Bridge - please spot the errors :) : comments [Matthew's Journal]

Very much seconded on only playing conventions you *both* will fully remember. Even if you can use a convention, it often gets you to the same contract as not using it - only a few hands do you gain an advantage by using the convention. If you're more likely to forget the convention than it to be useful, best not to use it at all. Often simple is best. I lose count of the number of people I've played against at tournaments who play a million fancy conventions, but can't remember them (or even better, haven't considered what happens if I overcall over their conventions) giving me a good result through them just messing up.

I have never ever found any hand where I'd have found Gerber useful, or had it used against me successfully. I have gained lots of points on many occasions in tournaments by people attempting Gerber against me, and failing to rememeber it, and ending up in absolutely the wrong slam. My conclusion to this is to not play Gerber. And there are sometimes hands you really want a natural 4C bid.

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I think gerber may be useful if (a) you're trying to bid a no-trump slam in response to a no-trump bid and (b) you're not comfortable agreeing when 4NT/5NT will be blackwood and when they're to play (or invitational/quantitative). (I think experts would play something else there, but intermediates may prefer a specific non-NT ace-ask bid.) However, I'm not sure I ever HAVE seen that come up :) I agree in any other situation there's no point playing it :)

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Entirely agree in theory that there are hands that must exist where partner opens 1NT and you want to know how many aces in order to bid the slam. In reality I have never seen one (any hand that strong, you usually have 3 of the aces yourself, so you can just bid a small slam anyway).

In any other situation Gerber is madness and even more likely to be confused, particularly if the suit/NT hasn't been definitively agreed, or clubs have already been bid. I've even found pairs that play *any* bid of 4C anywhere, in *any* situation as Gerber. Rather them than me, frankly.

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I don't know if you know that whenever I see that (really cute!) icon, I read it as 'the previous comment is Wrong and Upsetting'. There are lots of times on the internet where I wish I could say that in such a polite and cute way, but I'm not sure you're really intending to communicate 'your suggestion one might occassionally want to play Gerber is deeply upsetting me'. Or maybe you did, in which case it worked :-)

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Ooops, sorry if the icon give you that idea. It's meant as it's says on the icon - something in the *world* is wrong, not the thing I am replying to is wrong. Usually I am in fact agreeing with the previous commenter that something is wrong in the world. In a cute way, of course :)

< -THIS is my cute icon for "the previous comment is wrong" (Which, I am purely using in this particular comment to show you the icon, nothing else is meant by it here)

Which reminds me, all of my icons are several years old now, and I really should find time to make new ones. Mainly cute and friendly ones. Maybe I need an icon for bridge?

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Whenever I see your "the world is wrong" icon I always read "the workl is wrong" and have a prolonged period of "huh?" before I manage to read it as "world".

This happens even if the last time I did exactly the same thing was only an hour ago or something.

Not that I necessarily think you need to change it, but, you know, iconchat.

(none of my icons are particularly thematic of anything).

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oh, what fun, I was just looking for this picture the other day, but having long since abandoned all my own userpics I didn't know it could still be found :D

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I think you gave it to me in the first place, so feel free to take it back!

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I've even found pairs that play *any* bid of 4C anywhere, in *any* situation as Gerber.

Yeah. I understand why people want to do this; they want to completely avoid ambiguity (and honestly, you don't often REALLY want to play in 4C, and these people are probably not using cue bids). But if they're not sure whether they want to be ace asking or not, ace asking probably won't help them...[1] As we say, it's rare that gerber is actually useful (I suppose it does have the advantage of letting you ace-ask a bit lower than 4NT, but that's most useful for bidding a club slam, when Gerber is the worst possible convention :)).

It's even more common to assume any 4NT is blackwood: most partnerships haven't agreed how strong a natural/quantitative 4NT should be anyway, so they almost never do use it for anything else, but it's still problematic to assume 4NT is ALWAYS Blackwood. (If only because it encoourages you to treat other conventions as pattern-matching a particular bid, rather than knowing what you expect your partner to be saying.)

[1] I'm sure I heard of someone playing roman key-card gerber, with the obvious meanings, although I don't know if they really did :)

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I'd be surprised to find someone who thought 1NT-4NT was blackwood!

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I agree it shouldn't be, and maybe everyone who was taught standard acol was taught to use 4NT as quantitative at the appropriate point, but I think lots of beginners may be taught blackwood and not be taught (or not remember) a quantitative 4NT, in which case I expect an even split between "oh 4NT, must be blackwood" and "no, wait, can't be Blackwood because we're already in NT, not sure". I think I've seen or experienced that, although I'm not sure.

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Matthew's Journal

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August