Serious or non-serious 3NT

(Tnx to exams I haven't been able to post much, and this will probably be for another two weeks. When this period is over, I'll be back completely with weekly updates.)

When you found a fit in a GF auction, it's usually interesting to stay low. One of the players hasn't shown his real strength and might be interested in slam, so jumping to game is preempting your partner. Usually you should start cuebidding, but your partner doesn't know how strong your slam aspirations really are. An example is probably better to understand:
Suppose you're playing 2/1 GF:
1♠ - 2♥
3♥ - ...
Now responder will start cuebidding. However, none of the players are sure how strong their partner really is! Opener can be both minimum or maximum, responder can have a minimum GF but he's also unlimited. If you start cuebidding, you may have a combined point range from 25 to 40! How can one know what to do?

The solution is to use 3NT (and skipping 3NT) to show the difference between slam interest and not. 3NT is a free bid. Suppose the bidding continues:
1♠ - 2♥
3♥ - 3NT
or
1♠ - 2♥
3♥ - 4♣
Now, partner can make a good decision if he knows you're minimum or maximum for your bidding.

There are 2 main 'schools':
- use 3NT to show serious slam interest (serious 3NT)
- use 3NT to show a minimum hand (non-serious or frivolous 3NT)

Serious 3NT is widely spread, and used by many players. But, like most of the time, the reversed way of standard is better. There are several theoretical advantages for non-serious 3NT:
- When you're minimum, you're going to bid more games than slams. If you have to cue with minimum hands, you give opponents more information for the lead. If you can bid 3NT on the other hand, opponents can't double for the lead, and also don't know anything about controls.
- With minor fits, you may want to play 3NT instead of 5m if partner isn't interested in slam. Non-serious 3NT gives you this possibility.
- Perhaps a stupid advantage, but it is one: if your partner forgets the convention and passes, it won't be such a disaster when it's a non-serious 3NT. But when you showed serious slam interest and partner forgets, you'll probably lose a slam!

I see many people playing a standard Jacoby 2NT over their partner's 1M opening, and the bidding goes:
1M - 2NT (2NT = GF with support M)
4M - 4NT (4M = minimum hand)
5X - 6M
They go off because they have 2 quick losers in a side suit.
When playing serious or non-serious 3NT (doesn't really matter) you can easily bid 3M with minimum and maximum hands, and show the strength later (or let partner show his strength). This clearly improves your slam bidding, since you'll always be able to cuebid at 4-level before using the precious 'Blacky'.

It's always clear to the other player if a slam auction is necessary. Examples:
1♠ - 2NT
3♠ - 3NT
4♠ (minimum hand, no cues given away)

1♠ - 2NT
3♠ - 3NT
4m (cue with maximum hand)

1♠ - 2NT
3♠ - 4m (not a minimum GF)

What lead with a 5-4 against NT?

Leads are one of the most difficult areas in bridge. You can see only 13 cards, every one of them can cause a disaster, and all you have for deciding which card you’ll play is an auction produced by your opponents which you can't trust. Some people even go so far to claim that the lead is a pure guess. I disagree completely! Imo for about 95% of the hands there's a clear indication what lead may be more successful than others. Sometimes there's a clue that you need an active or passive lead, or your partner showed you what to lead (or what not to lead by passing),...

There is however a figure that is still unsolved. Against NT contracts, especially 3NT, what suit is best to lead when you have a 5-4? Beginners learn to lead their longest suit, but we all know that beginners don't always learn to play the best bridge, they learn general rules. I know several people who really believe that in general, leading the 4 card suit is better, and I'm also one of them. When you have AKQJT-5432 it's obviously ridiculous, but in general with almost equal suits I've noticed that leading the 4 card suit usually gives a nice advantage over leading the 5 card suit. I've tested this already for a while, and got good results with it.

The strange thing is: it seldom loses. Leading a 5 card suit usually reaches partner's doubleton, and such suits usually split 4-2 in opponents' hands. So the length trick doesn't come in, and you give away a trick by playing the suit yourself. With the 4 card suit, you have more chance of reaching partner's 3 card suit, and he'll have lots of communication, even if the suit splits 4-2. Last friday was one of my latest successful experiment: I held Qx-Kxxxx-Kxxx-xx, the auction went (we were silent):
1♠ - 2♣
2NT - 3NT
I led a small ♦. Declarer had ♥Jxx opposite AQx in dummy, and ♦s split 3-3. 3NT was just made for a top, since everyone else led a ♥ and gave away 1 or 2 tricks.

