EricK

If 1NT becomes the final contract, it is OK with me. My problem is, what if pd has a hand (almost) strong enough to force to game? I know, you would say "pd then should check back if I really have I stopper". To me, it is absurd to check back while my NT already says stopper. And I hate too much gadgets which takes away the natural meanings of some bids. When I bid (1)NT, I guarantee stopper (at least Kx or Qxx). And if pd wants to check on slam, he will know I have some honor(s) on opp's suit. For the hand given on the thread, I will bid 2C and apologize to pd if it leads to a bad contract. That's the point though! None of the bids accurately describe the hand. You want 1NT to promise a stopper and are prepared to lie about your suit lengths, others want to tell the truth about their shape and point count and lie about the honour location. Why is one more natural than the other? Why is one more likely to lead to disaster than the other? Why is bidding 2♣ and then apologising to partner better than bidding 1NT then apologising to partner?! Eric

Wrong. If I believe I am gaining from using 2♣ as weak, then I'll accept the occasional bad result when I'm dealt a 24 count. Responding on 2 counts will lead to many more bad results than passing 2 counts. Well, if someone can find a single convention card of the teams playing in Istanbul that doesn't have a strong forcing opening, then I'll agree. A weak 2♣ opening has been around for at least 25 years, but the idea has been pretty much discarded. Yes, but I am sure that most of those playing in Istanbul (if not playing a strong ♣) will open the given hand 2♣. There really does come a point when if a reasonably low level opening bid becomes too rare then you are almost certainly better off not opening it, but instead using it in some other way. Eric

If you are going to open this hand with 1♠ (and it may be right to), then there is surely no longer any need to use 2♣ as a strong opening. But I bet none of those who have voted for 1♠ are using eg a weak 2 in ♣. Why not? Eric

I think I have seen a quote from Martin Hoffman along the lines of "Most games which made could have been beaten and most games which were beaten could have been made". Obviously he is referring to hands where there is some "play", but I think the point is valid. Eric

What happened to the pairs where 1♠ was opened? Eric (who is a 2♣ opener)

But even without a ♥ stop you still might make 1NT. A lot might depend on whether dummy or RHO or both or niether gets squeezed on the run of the ♥. Eric

I don't like partner's 1NT bid much. It looks much easier to simply support ♣. I figure with 5 cards in overcaller's suits opener is almost bound to have at least 5♣. Having said that, I think that you must really bid 2♠ here. It is encumbent on the player short in opponents' suit to act. If you pass, partner will almost always have no bid to make. For those who open 1♠, I ask what happens if the bidding goes 1♠ (2♥) P (P) back to you? Now you are in an even worse position than if you had opend 1♣! Eric

Becasue, so the theory goes, the gains you get from being able to rebid 2M on various stronger hands which aren't suitable for a reverse, a jump rebid, a NT rebid, or a raise of partner's minor, more than compensate for the losses you get when stopping in 2M is the correct contract. Many of the problems are solved by not bidding 2m on the misfitting 9 point hands (i.e up the requirements for a 2/1 if singleton or void in partner's suit i.e. apply some basic hand evaluation rather than count points) Eric

The "cautious" opponents were world class players ranging from the US national team to the UK of Reese-Shapiro, to the great French team, so I would not go that far as to term them overly cautious. Also, most people, including the italian books on the Blue Team, report the common expert opinion that there was not such a huge difference in card play skills between the Blue Team and the various US teams who challenged it. According to many of these sources, it was in slam bidding where the italian fared much better. Most of the World Championships were played by pairs playing the Neapolitan Club or derivations of it (although it is true that some did in fact play the Roman Club). The Neapolitan Club uses control responses to the Strong Club Opening, so for the sake of this discussion it amounts to about the same. It is true what you say about the strength of the opponents. But that does not mean that their bidding styles against strong club were optimal. You only have to look at hands from the 1950s and 60s compared to today to see how much more aggressive bidding has become. Very weak pre-empts which are commonplace today were an absolute rarity in those distant days. The players were not "cautious" when it came to bidding the good hands, but they were more cautious when it came to interfering in the opponent's auction. The Blue Team may have bid better than their opponents, but their opponents allowed them to bid as well as they did! Eric

