xxhong

Well, the tendency to open light is to open those distributional hands with good controls in modern bridge. I would open 1S with Axxxxx Axxxx x x and I wouldn't open 1S with Kxxxx Kxx QJx Qx. That basically means that I hope to find a fit in the first hand to play a game or slam facing a hand also has opening value or more. And the second hand, there is much smaller chance to make a game facing a minimum opening value hand. In that sense, I think modern bridge of course open light hands with a calculated risk and with a high potential reward. Therefore, I don't see any need to adjust responding style too much to cope with those light openings. Basically, if you find a fit, those light opening hands play well and you should just treat them as a normal hand. If you don't find a fit, you just bid 3NT and hope you don't get doubled and make it. After a 2/1 gf sequence, it is not an easy task to double 3NT even if you can defeat it for a few tricks. For bidding systems, SAYC is just an ancient system. It is still quite focused on finding the best partial and inviting too much. It may have some values in match point (not always, because game and slam bidding can also be very important in MP, and 2/1 can usually offer reasonable spots in partials as well), but the efficiency in game and slam bidding is much lower than 2/1, which is just against the score format of this game. So it is just a matter of time that people will eventually play a system that fits well with the score format. Also, one can play 2/1 without forcing 1NT. 2/1 principle just forms a gameforcing situation with game value. Therefore, if you have more ways to invite using bids other than 1NT or 3M, you really don't have to play a forcing 1NT IMO.

If partner has a very strong spade suit, you want to play in 4S usually. If partner has some level of fit in D, you want to play 5D. So you can probably just bid 4D here to show a good 6 card D suit or 7 card D suit and pass partner's 4S or 5D. Usually, 3S should deny 4 clubs, so you usually don't play very well in clubs and 4C should be a cuebid for S.

If 3H isn't forcing, you can probably just bid 3H here, which solves all the problems. 5H is a rather bad contract.

The basic algorithm of gib bidding is not to play NT when possible. That's due to two reason I think. One, the original meadowlark bidding database is very badly designed, which always require a few HCP more in your range to bid 3NT. Two, gib does double dummy analysis on a very limited sample size. Therefore, it often finds 3NT difficult after the perfect defense and gib rarely sets the constraints of the sample generating algorithm correct. This really needs a lot of work and I don't think bbo has the resource to improve it by a lot. Also, this is restricted by the computer performance. Of course, an ideal solution would be to buy a lot of high performance computer clusters and doing both double dummy analysis and single dummy analysis. Still, for now, I think there are ways to improve. The algorithm should be set to disallow removing from 3NT in most situations for non-freakish hands.

Yes, with 18-19 HCP, it is often a good idea to bid 2NT with stoppers IMO. If you double, facing a 2NT bid by partner, which forces to 3C, you may not like it at all with club doubletons. Also, you may not like to see partner jump to 4 level in the doubleton when you can make 3NT easily if you bid 2NT and get raised. Of course you may not make 2NT sometimes, but they may not double you either. In some sense, 1x 2Y p p 2NT is safer than 2y p p 2NT, because 2Y's partner may hold a big misfitted hand to double you in the second auction and in the first auction, 2Y's partner usually don't have much value.

5S is a huge underbid IMO. What would your poor partner bid with something like - AKxxx AKx Axxxx? RKC with this hand is very practical. Raising 3S to 4S with stiff K is really not my cup of tea. Of course, you may play some 4S when 3NT goes down sometimes. However, it distorts your shape and sometimes, you really should play in 3NT. Your partner may hold some useful cards in hearts or clubs to help you to make 3NT sometimes. Still, even if you decide to bid 5S, opener can still cuebid to try for 7. Here, 5NT should show odd number of KC and 6 level cuebids should show even number of KC.

2C( we open lighter 2C than most) 2D(GF) 2H 2S(H<=2) 2N(H>=5) 3D(4+) 3S(4+) 4C(Some kind of slam interest in S) 4D(Cue) 4S(enough) pass

I actually don't play support doubles, because it is sometimes difficult to show a strong (semi)balanced hand without S stopper. For example: xxx AK AKxx KQxx after 1D 1H 1S 2H, double looks good here and 3C is probably unattractive. Or sometimes, you may have some distributional hands that is not strong enough to reverse. For example, x AKxx xxx AQJxx after 1C 1D 1S 2D, double feels better. For those who play support doubles, they may have to pass 2D here.