Today I even did it with a 6-4, again with success! RHO had promised a stopper for my ♠AQ98xx suit, and my 4 card was ♦AJxx. Here I had a clear indication that my long suit wouldn’t be successful since partner also didn't ask for a ♠ lead after the cuebid, and we defeated 3NT with ease since partner had ♦Qxx in support and dummy came open with ♦Kx. :-)

I don’t have an archive on this, but I estimate about 3 out of 4 times it's a success when you use some common sense like I mentioned above. Perhaps we can get some proof when I can get someone to do some simulations on this (hint), but all the factors that are in play might make this quite difficult.

Spotting psychs

Psychs are a very interesting concept imo. They're allowed, but most of the time people really hate it when someone uses this trick against them. Lots of times you hear them react "how could I know", and in fact, sometimes it's indeed quite hard. However, most of the time, with a little tweak it's VERY easy! The most simple solution is to play penalty doubles in some situations.

One of the most frequent ones you'll encounter: your LHO opens with some ♥s, partner doubles or bids NT and RHO comes in with ♠. Example:
1♥ - Dbl - 1♠! - ???
The standard treatment of a double is takeout. However, if you use Dbl to show ♠ then the psych will be exposed to partner. You may wonder what to do with a hand without ♠. I'll throw a question back at you: how many times is a 1NT bid really useful in a normal auction? Fact is that you can rarely bid 1NT to make (you need a hand with stops in both Majors, and some constructive values, and not enough for 2NT), so use this as takeout double.

Without the penalty double, you'll get following auction quite 'frequently':
1♥ - Dbl - 1♠! - 1/2NT?
pass - ... - 2/3/4♥ - ???
Now it's too late to bid ♠. Ok, you know the 1♠ bid is 'probably' a psych, but that's all, and it's too much of a risk to bid 4♠ out of nothing. You should've shown the suit on the previous round, and let partner decide what to do.

Here's one I recently encountered:
2♥ - 2NT - 3♠! - Dbl
pass - pass - 4♥ - pass*
pass - 4♠ - all pass
(*) should be forcing
I bid 4♠ on a 3 card, since it was now clear what my LHO had. A nice try, but it got exposed. :-)

You cannot always use a penalty double ofcourse, many more times a takeout dbl is way more useful, so don't exaggerate. Most useful is after takeout doubles, or after 2NT overcalls (after weak two's).

Here's one I've pulled in competition last year. Opponents didn't have the tools and got to 5♣-1 instead of 4♠=:
2♥ - Dbl - 2♠! - Dbl
pass - 3♣ - pass - 3♥
pass - 3♠ - pass - 5♣
all pass

Many psychs can easily be discovered. Usually the psycher will support his partner's first suit, or do something unusual. Another example which might be considered a psych control:
1NT - Dbl - pass* - pass
2m!
1NT whatever range
Dbl showing penalty interest (most common after weak NT)
(*) forces opener to RDbl (either to play or pull as escape)
Now opener doesn't do what he's asked for. Guess what, he psyched the 1NT opening...

There are many more examples with 1NT openings:
1NT - pass - 2♦ - pass
pass!
With xxxx-x-KJxxxx-xx it's quite safe: partner will probably transfer to ♥ which you can pass, and if partner transfers to ♠ you'll have a 9+ card fit.

1NT - pass - 2♣ - pass
pass!
Similar, but more dangerous. "No double, no trouble".

Short on entry's

You hold 4-Q7-742-KQJT953 and the bidding goes:

pass - 1♠! - pass - 1NT!
pass - 2♣! - 2♥ - 3♣
pass - 3NT - pass - ???

1♠ = 14+HCP, 5+♠, forcing for 1 round
1NT = 0-9HCP, 0-2♠
2♣ = minimum and natural, or 18+HCP any
3♣ probably shows 6-9HCP and a ♣ length, no 2♠s.

Now it's decision time: will you let partner play 3NT, or will you put him in 4♣ or 5♣? It's clear partner has 18+HCP, but will he be able to reach your ♣s? Especially if you know a ♥ lead is coming, partner needs at least ♣Ax or xxx to be safe. That's why I was about to bid ♣. Now there's another question: is slam still possible? 4♣ would show slam interest, where 5♣ denies interest. Since we have no sure fit, and may well have 2 Aces or an AK outside, I decided slam was very far away and bid 5♣.

This was a huge success: partner had AKQJ3-A9642-K95-void. 3NT is a disaster, if they didn't intervene we'd probably end up in 4♥-1, 5♣ was laydown.