Hello Brain,
I looked up the Asking Bid Guidelines for activating Beta's and found this statement for counting singletons:
"Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we do not count a singleton King as 1 Control unless Partner has shown strength there (eg: an earlier trump ask in that suit) or we know they are strong balanced (and so are likely to have one of the adjoining honours). "
My question is...……………..
Does this statement "or we know they are strong balanced (and so are likely to have on of the adjoining honours" cover your example hand since responder used a "Forcing 1NT" to start the sequence.
Thanks.
No, absolutely not. The forcing 1NT is a totally artificial bid and (particularly if it's used to switch on the asking bids) absolutely does
not indicate a balanced hand. Let's take an example.
If I have
QJxxx
KQxxxx
void
AQ
that's hardly balanced, yet if partner surprises the hell out of me by opening 1
then I'm bidding 1NT and then using gamma in
over the rebid, both to check for
AK and to switch on the asking bids, with absolutely no other options for bidding the hand.
If you follow the guidelines in the notes, then you absolutely would
not count a stiff king in the
1M-1NTF
(rebid)-(gamma ask)
(relay beta)-<??>
sequence. You have no grounds for thinking that responder has length in the suit or an adjacent card.
Georgi and I discussed this, and we decided that, if responder was strong enough to switch on the asking bids, the odds were that a stiff King
would be worth something, and we were happier with having an accurate count of Aces and Kings held by Teller, and Asker could worry about a King being singleton if it mattered.
So far, I cannot recall this tweak to the system having caused us a problem due to a singleton King, and Georgi and I usually get through close to 100 boards per weekend.
It's another thing to remember. The usual advice still applies - before you think of tweaking the system, make sure that you've a sound knowledge of the
unmodified system. Georgi and I are a couple of incurable system tweakers, and a lot of the ideas we come up with don't last the course, but this modification is one that I think we're sticking with!
AfterthoughtI shouldn't post replies before I'm properly awake! What I wrote above about there being no alternative way to bid the hand would have been correct until relatively recently, but of course the example responding hand I gave does have a second possibility, which is 4
Exclusion Beta in response to the 1
opener.