In the last video of the “transfer series”, I show three other situations where transfers can be useful:
- Over an opposing takeout double,
- After partner overcalls and RHO passes, and
- After partner preempts (this is a definite minority treatment)
In all 3 cases, the common theme is we’d sometimes like to bid a suit in a “forcing” way and sometimes in a “non-forcing” way. Transfers unite both of these handtypes.
PS I promise I will stop talking about transfers!
Comments
2 responses to “Video: more transfers by gwnn”
Hello Csaba Daday,
Q: With a transfer the opps get an (almost) freeby bidding round. Giving them an competitive edge. Does in your opinion the benefit of weak/strong options and keeping the opening hand hidden weigh stronger then allowing opps to keep freely in the bidding.
Dominique
Hey Dominique,
That’s a very fair question. Opponents will get one more bite at the apple. The main advantage of transfers is not, however, rightsiding (except for the “transfer to 3NT” gadget) – it is usually that we are allowed to make a forcing and a non-forcing call at the same time. With forcing strength, we bid on, with non-forcing strength, we just pass. This is the main reason of using transfers in competitive auctions, not really to have the stronger hand declare. That can change half a trick here or there but being able to act on more hands can change entire game or double game swings.
This also depends on the situation a lot and we need to be careful lest we compare apples and oranges. For example, suppose I have a “nonforcing diamond” hand and it goes:
1C-1S-p-2C
p-2D-p-p
p
It is true that I gave the opponents more chances to act. In particular, opener could have acted twice (over 2C and at the very end) instead of once.
But we have to remember that if we had played 2D as forcing, the auction would have gone
1C-1S-p-p; p!
And we didn’t get to show our diamonds or to make sure our partner isn’t maximum. So passing is a bit sad too. Playing a NF 2D advance (actually my preferred method) also has its drawbacks when we feel too strong for it. Transfer advances allow us to show both of these hand types at the same time.
The same goes for, say
1S-(2H)-p with a 6-card club suit and a decent but far from game forcing hand. I’d like to show that hand, and transferring allows me to do it. Here, a natural and GF 3C would be a serious overbid. (A lebensohl 2NT would be an option, but then we wouldn’t know what 3rd hand’s suit is if 4th hand bumps to 4H.)
So overall I would say there are definite pros and cons to it, and in these presentations I purposefully concentrated on the pros. The comparison of the natural and transfers gets complicated though because transfers, as a rule, unite more than one hand type, so we have to try to add up the gains on one type with the losses on another type.
I hope this at least somewhat helped 🙂
Csaba