gregsolomon

I once read an interview with Eric Rodwell where he said exactly the same thing. The other day I saw Prakash Paranjape playing something like: 1C 16+ 1D 11-15 and a biddable 4 card major 1H/S 11-15 5+cards 1NT 12-15 balanced, no biddable 4 card major 2C/D 9-15 6+cards, no biddable 4 card major 2H/S weak Not sure how big a following this has, but it looks sound enough to me. They mentioned that they often do quite well after opening 2m, because overcalling is mildly hazardous. And when opps double for takeout it goes e.g. 2C-Dbl-3C compared to the rest of the room where it has gone 1C-Dbl-SlowPass :rolleyes:

To answer your question Peter, the impression I got kibitzing Malmo was that F-N Twos rely heavily on bidding judgement. Since convention cards don't really let you vary the system by vulnerability and seat, they put down what they play green against red in first seat, and take it from there. As do we all. In terms of the rest of your post, it's certainly true that a lot of very fine bridge players agree with you. However, you forgot some cases ... 6. Sometimes you pre-empt your partner. 7. Sometimes you push opps into a making game/slam. 8. Sometimes you tell them how to play it. F-N gets light openings in at the two level and stops opps finding their part scores. I don't that claim it's best, just that it's the natural conclusion of Trent Weak Twos. I also play the methods you're suggesting above. Cheers mate Greg

I've played ultrasound methods (including very sound weak twos) at matchpoints, it seems to give you a nice low variance game of about 56%. Most interesting result was that I found that I didn't really need 2C as an artificial game force - I either played all one bids as forcing as per Fantoni-Nunes or put my GF hands through 1C as per Nightmare and others. Personally, I think that the frequency of Trent weak twos is too low (Terence Reese, Zia Mahmood and others happen to disagree). I used Fantoni-Nunes two bids for a while (these are just natural 10-13 unbalanced) but the responses are a bit tricky for me. My preferred methods now are to open 2C/D on 10-13 points 4+ cards with a 5+ card major and respond as per the Multi 2D. 2H/S similarly show a 4+ card major and a 5+card minor. Also, some Precision players I know use 2C/D as 10-14 unbalanced, no major better than xxxx. (They open 1D on any unbalanced hand with a decent four card major). What all of these methods have in common is that the opps overcall at their peril. I think that when you open at the two level, you should be trying to win a part score battle, not trick the opps out of game. The core should be hands from the 9-11 point range which will give you high frequency, a good success rate, and an accurate definition. What you add on to that is up to you.