Chamaco

Right, here we are talking SAYC or 2/1. That's why I think 2C is nonforcing over 1NT in these systems. If so, it does limit opener's hand

I do not hate technology: if someone uses a new technology to improve teaching or the level of documenatton and play, then it's great. For instance, the tools Fred introduced (Bridgemaster, BBO, and now Full Disclosure) are indeed revolutionary, but they do not drop the quality of the products, they indeed enhance them. Instead, when you do use large AMOUNT of data, but lose depth and originality in the coverage, that's where we lose quality. Technology is not evil: if hi-tech is used for a better product, I am all for that.

Alekhine played and wrote in the years 1910-30s. Besides, he was universally considered one of the most objective commentators of the time, one that introduced the modern way of commentary (the same followed by Bronstein in one of the best books of all time, the commentary of the Zurich 1953 tournament). Many think that especially his ability in annotating, leaning from errors, and selfcriticisms is what led him to defeat Capablanca in the world title match. Capablanca or Nimzowitsch articles/books (same period) appear to the modern reader even worse in terms of dogmatism, and we are talking of really great players. It is only natural that all of these books seem overly simplified to the reader of the 2000, in between we had many generations of other authors that have elaborated many nuances from the time these giants were playing :-) If any of them was living, playing and writing today, he's be writing ina different way and most of its articles would go over our head, trust me ;)

I believe that with this hand it is reasonable to invite even opposite a 10-15 opener

Sure Arend, but then be sure to avoid using the Ireland flag and to call certain TDs for adjustment ;)

That's fair, but when I decide to do that, I would not buy a book. Buying a book that titles "I fought the law", I expect a *somewhat* but not *totally* biased analysis: I know pretty darn well that the Law fails in given hands (I paid my prices for that), and indeed I wanted a good read about that that would add more to the subject, besides the adjustments mentioned by Cohen in "Following the law". But, buying a book with such a title I expected an analysis more detached and objective. As it is, the analysis is pure desctructive: it appears that the LOTT is close to useless, which is not true either. This is rather annoying: if, like you correctly say, the only reliable approach is "do your homework" (which I do) then I'll stop buying bridge books, but that would be sad, meaning that bridge authors are not capable to analyze some topics with a decent deal of objectivity. The part of the book that has some values is the one on their method to compute trick-taking potential, although the results are often very close to the application of a straightforward and oversimplified method such as LTC. Besides, it's not really what one expects to get when he buys a book with such a title... ====== What makes me even more sour is the fact that for me this is a "deja vu" from the chess literature. Pre 1995 chess literature had a good standard, because every book chapter had real contents, selected by human persons with specific cases histories that were fitting with a given topic. Then, starting the mid 90s, the big databases became available, and the quality of many books dropped. Lots of books became just big database dumps, because dumping and analyzing by PC lots of data became quite fast, quite faster than writing a REAL book, and putting real effort in analyzing single, complicated, and deep positions. This "Fought the Law" book gave to me the same impression, in a way.

The even darker side would be to play that 2D shows any type of reverse (regardless of diamonds), to be clarified later, but that goes beyond the scope of this thread I think.

That is true, but the book is presented under the aura of "making an objective statistical analysis". It should be pretty clear that it is not so. As far as being a book for a general audience, I have nothing against that, as long as this is quite clear, and that the critics are not biased with carefully chosen examples Sure, I agree on this. I disagree. If he wants to bring these examples, it's ok, but then he should mention that Cohen himself would downgrade hands with mirrred shapes or duplication of values or 4333. You cannot criticize a hand evaluation methods based on its misapplication, this goes beyond good faith. I agree and I like "food for thought", but I do think that this should be done in a fair way. There are many examples where the law fails genuinely and these examples are very interesting, but using systematically examples where it fails because applied in the wrong context does not seem to me the proper way to "feed" any thoughts ;)

Salut Alain :-) I have the same problem: Firewall from work , so could not connect... :unsure:

Their suggested method sure seems a good one, but my point was that it is not an alternative to the LOTT, because it has different purposes: the LOTT goal is to find the PAR of the hand, even if you go down (because opps have a beter score), the FTL method just tries to compute how many tricks your side can make, regardless of the opps potential. That's a competely different story, and that's why it is silly to compare the 2 methods. ===== I'll repeat here that I am not criticizing their suggested method, but I strongly dislike the inappropriate way they attacked the theory of the LOTT: they used biased examples and inappropriate statistics.

Justin, make your example hand a bit stronger. Would you pass even holding QJTxx AJx xx xxx ? This is not an invitational hand, it plays about one trick less than a limit, and if he 3H bid shows an invitation, here we cannot bid 3H. I am inclined to think that bidding an immediate constructive 2H would avoid this headache, what do you think?

Roland, I am confused: :unsure: do you suggest this sequence if 1NT is forcing or if 1NT is NON forcing ? If 1NT was forcing, doesn't this also sacrifice the natural 2NT invite ? :unsure:

Thinking about it, I am more inclined to use 1S:1NT* as SEMIforcing, so that hands that would not accept any invitation would not rebid. It seems to me that this might solve the problem, since after 1S:1NT:2H/S, an invitational responder just bid game, hence any 3-level suit bid by responder is signoff. The 2 difficulties left are: 1- missing an 8 card major fir when responder is very weak or invitational with 3 card support 2- the way responder shall force to game with a long minor and an invitational hand: if he just bashes to 3NT, sometimes he will go down when 5m is cold; if he just bids 4/5m, sometimes a laydown 3NT will be missed. Comments ?

However, it important to draw a line in the strength required to show spades before showing a fit (when the fit does exist and it's not a mere preference) Otherwise, the dreaded competitive auction wil be hard to handle: 1H-(p)-1S-(3D) p-(p)-? Now, is 3H invitational or simply constructive but less than invitational ?

