Cthulhu D

Yeah, this is one of those times where you randomly get lucky and make 6... you don't want to count on getting a lucky in game vs slam (whereas you might want to aim to be a bit lucky in game vs part score).

I think a really big question you want to resolve if you're going to play transfer responses is if you want the accept to be exactly three card support or a weak NT. This decision ripples through your entire design. However, I like the moving the 20-21 hands into 2C and having the stronger hands in 2NT. I'm not sure I'm going to do it, but I see the advantage. how often do you get pre-empted?

No - you have invites available after 1C-1red-1NT so you can have a broader range of NT and still manage with precision. So our ladder is 11-13 1C, accepting the transfer 14-16 1NT 17-19 1C, rebidding 1NT 20-21 2NT 22+ 2C using Kokish.

I think if you can manage the 17-19 rebid, 14-16 is significantly better than 15-17, particularly if you're already playing 14+-17 1NT. This depends on some big bidding theory assumptions, specifically: Opening light in a minor or NT is good, opening light in a major is good in the first seat. In teams when one team opens 1NT and the other team opens 1C, the 1NT opener is better particular the weaker the 1NT opener is. These assumptions may not be true though.

We played this for a while (11-13 when it seemed good, 14-16 rest of the time) in a 5 card major, short club, unbalanced diamond context. We tossed it because it adds a lot of complexity - in auctions you don't expect. Your support doubles work differently depending on what the vulnerability is. We'd decided 5332 hands are 1NT hands to improve the quality of other constructive auctions, so it's felt there. It obviously has a huge impact on your minor suit openers (though for us that's 1C). It changes how you want to play transfer walsh. It's very tough, what feels like it should be a minor change has ripple effects through the rest of your system in constructive and competitive auctions that is hard to design for remember. If you can handle that memory load of running two cards, I suspect it's a winner. We make enough mistakes running one card and so have the 14-16 NT range with T-walsh opening all 11 counts approach and think that's the best solution for us.

A lot depends on your friends here. If they are systems thinkers its a lot easier. My observations: Go with a simple but aggressive opening system (EHAA is my preferred here). My rationale is: People tend to enjoy bidding, and the high level problems with no support or guidance EHAA gives you are awesome because they don't require you to teach anyone anything by rote! 'What should I be doing here? I dunno, maybe double?' The other advantage EHAA has is that the openings and overcalls are the same, so less for people to remember. (Maybe get them to play a strong NT instead of weak overcalls.. or don't! Whatever). This is very easy to remember - you you can teach someone all the opening bids very quickly and the qucik reference card is very simple. You might even want to skate over that you shouldn't open your 4441 12 count with 1NT to make it even simpler. If they are systems thinkers, teach them some very basic principles: open your longest suit if two are tied so you can make the cheaper rebid later, you are looking for 8 card fits, 25 points is enough to bid 3NT or 4 something, how you limit your hand (by making a raise or bidding NT), a new suit by an unlimited responder is forcing, and slow arrival so 1H-2H is somehting, 1H-3H is more, and 1H-4H is even more) Then let people go for it. They will have a bunch of crap auctions, but don't worry about it. Don't bother with the exceptions and everything else. You need to get people through 24 hands at most, of which half they won't even have the balance of the points so most of the junk won't come up. I wouldn't even bother with Stayman.

I think this is the most important bid to make - partner will have a way better idea of what to do then even if he doesn't know where 3 of your minor suit cards are.

This guy is a dick. I don't know why people get on their partners in casual games or even ever. What are you going to achieve? The bit I've bolded is very telling IMHO. One thing I might suggest is find someone in the 0-20 games that you've played with and have good chemistry with and see if they want to swing by the 0-500 game some time and see if that works better for you. Doesn't have to be a serious 'partnership' just suggest a one time thing and if it works out suggest doing it again. Similarly ask the director if any other players might be looking for a new partner and seeing if they want to play and see if you have good chemistry with them rather than relying on the speed date at the start of the night.

The stats that exist suggest that opening light without spades is a good plan. So I'm probably going to open all of them as 12 is hardly light. Then it's just a matter of dealing with the consequences systemically. I play a 14-16 NT with a short club, so these are all obvious 1C openers. Partner is primed to expect a balanced 11 count so these are all fine. You might be better off playing better minor s partner is more likely to find your useful honors with a lead. But either way open Analysis of opening 1X vs Pass: http://www.rpbridge.net/9x41.htm

Jeff Goldmsith has the interesting take that even if passing a forcing bid is right on the hand infront of you, the lasting effect on the partnership means its not worth it: Partner may in the future decide to take more extreme action for fear of you passing a forcing bid.

I probably could, but I don't want to because it would add memory load due to the asymmetry between 1H and 1S response structure. It's super simple so 1D-1S-2C is hearts, if it was diamonds would be a lot easier to do what you suggest.

