-minimum values for the raise and help in the suit or whether it asks only about the suit.. we are to accept with help even with a minimum or can make a value-showing in-between bid (if available) with no help but extra values elsewhere.

We also need to know the kind of holding partner will have. Could he have Jxxx or does he need some values in the suit... say Q10xx or better? We need to know this in order to know how much and what kind of help is sufficient. Qxx is not much help opposite xxxx but it is very useful opposite KJxx.

Subject to these important issues....

I prefer that opener have something in the suit. So I look for fitting honours.. the Q or better ... or shortness coupled with extra trump length. Now, since I usually play a method that shows most 4 card support right away, the shortness coupled with extra trump length is a rare beast (it has to be a hand too good to preempt and too weak for a constructive raise... maybe Qxxx xx KJxx xxx... I'd accept a 3♥ try but reject a 3♣ try... and would not even bid 3♦ along the way... not with xxx in ♣.

And with fitting honours, or the shortness/long trump....I need a non-minimum.... I assume partner would have blasted to game had he only wanted a specific holding in a minimum hand.

Is this a perfect scheme? No... but nothing is, and this works well for me.... well, technically, I don't play 'long suit' game tries.. I do use a lot of help suit, and I suspect that there is a large overlap and that, indeed, many players use the terms interchangeably.

[sfbp]

mikeh, on Jul 24 2006, 11:20 AM, said:

It is increasingly common, especially at imps, for opener to tend to blast to game without revealing information to the defence. If playing this style, then opener, for making a game-try probably needs both real help in the suit and at least an average overall hand. If he can make game opposite a top-of the range response or a fitting minimum, or some luck arising from concealment, the tendency seems to be to just bid game.

I think there should be 2 prerequisites for a game try

1. The initial raise should be capable of accepting at least one game try - otherwise you are too high on many dog openers (and no reference to Nitram Nilved intended). The corollary of this is you need to play a forcing 1NT and be willing to put the non-interested (bad) responding hands via 1N to 2M for a safe stop.

2. Your opener must have something he wants to know or to tell that will help partner decide. As you say, many blast - but isn't that because they simply can't really be sure what the bids mean, especially here on BBO?

I agree that help suit game tries tend to give information to the opponents, and for that reason i prefer short suit game tries.

If opener doesnt HAVE shortness then he bids 2NT, and ONLY IF responder thinks that opener knowing shortness will enable a decision, then he bids his shortness. Often he can simply blast 4, and opponents still have no information.

Especially if shortness can be a doubleton as well as a singleton, this method is fairly reliable. The rule I use is one of concentration - if the hand is decent, then its ok to have "stuff" in the short suit. But if it's only moderate (11-13) then you must make the shortness try in xx or x, or not at all.

Stephen

[whereagles]

I'm beginning to hate long suit trials based on honor cards because it's very difficult to define what constitutes a 'long trial' and what an 'accept' is.

It definitely is much simpler to do long trial on suits like xxx or xxxx because then pard will at least know if his singleton/doubleton is of use.