I'm sorry, I still don't understand. I no longer think I even understand what a mixed strategy is. To me, a psych is an attempt to get a good board by fooling the oppoenents into thinking you have something other than you actually have. A mixed strategy includes destructive bids that don't describe your hand yet but may be used in conjunction with future bids to describe your hand. In a psyche, you say you have A but really have B, in a mixed strategy you have either A or B, and you tell the opponents this. The only difference between a psyche and a mixed strategy is in the explanation, but it's a very fundemental difference. If you could help explain mixed strategy vs. psyches to me, or perhaps why I'm wrong about the difference, I'd appreciate it. To me a mixed strategy is one where the same hand may be bid in more than one way. Something like: on this sort of hand I will raise to 4♥ 50% of the time, raise to 3♥ 30% of the time, and bid 1♠ 20% of the time. Eric

The point is whether the opponents of these great players were playing the best defenses. Practically any detailed system in the hands of expert players with great bidding judgement will yield excellent results against "cautious" opponents. Remeber, only one pair on the Blue team played Blue Club. The others playrd different systems, and still had the same great results. As people started to realise that they can interfere massively in a strong club auction without coming to great harm, systems like Blue Team club, which don't give opener shape information early on, went out of fashion. Eric

In my opinion, far too much emphasis is put on bidding and not nearly enough on card play. Beginners should start by learning how to play the hand, then move onto defence and only then bidding. Good bidding involves good hand evaluation and this, in essence, involves imagining the play of the hand. They can't possibly do that until they have experience of playing the hand. When beginners concentrate more on bidding they tend to bid according to inflexible rules, and once this gets ingrained it is very difficult for them to get out of the habit. Eric

Why? I haven't played with anybody playing four card majors 1 of a suit showing 12-15, 1NT through 2♠ showing 16-19, and 2NT through3♠ showing 20+ either, nor have I played against it, and yet it's about the simplest system possible. Such a system exists, it's very simple, and anybody could play it. I simply don't have the experience of playing against it, so my opinion on it wouldn't be useful. I judged from your post that you had very likely played other 5 card major systems with a strong NT. If so, unless your system was incredibly complex, I doubt very much that what you played was significantly different to SAYC on a large number of hands. Eric

I don't think the Point counts are meant to be taken rigidly. They (surely) mean the equivalent of a 16 point hand etc Although they say that eg 1♠ 2♦ 3♦ is bid on a minimum hand (less than 16 points), they don't mean that all minimum hands with ♦ support are suitable! I expect that minimum minimum hands bid 2♠, but maximum minimum hands bid 3♦. Similarly for 1♠ 2♦ 2NT. Eric

I would think that having the declaring hand unknown is better at MPs than IMPs - At IMPs, the defence (if they are good) will construct your hand on the assumption that they can beat the hand, so having it hidden is not that great an advantage on the thin games. But at MPs they also have to be worrid about overtricks (in other words their target isn't clear) and in these circumstances having declaring hand unkown is much more profitable. Eric

It is strange that you find it impossibly different to anything you've played, because it was designed to be a simple system which anyone could play. Where does it say you rebid your suit with a 16 Point 6511 hand? Eric

SAYC (Standard American Yellow Card) is nothing to do with Fred. It was a system designed by the ACBL for use in Yellow Card games. These were their idea for games in which there was little or no alerting and everyone knew what was going on. It subsequently became one of the standard bidding systems which everyone online claimed to be able to play. However, most people who claim to play it haven't read the booklet, and in fact are not really playing SAYC at all but are playing "my local natural system with very few conventions". Making 1M 2m 2M forcing isn't such a great burden anyway. How often is responder strong enough to respond at the 2 level, yet fairly certain there isn't much chance of a game opposite partner's maximum for a non-forcing 2M bid? But by making it forcing you can use it as a mark time bid on a lot of stronger hands which otherwise have no perfect rebid (strong hands with a weak 6 card major, balanced hands without a stop an outside suit, hands with 4♠/5♥ not quite strong enough to reverse etc) Eric