We play a 'simple' transfer rebid structure. So 1D-1S-1NT is clubs, NF. I'm aware of the technical merits of playing it forcing, but partner doesn't want to and it's not worth the effort to change it for this partnership. (It's all the result of what is actually probably a mistaken design principle! We've agreed to maximize the opportunities to play 1NT when game isn't on and as such 1NT is basically not forcing whenever it is bid. But the results of analysis say we should probably play more 4-3 major fits. However, the principle echos through the entire system and I have no real desire to do anything about it because the cost of changing is high relative to the marginal benefits). Whoops! We play 4 *diamonds* as the 6D5H heart hand currently and 4H is undefined. So we probably have both open! My bad, I've edited the OP. I like the suggestions that 4H and 4D are basically two variants on 'very shapely red hand, I care more or less about side suit aces' My general comment is I don't like saying A: XYZ B: EFG C: etc etc because these bids are generally infrequent. To ease the memory load I always want to have a principles based allocation of hand types to bid. My currently principles are 1) Double jumps in new suits are splinters 2) 2NT is an artificial raise (and surprise surprise the situations where it isn't 1H-2NT has been forgotten more than once). \ 3) Jumping to game is generally fast arrival and a weaker action 4) Double jumps in my suit or partners suit is... ?!?! So I guess I'm really asking what should a double jump in my suit or partners suit be generally. It probably makes most sense for it to be a picture bid with the balance of firepower in 2H

Discussion elsewhere here made me realise something. We've got the following bids available for big hands with 4 card support (also needs to pick up 6D3M with 17+ as well) after 1D (always unbalanced)-1H: 2NT 3S 4C 4D 4H What principles would you use when allocating hands to the bids? I try and keep principles in mind, so maybe I should play that splintering emphasizes the shortness and 2NT emphasizes the diamonds? The relevant hand shapes to put across the bids are roughly. 4D4M41 5D4M31 6D3M22 6D3M31 6D4M21 6D5M11 6D5M20 Currently I allocate it. 2NT: 17+ with 4M or 3M 6D 3S: Splinter 4C: Splinter 4D: 6D 5H That doesn't of course tell you when you should be considering a splinter over 2NT and visa versa.

Ugh I cannot edit - I'd pass 5, and probably 6.

If these were heart hands I'd open all of them without thinking twice. The stats seem to suggest balancing back in with spades is better than preemptively opening with them. However with my regular partner I play a 14-16 NT so I'd open all of these.

Playing 1H-1S-?? if you want to play strong stuff you can just play transfers here 1NT: Clubs 2C: Diamonds or strong, now you can stop in 2D as well if you want. 2D: 6+ hearts 2H: 5 hearts 4 spades 2S: Reverse But I think 1NT: Diamonds 2C: Clubs or Gazilli 2D: 6+ hearts 2H: 5 hearts 4 spades might be a bit better. Now you have 1H-1S-1NT-2C as a noise. Now you have lots of sequences, because you can show hearts by 1H-1S-2D then moving again, 2D then passing 2H, 3H directly, 2H via 2C, and 3H via 2C - which means I'd suggest devoting more bids in the 'Gazilli' bid to various strong diamond hands.

If you play transfer responses to one club, you could split the range. So you could do 1NT: 11-13 1C-1X-Accept the transfer: 14-16 1C-1X-1NT: 17-19 2NT: 20-21 2C-2D-2NT: 22-23 Etc

You have two things you want to do: A) Discuss whether to play 3NT vs 4S on this sort of auction without a direct raise. B) Discuss whether we want to play a slam. You've got 5 bids and two questions, so you can do a lot of stuff.

Edit: Whoops Yeah, so opener should rebid 2NT not 2H as he has a 22-23 NT hand, and then you can do everything nicely.

Stephen Tu has it dead right. I think it really comes down to, you have two flex bids unless you are a very serious partnership (3S, 4C) and if you're playing texas you also have 4S so the question is how can you use this space. Everything else (3C, 3D, 3H, 4D, 4H is showing the majors). We use 3S as a relay to 3NT and then: 4C Club single suiter 4D diamond single suiter 4H Both minors short hearts 4S both minors, short spades 4N 2=2=(45) slam try 5C both minors, no slam intrest 4S is 4-4 minors slam force. This structure isn't the greatest because we cannot disambiguate 2=2=5=4 from 2=2=4=5, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make (You could do that if you played 4H = short spades etc, but I'm not going to do that because it's too hard to remember). 2NT-3NT isn't a flex bid because this auction doesn't happen very often so you'll forget.

[hv=d=n&v=0&b=1&a=1c1s3d]133|100[/hv] What's the best use for double here? Related question, if it's support, how many does double show?

I kind of wonder if a 11-13 NT isn't a better solution.

I feel like Wilkosz is 'obviously' good because it's a very well defined opening for hands that are well suited to pre-emption (and the auction + your holding usually removes all ambiguity about what hands people hold where it is nessecary for the partner of the Wilkosz guy to do something at a high level), so it's going to rake it in when it comes up IMP wise. My only concern is that the frequency isn't high enough, but checking the frequency tables says it's 2%, which is higher than I thought it was going to be!

13-15 and 16-18 isn't a great pair of ranges either to think about your system. You might have more joy if you think about 11-14, 15-17 and 17-20ish (or whenever you open your strong forcing opening).

This is why my convention card says '2C: weak, 0-10 HCP (5)6+ Diamonds or a Strong Hand' and if you ask me I say 'he's looking at the vulnerability like you are, 3rd in W vs R at imps he could have anything' but yeah, if you have 6-10 HCP written down on your card you probably need to have different stated agreements. What if he had xxxx xxx QJT98 x and nothing else? Preempting looks real good, he's even got 3 winners! That's surely worth opening 3rd in WvR (if partner is a maximum passed hand and has a flat 10 count, he might even have 2 winners for me and I'm ahead vs game, and if he's broke I'm ahead vs slam) (It's particularly good for me as I know that the opponents likely have a heart fit as we play ekrens 2H so I have the negative inference he doesn't have both majors)