MickyB

An alternative structure (suggested by a reader of these forums, he can identify himself if he wishes!) trying to satisfy the same goals - basically "Polish Diamond" - a work in progress, I'm just throwing random thoughts out there really! 1C 17+, probably not opened with primary diamonds 1D 11-13 bal or 14+diamonds 1M 4M5m or 5+cards 1N 14-16 2C natural 11-16 2D natural 9-13 Compared with my original structure, it's easier to compare clubs with diamonds and diamonds with clubs. It handles diamond hands slightly better overall than my original structure handled clubs (because you can pattern out on strong hands more easily) and gets to open 1NT with 14-16 balanced. It's approximately equal on majors, 11-13 balanced and 17-19 balanced, but is a fair way behind with clubs (compared with diamonds in my original structure). Again, perhaps thinking about this from a 3rd/4th seat point of view.

How is this true? Because you get to show them with a 1NT rebid? So do most other vaguely sensible systems that use a 14-16 NT. 17-19 balanced is a problem in competition for most systems. As Adam and I said, it isn't a problem in a strong club system (in fact, I find it slightly bizarre that so many strong club systems don't open their 16+ 1♣ with a balanced 16-count), but that's the exception. Maybe I'm going too far to try to find a cure.

It comes down to trying to describe the hand in two bids. On a single-suiter, 1C then bidding the major describes the hand. If you start with 1C on a two-suiter, you might well be unable to get show both of your suits in competition.

They are. Might even be best to put all diamond hands in here and make it forcing. The problem with swapping the 14-16 and 17-19 ranges around is that you then aren't showing your strength in one bid on balanced hands, which was the main aim. Still, it's better than many systems on 17-19 balanced.

Thanks Ron, and that sounds good Shen.

Ok, well the difference with multi is that, with an 18-count with Ax in their suit, you would double a weak two but start with 2NT over a multi. Not sure whether this hand should be acting again over 3H now.

A while back, in a thread on the "Revision" strong club system, we were debating the merits of removing the balanced minima (16/17 counts) from the strong club opening by playing a strong NT. It was suggested, by Glen I think, that this might be of more use in a multi-club system - 18-19 balanced hands can be problematic in competition in most systems (apart from strong club), hence a number of pairs devoting either a 2♣ or 2♦ opening to showing this hand-type. With this in mind, I've come up with this opening structure, as a modification of Polish Club - 1♣ = 11-13 balanced/14+ with clubs/17+ major single-suiter/20+most hands 1♦ = 14+, either balanced, primary diamonds or 4♦5♣ 1M = Either 5+cards or 4M5m 11-13 1NT = 17-19 2m = Unbalanced, 9-13, either 6 cards or 5-4 minors I like many things about this - the 2m openings work very nicely, balanced hands show their strength immediately, we'll be able to show 20-22 balanced with a 1NT rebid and the 1♣ opening should work very nicely in competition. Whether this is enough to overcome the strangeness of a 17-19 1NT opening, I don't know! I may well be giving this a try this weekend, hopefully that will give me an idea. I think I remember hearing that Klinger's Power system uses a 17-20 no-trump with a fairly wide range of shapes permitted and responses tailored to cope with this - does anyone have any more info here? Btw, I may land up using this system in 3rd/4th seat only, which would reduce the loss of the preemptive effect of opening 1NT on weaker hands. This is mainly due to the old 15-17 1st+2nd/14-16 3rd+4th issue - if anyone wants me to expand on this, I shall do so when it isn't 4am :)

(2♠) 2NT (3♠) - what's double now from either side? What about after a multi? i.e. (2♦) 2NT (3♥)

Had a session earlier with two fairly similar hands, one 4441, the other 5431. In both cases, you open on an 11/12-count, LHO overcalls in a major (your singleton), partner bids a new suit at the two-level and RHO bounces to 4M. With four-card support, what's your plan? - Compete to the five-level immediately - Pass, planning on pulling to five of partner's suit if he doubles - Other - Depends on honour location, etc

Yup, indeed, starting with 1NT leaves as much room as possible to allow responder to decide what strain to invite in - e.g. 1M:1N, 2M:??. I came to the same conclusion on the way to coming up with "split range 2/1s", where the main handtypes in a 2/1 are GF hands and 9-10 with a doubleton support, it's those slightly weaker hands that benefit from getting to show some strength with their initial response because they can't really do it later.

I rarely have any idea how many days are in the current month, but that's just because I rarely know what month it is.

Sorry if I've missed prior discussion of this, but any ideas who their new partners will be? I feel like starting a rumour that they'll play with Fantoni and Nunes in some combination :)

Wow - pretty huge that none of the pairs in question break up balanced hands by suit lengths in any way. Can't say I'm a huge fan of all of these systems, though, there's some pretty weird looking stuff there. Oh well, seems to work for them :P

I downgraded a 4333 15-count on vugraph - well, actually I miscounted my points, but it's near enough the same thing :o

I wonder if RKCB is such a good convention. If we miss the king and queen of trumps, slam may still be good if all we need is one of the two finesses to work :o I'm sure there's something better than RKC out there, I just haven't invented it yet!

Lol. Horrible problem, though. Guess I bid 4♦.