Would your partnership have opened ♠KT98 ♥2 ♦32 ♣AQT987 with 2♣ in first seat? If so, then his description of 2♣ as showing 11-15 HCP is wrong. He should be saying something like "11-15 HCP in principle, but can be weaker with extra length and/or good suit quality". If you have agreed (either explicitly or implicitly) that 3rd seat openings can be weaker than first seat openers, then his description is also wrong. He should be saying "9-15 HCP" or whatever the 3rd seat range is. But if neither of those things apply (so, in effect, you were as surprised as the opps were by how weak his hand was) then there has been no infraction. Eric

Ont he first hand, if you plan to respond pass partner's 2♣ response, you will often be playing in a 4-2 minor fit, rather than a 5-3 major fit. Is that what you wan't? A better non-standard idea, if you don't like the wide range of an overcall, is to overcall 1♠ on opening strength hands (using Zar points or similar to determine what counts as opening strength) opposite which partner bids as if you had opened, and make WJO with weaker hands. This puts enormous pressure on the opps, and does allow constructive bidding opposite your 1 level overcalls. Eric

I bid 3NT. I consider it obvious, although there are many ways it could go wrong! The trouble is other bids have at least as many ways of going wrong. The correct contract might not be 3NT, but if it is I have to bid it now. Eric

Doesn't this make them HUM? Quoting from the definition of HUM:- " B ) By partnership agreement an opening bid at the one level may be weaker than pass." Here your opening 1M bids may be weaker (at least by some definition of weaker) than Pass. Eric The way it is phrased there is some ambiguity, but the WBF has never interpreted it this way. There is nothing highly unusual about opening some 12 point hands and passing others. Majors vs. minors is just as valid a judgment criterion as shape, honor concentration, etc. The definition is directed at FP systems and other systems where a pass has a lower limit higher than 0. For example, the Walpurgis Diamond where pass is 8-12 and 1D is 0-7 or natural 13+. It would also seem to apply to the old Marmic system where pass was either normal or 16-19 balanced, where a 1 bid can be weaker than pass' strong meaning's lower limit. The trouble is that the sentence as it stands is not ambiguous. If they wanted it to say something else they should have written something else. I note that most FP systems would be covered by " c ) By partnership agreement an opening bid at the one level may be made with values a king or more below average strength.", because of the Fert and the Marmic system would be covered by "a ) A Pass in the opening position may have the values generally accepted for an opening bid of one, and the player who passes may hold values a queen or more above the strength of an average hand (an average hand contains 10 HCP)" So what exactly is the point of point b ? Also, " d ) By partnership agreement an opening bid at the one level shows (a) either length or shortage in a specified suit or (B) either length in one suit or length in another" would seem to make a system with 5c♥♠ and 4c♦ a HUM because the 1♣ opening shows either length (3 or more) in ♣ or ♦. Eric

Doesn't this make them HUM? Quoting from the definition of HUM:- " :) By partnership agreement an opening bid at the one level may be weaker than pass." Here your opening 1M bids may be weaker (at least by some definition of weaker) than Pass. Eric

OK. Acol it is. Now should we play original Acol where one only needs a reasonable 8 count for a 2/1 (so 1x 2y 2NT is non-forcing), or a more modern style where you need say 10+ to respond at the 2 level (so 1x 2y 2NT is forcing)? Or maybe play 1NT as 12.5-15 and so make 2/1 bids 9+. And what about 2 level bids? Acol 2s? Strong 2C plus 3 weak 2s? 4 weak 2s? something else? Thanks again for any help. Eric

Oh, i agree... no one will play this way at imps... because while I think from the bidding WEST has those honor cards, i am not willing to risk losing a lot of diamonds if I am wrong. At matchpoints, if I think of it, i would try it, however, which explains my "at matchpoints, maybe" comment. But stregnthwise, it should be good.. here is why. 1) they are vul (1Dx is down 500) 2) Dbl of 1C gives the precision pair MORE BIDDING room and actually helps them. To bid this weak makes no sense. Ben I agree with you that this is how (1♣) X ought to be played. But The West hand isn't strong enough for it at this vulnerability IMO, so I figured they might be playing some other agreement. I would have passed the West hand at this vulnerability (but bid 2♥ if NV). Eric

That is very impressive. But is it clear that West has the ♠KQ and ♣A? I am guessing that this was a strong ♣ opening, and EW were using X to show ♥ one suiter and 1♦ to show ♠ one-suiter. How much strength do they require, I wonder?