1H 1S 3C 3S 3N 4H(transfer to S) 4S 4N(RKC) 5C 5N 6D(DK) 7NT If you start from 2C 2C 3S (set up trumps) 4N 5C 5D 5N 6D(DK) 7D(DQ) 7NT

If a partnership decides to rebid 1NT with singleton in responder's suit, One should probably always open 1C with a few exceptions. This treatment is good in many ways, 1NT rebid keeps the bidding low and makes further exploration of the right suit easy because of the two way checkback. Suppose the bidding goes like: 1C 1S 1N 2D(gf checkback) 3D, you have pretty much shown all your features, point range, shape. Those who open 1C then rebid 2C or 1D then rebid 2C would have a difficult time to reach this bidding accuracy. Also, if you open 1D and rebid 2C, you always get your suit length correct, which is extremely important for game and slam bidding. The draw back is that sometimes, you may miss 5-3 fit in 2M. Still, if you focus on games and slams, this is just a minor issue IMO. The exceptions not to open 1C with 4-5 are hands with very weak clubs and balanced or semibalanced with 15-16 HCPs (or 14-16 if you play 14-16 1NT). AK Kx AJxx xxxxx, this is certainly a 1NT opening to me. Sometimes, you may have a big headache, AKQ x AQxx xxxxx, this hand is not strong enough to reverse, no good to open 1NT and the club suit is too weak to rebid 2C. You can probably open 1C, then underbid 1N over 1H and underbid 2S over 1S. Or you can open 1NT and hope partner doesn't hold 6 hearts or 5 hearts weak hand, or you can just open 1C and rebid 2C, hoping partner can move on or hold some club support.

If you play low to discourage and your partner always give low no matter what, that indeed covers a high percentage times when the "signal" and the situation are consistent. That doesn't really mean there is a signal system. Gib basically plays either the lowest card or the highest it doesn't think may cost a trick (here, in many situations, it does cost a trick). That's pretty much all gib plays. I never think Ginsberg wrote anything in defensive carding signals for gib. BBO has never modified the playing part of gib. Gib's defensive plays are largely dependent upon double dummy simulations and it is very poor on the first two tricks because of the huge sample size. There is basically no reasoning, no understanding of the previous plays, no signals, no concrete trick counting and only simulations in a very limited sample size. Actually that's also the major weakness of gib's declaring play. The fate of the contract is often dependent upon the first two tricks.

Both should be penalties. No point to play weak takeouts here because the nowadays' takeout is light enough against 1D. Most would double 1D with Axxx KQxx xx Qxx and many would double 1D with Axxx KQxx xx Jxx too. Penalty doubles can be really juicy in such kind of sequences IMO.

Gib plays no defensive signals at all. Basically, gib's declaring and defense have never been modified by BBO I think. All BBO has done was to improve gib's bidding. The most significant change is the 1NT opening and 4NT RKC. Still, some very basic designs are missing, including a very simple trick count method for declaring, defending, claiming and bidding. The bidding of gib is never based on trick count. It is mostly based on points or high card points and often mess the points and HCP up in NT biddings. Without the basic trick counting, gib rarely makes good decisions at grandslam bidding after RKC.

Bridge is a game of partnership. So to fairly evaluate gib, we can only compare the partnership strength. IMO, gib partnership is much weaker than most of the set partnerships, playing on BBO. So the claim that gib plays equal or better bridge than average bboer isn't very solid IMO.