I don't see how using 6D to show the majors and 5NT to show C+M helps with choosing strain. Either way, you assume initially assume 5NT shows clubs. When it comes to bidding small slams, the methods are equivalent, it's only when it comes to grand slam bidding that they differ - haven't put much thought into which method is superior. If the opponents' suit was clubs, now there would be a slight advantage to splitting up the two-suiters.

This is very counter-intuitive to me. I'd expect 11.0 to indicate an average hand of 11 HCP, so all of your numbers would need 0.5 subtracting from them, e.g. a "down-the-line" weak no-trump, where you upgrade 11s/14s as much as you downgrade 12s/15s, would be 11.5-14.5. I may be alone here! However, I can't see either method ever catching on. Btw, I was interested to see that one of the Irish pairs display all of their no-trump ranges in "54321 points". Must take some getting used to when playing against them - I certainly can't think of any other reason for playing it!

That double dummy analysis suggests upgrading this hand does not surprise me - Thomas Andrew's work suggested that shape was almost irrelevant in determining whether 3NT would make, in fact, 4333s performed slightly better than other shapes. What I haven't worked out is why the DD results conflict with most players' beliefs. Two possible reasons - We remember the times that a long suit gave us nine tricks, and attribute this to having a long suit. We don't remember the times that having a doubleton rather than a trebleton allowed the opponents to cash one more trick in the suit, or gave us one fewer stopper. Playing double dummy is of greater benefit when our hands are flatter. With a five-card suit, it is usually right to play on it; With no long suit, we might have to guess which of our suits break 3-3, or which finesse to take.

Interesting. 5M4m normally belongs in 2M - the vast majority of hands with a doubleton in the major will pass, and even with a stiff there's no guarantee that being a level higher is an improvement. Do you rate to make, on average, more than a trick more in a 4-3 than a 5-1? 5-5s, on the other hand, are often happy to go a level higher to play a 5-3 rather than a 5-2 - being forced is a big issue. This won't happen if the 5-5s are bundled in with the 5-4s. Not sure which comes out better, guess it depends on conditions and style - basically, how often you want to overcall with 5M4m. I like the responses, btw - nearly made a critical response without reading them first, would have made a fool of myself :rolleyes:

This happens a lot to me, but if you are really improving, your errors will keep getting smaller as your game oscillates between great sessions and slumps. If you feel you are getting worse - time to hit the books again. Maybe my recent poor form is due to starting to play a fair bit of online poker (I'm seeing if I can make a living at it). This has meant - I've played less bridge I've been staying up later, as the site I've been playing on doesn't really start to get busy until late afternoon, and there are Yanks to keep playing against until the next morning, if I choose I've been thinking about poker when I may otherwise have been thinking about bridge Hmm, looking at that it seems fairly clear there's a connection. I might well move to a different (busier) poker site soon, that would hopefully reduce the temptation to stay up late. Someone said to me that, when you've been unemployed for a while, starting to work full time messes up your bridge for about three months. I guess this is the same thing.

Think I'm similar to Helene - I need to work a lot of cardplay stuff out consciously, following it through card-by-card, whereas some people seem to just 'see' it. It's odd, I go through phases where I make few mistakes, and phases where I make many. In some ways, I'm much better than I was 8 months ago, but then my bridge was almost error free, well, at least of errors I was good enough to spot; But for the past couple of weeks, my f2f bridge has been sloppy, and my online bridge even worse.

What was your reasoning? It was actually 1S p 4S vs 4S, the reasoning is obviously if you have say, xxx of spades, partner could easily have a doubleton after 4S X but is far more likely to have a void than a doubleton after 1S p 4S X Also, we've already had the opportunity to act at a low level, reducing the upside for partner doubling on a decent hand with two or more spades.

I play this in one partnership. If you and your partner want a system that is, for the most part, clearly defined, then this is book is excellent - if you both learn everything, you'll be on the same wavelength in most situations. It is a lot to read, though (300 pages) and I'm unconvinced by the merits of some of the methods - mainly Flannery and rebidding 1S on 4333. If you are happy with these, you'll probably like the whole system.

Ah yes, good point David, missed that. Rarely, you get a situation where you think the entire field will be in a more ambitious contract. In this case, there is some logic for doing everything you can to make your contract at the expense of overtricks - you don't want your 3♠-1 to be losing matchpoints when some pairs are in 4♠-1. Anyway, back to the original subject. I think this whole "anti-field" thing is overplayed. There are a lot of factors, though. You need to know what you are aiming for. In most events, I'm happy to increase my chances of winning at the expense of reducing my chances of finishing in the top x places. In some events, you are just aiming to finish in the top x places in order to qualify for the next stage. You need to know how you are doing so far. The better you are doing, the more you should play with the field. You need to know how good you are. If you are average or below average for the field, it's worth going anti-field on close decisions - if the things you do happen to work then you may place highly, and if they don't, well, you probably weren't going to place highly anyway. You need to know how good your opponents are. If they are likely to give you the board later on defence, you don't need to try to be a hero and win it in the bidding. You need to look at the length of the event.If you are trying to win a short event, there's again more reason to go anti-field - a pair who average 53% are unlikely to get the 62% needed to win unless they take some risks.