Canape Alert
Should an opening bid of 1S which could have a longer heart suit be alerted? My partner and I play 1C which could have longer diamonds and announce as such but a pair opened 1S with 4 spades and 5 hearts this evening - I politely asked if they do so regularly and said yes if weak (meaning, I assume, weak for an opening bid, which his hand was). So I'm assuming that's systemic but they don't ALWAYS open 1S when they have 4 spades and 5 hearts, and, as far as I can see, the blue book only requires an alert if they always open a specific two-suiter in a certain way that shows the shorter suit. It seems illogical to me that this shouldn't have to be alerted (given it can't be announced) so I expect I have misread or missed something somewhere but any thoughts welcome.
Comments
I would personally bracket this under having an agreement to systemically open (some) hands with 4 spades and 5 hearts 1S. The Blue Book does mention a slightly different example of a 1S opener that is canape only with some two suiters as still being alertable.
It's certainly in my mind a potentially unexpected meaning, although to the pair in question I expect it just seems the obvious way to bid those hands.
The 1S opening should definitely be alerted. It is an unexpected meaning(to most opponents) so 4B1B of the blue book applies.
I think that frequency might play a part here - if this a couple of times a year thing, then I really don't care that this might be a thing after the 1S open.
However, if this is only done with S and H, then after something like, 1S - 1N - 2H: now I think an alert of 2H might be warranted?
After 1S open, perhaps 4S and 5H might be expected 1 in 100 or more hands... but after the 2H rebid, it might be closer to 1 in 5 or 10 hands for that auction?
It might affect me if I have a marginal 2H overcall over a 1S opening. In any event in England you don't have a choice. If it may be canape it is alertable.
Many pairs will open, e.g., 1H when they have a hand with five hearts and six clubs. I don't think that makes the bid alertable.
I think with both majors 5-6 would seem unusual, I agree that the handling of 6-5 minor / major 2 suiters often is to open the major, that wouldn't surprise me. That's just my own reaction though, so comes with the usual amount of caveats about my bridge judgement.
The player who opens 5H and 6D 1H will, typically, perhaps have no agreement with partner to do so but might open 1H if they thought they would have rebid problems. It is a sufficiently rare hand type that there is not likely to be an agreement to do so (partner will assume that 1H 1S 2D is longer length in hearts or perhaps equal) but if is routine to do it then it is definitely alertable. For example 1D 1S 2C in Precision will usually have longer clubs, many sequences will for the small number who play Blue Club so the opponents ought to know this is a possibility both for their potential actions in the auction and also for leading purposes.
Well, for many partnerships it's routine (and often even an explicit agreement) to do it with 6C+5H but that hand type is rare, and the bid is still pretty much naturally showing hearts (and will almost always have hearts as the longest or equal-longest suit). So alerting that it's a possibility every time you opened 1H would be something of a useless or even negatively useful alert; likewise, a "could have 6 clubs" announcement upon opening 1H is going to confuse a lot of pairs and hardly help any. I guess there's a discussion to be had about "when do you alert a rare possibility when the bid is usually normal?"; alerting it immediately tends to overemphasize the rare hand type, but delaying the alert might for some players be too late.
(The 1D…2C example in Precision is somewhat different, as it contains 5C+4D hands which are fairly common, and in general the 1D opening is only marginally more likely to have diamonds as its longest suit than it is to have clubs as its longest suit.)
An example from a system I often play: (1NT), X=4+/4+ in spades and another, (P), 2H almost always shows 3+ spades and more hearts than spades, and that's how I alert it. The 2H advance is also used in theory for a weak hand with long hearts – even without a spade fit – but that hand type has never actually come up in that sequence and we generally assume it doesn't exist in the subsequent bidding (presumably unless advancer corrects spades to hearts). Does it make sense to alert the opponents to the unlikely possibility immediately upon the 2H bid, or does it make more sense to delay the alert until there's some evidence that the rare hand type has actually occurred? (This is mostly hypothetical – my partners have enough trouble remembering the common possibilities that there isn't an agreement about the rare ones to alert – but I'm interested in what the alert would be if both partners had a full agreement about the entire system.)