Flame, u are in good company , I have the same problem :-)

Meanwhile, I would strongly advocate playing 1♠:2♣ as not quite game forcing, which has many advantages, one of which is that you can use 1♠:1NT,2x:3♣ as good-bad. But you lose the option of signing off in 3C with a long, weak minor, say x-x-xxx-AJTxxxxx With such a hand, you don't want to pass the 1S opening, you don't want to preference to 2S, you just want to play 3 clubs, and I think 1NT forcing structure should be oriented to allow partscores in 3m. On the other hand, 1M:3C are used by many (including myself) as artificial raises, so the use of the immediate 3C response for weak or invitational hands wit a long minor is not available. === Besides, the use of 3C as good bad would be unoptimal when opener's rebid is 2D or when bidding goes 1H:1NT:2H; in that case, the most efficient puppet bid is the first unbid suit at the 2 level.

Doesn't 5H make too, guessing diamonds right ? BTW, It seems that 5C makes and is not down 1, if we guess spades (indeed, no need to guess, the J drops automatically under the K at 2nd round of the suit)

No, I posted an example hand with only 5 spades and 5-2-1-5 shape that deos not want to play 1NT and does not want to rebid 2S with a Kxxxx suit :-) There are many hands where the 5-2 fit in H will play better than NT, and IMO it is reasonable that a simple rebid in 2 of opener's major is NOT an invitation but simply a signoff :-) Of couse, since the original post referred to "expert" standard, thre is the addition point that most experts play some sort of 2-way checkback, resolving altogether the ambiguity. :P

Artificial. I cannot think of anythink but a good artificial raise of pard's minor. Opener has already limited his hand to a minimum, and responder has suggested a signoff in diamonds. The only reason to keep the auction open can be based on reevaluation based on a fit. Is 3C invitational or signoff ? If it is signoff, the case is similar to the above (3D shows a fit in responder's long minor). If it is invitational, it can be used either to checkback for (half?) stopper, or to show a fit. Artificial.Seems like a 5-4-0-4 shape with some slam ambitions. Natural, 4-4-0-5 shape, reverse strength. ========================================== The rules I can think of are: - when both opener have limited their hands, but opener still keeps the auction alive, that can be based only on some sort of fit. - when opener (or responder) bypasses 3NT with a new suit, that implies some sort of fit, usually (but not necessarily) for the last bid major.

The impossble pairing in late rounds of a swiss used to be a problem when it had to be done manually, but nowadays it's over. In Chess tournaments, that use Swiss pairings all the times (indeed the pairing system used in bridge was borrowed by chess events), this is routinely avoided without hassles. There are SW programs for Swiss pairings, so that would not be a problem.

Right, and there are many weak hand types that will want to signoff in 2M and not in 1NT even holding doubleton support.

The book is not quite well documented: there are MENTIONED the summary of hundreds of hands, but the precise conditions of the analysis and simulations are not illustrated. A "well-documented" summary usually should allow the readers to verify whether he can agree/disagree with the boundary conditions, as well as to double check if there are mistakes. Basically, "well-documented" means delivering access to the raw data and the methods, to enable someone else to verify whether te math analysis might output a different hypothesis than the one presented by the authors. Also, claiming that LOTT fails when it deviates by ONE TOTAL TRICK is very silly: ONE TOTAL TRICK means more or less half a level, that is, the margin that is left to hand evaluation and adjustments. If we indeed consider the times when the LOTT deviats by at most +/- 1 TOTAL TRICK, the % of success is quite significant (if I recall correctly, in the 75-80% range). Finally, the most interesting parts of such books are concrete hands and examples, but the chosen examples are carefully selected for worse case conditions (4333, shape duplications and /or duplication of values). But such factors are used to adjust in ANY method: Cohen suggested it in his 2nd book, and in any case they should be used even in more traditional evaluation methods (e.g. Lawrence's book on Hand evaluation). Hence, the documentation and the argumentation is very partial, and above all absolutely UNSCIENTIFIC, despite the way the data are presented might lead a naive reader to believe that the analysis is objective. The misuse of statistics can demonstrate almost any nonsense, if one can play with numbers and select the right case histories.

What's worse a. stretching to double with 4333, bad shape but no wasted honors ? or b. pulling pard's double of 4S ?

This is not quite true. Lawrence's book criticizes the Law bringing up unfair examples, e.g. examples with duplication of shape/values, and other minuses that were already addressed by Cohen as "needing adjustments". He goes on using statistics in an unfair way to say how man times the law does not work. Finally, he suggests using a method of numericaly assessing the trick-tacking potential, that is NOT a real, practical, alternative to the Law, because it has different purposes (the Law tries to assess whether a jump raise will be a good sac opposite the alternative contract by opps, FTL just tries to assess whether we'll go down, regardless of which alternative contract opps have). So, it's fair to say that the Law of Total Trick is not a Law. It is also fair to say that often it fails and that it should not be used as a panacea. But the way it was done specifically in the book sounds more like a battle of religion and/or a marketing affair. Critics are always food for thought, but bringing down an opposing theory by using unfair examples and a misuse of statistics is bad.

1. 1M rebid by opener has little to lose and much to gain to be treated as 100% forcing. I'd play it as forcing, and have met lots of good players that do so 2. 1H-1S-1N-2H I do not think it's a limit raise, but is more likely to be doubleton weakish/constructive preference in unbalanced hand. For example: Kxxxx-Jx-x-Axxxx Moreover, thinking of "expert standard", most experts nowadays would go via NMF or Roudi or 2Way Checkback to show invitational or GF values. However, holding 3 card heart supprot and 4+ spades, I'd raise immediately to 2H concealing spades if my values are less than invitational.