IMO, the simulation should never overrule systems. Basically, the gib system has many holes (either undefined bids or redundant bids or bids without logic). Still, the bidding should be based on the system, not the random simulations. IMO, a simulation should only be invoked when there are multiple possible systemic bids to decide which bid is better. This single improvement would make gib much more playable than its current version. Now gib can reject a systemic bid, when the simulation says that a ridiculous non-systemic bid may produce a higher score in a very limited sampling set. Therefore, gib is often seen to break its own system. For example, in strong jumpshift auctions, gib is often seen to jumpshift and rebid its suit with very broken 5 card suit (sometimes Axxxx), which represents a solid 6 cards or longer suit, just because of the favorable simulation results from a very limited sample set. In bridge bidding theory, a lot of conventions are strictly designed with very very few flaws. Therefore, a system abuse is usually the road to disasters and unpleasant experiences playing with gib. Also, the same is true for defensive plays I believe. A signal system should be respected and the design of the defensive plays should respect that signal system and make plays according to the defensive signals. Therefore, a simulation should be invoked only when there are multiple choices which are not against the current signals. A complete defensive signal may not be easy to develop. However, a simple leading convention, a signal on the first trick and a discard signal on the first discard should be relatively easy to implement and respected.

p p 1H 2D(3 hearts, limit raise in H) 3H(slam interest, 6+ H, balanced) 4C(cuebid) 4D(last train) 4S(RKC) 4N(1 or 4) 5S(no side king, but we have all KCs) 6C(CK) 7NT

Opening 1C then rebid 1NT would make it very difficult to show 6 clubs in latter rounds. Usually, my bidding design is not for one shot business. Rebidding 2C would allow to explore more different possibilities when you belong to games or slams. When the suit is weak, you may miss more good games or slams when partner also holds some not so strong but long support,which often swing the game if you have the device to find the 6-4 fit in games or slams. In some sense, 2C rebid looks ugly, but effective when you find fit. 1NT looks nicer, but doesn't really solve a lot of problems.

It is playable, but you may go down in a lot of 2NTs. Also, you have to overbid 3NT with 18 HCP. IMO, a better solution would be to rebid 2NT to show good 16 to 18 and open 1NT with 15 to normal 16. Opening 1NT with 5 M and 17 can often be rather bad when partner holds some shapely (or even balanced) 7-8 HCP with 4 cards support.

1C 1H 2D 2S(5+H, gf) 2N(natural, denies 3H, 5D) 3C( may still belong to 5C or 4H when partner's D is very weak, also, this 3C shows 3 clubs) 3D(value showing, denies doubleton H) 3NT(no need to show 6 hearts, usually slam shouldn't be good) 4H(stiff honor, super maximum, 3-1-4-5 shape) 6C(stiff D, SK, CK and HQ should offer some plays)

With weak 6 card minors, it is usually a good idea to open 1m and rebid 2m, even in the range of 15 or some bad 16 HCP. One reason for this treatment is that such kind of hands can be very very powerful when a fit in the minor is found and when there is no good fit, it is often not too bad to stay out of games. After 1NT opening, usually such kind of features are not easy to show. In my system, the hand can be bid as: 1C 1S 2C 3D( shortness, 4+C, here splinter stiff K is fine, cause you don't really need partner's Q for pitches) 3H(cue) 3S(long spades) 4D(RKC) 4N(two KC, no Q) 6C ( since you know partner shows 4+C, C Q is usually not needed to have some play in C. )

2D(about 19-20 HCP or 8 to 8.5 playing tricks) 2H(relayed) 3D(D one suiter, 6+ D) 3H(5+ H, gf) 3S(S value) 3N (suggest to play there) 4D(very extreme shape and short H) 5D( to play)

I think it's a penalty double. In my opinion, a take-out double can only be made when partner is allowed to pass with some certain hand types. Here, 2H denies S length.

There is a very basic idea of bridge bidding: usually bid your longest suit first then shorter suits later if that bid doesn't overstate your strength or length. Now you are asking "what can I do if I throw a needle into the ocean and want to get it back?".

Here, I play 2S as a relay to 2NT and sign offs (of course, opener can break the relay with gf values). So 2NT shows 5+ S and gameforcing. With this in mind, it would be quite easy to handle this hand: 1D 1S 2H 2N(5+ S, gf) 3C(the direction is unclear, 3NT is not an option, also no 3 spades, 6D or 5H) 3S(6 S) 4D(cuebid) 4H(last train, showing C control) 4N(RKC) 5S(two kc with SQ) 6D(DK, trying to find out whether partner holds DJ or HQ to bid 7NT) 6S 7D(DQ) 7S(denies HQ or DJ)

You can probably play 1S 3C as setting up trumps in C. Otherwise, you have to bid 2C then 4C to set up trumps.