enigmisto

Is there any sort of community for discussing/mentoring SMP, similar to the one that exists for Oliver Clarke's flavor of Precision?

I have Dan's book. I bought a half-dozen Precision books, and found Standard Modern Precision to be one of the more complex ones. I appreciate your recommendation, and will consider it. It's good to know that the extra complexity pays off.

Precision Today recommends that after the sequence: 1C (16+) - 2NT (14+, balanced, slam interest, forcing to 4NT) the Baron convention should be used. It outlines the idea as saying that with a 5-card suit, opener can just bid it directly at the 3-level (with 3NT showing 5 clubs). Alternatively, opener can bid 3C which conventionally asks partner to start bidding 4-card suits up the line. Sounds simple, but there are a number of holes in this description, and I can't find any more detailed description than this on the web. Can someone please elaborate for me how this convention works? Here are some of my questions: If opener has a 5-card suit and a 4-card suit, should they bid the 5-card suit directly with the hope they can bid the 4-card suit later, or do they bid 3C Baron hoping that if partner bypasses their 5-card suit, they will later bid it? In other words, does initiating Baron deny a 5-card suit or not? How do you show 4 clubs when bidding up the line: 3NT or 4C? When you run out of 4-card suits to bid, what do you bid? It seems quite possible that if no fit is found, you'd want to bid 4NT naturally, so is 4NT blackwood or not. If not, how do you explore slam? If yes, how do you sign off in game with no fit? Alternatively, if you think Precision Today's Baron recommendation over 1C-2NT is a bad idea, please describe your alternative. Thanks!

The main thing I'm still not understanding is whether transfers are only applicable to responder's first bid, or whether they continue to apply on subsequent bids.

So what happens if the initial transfer is rejected by the 1C opener? I assume that when opener bids his suit, there's no need for transfer, since he's the stronger hand. So what happens on responder's second bid? Is their second bid a transfer or not? It seems like if one bidder is not transferring and the other is transferring, it could create big skips in the bidding.

I'm reading Precision Today, and it has a chapter in the back recommending transfer positive responses, and that they should be on over interference, but it is scant on the details. Are transfer positive responses only on for first bid by weaker hand, or all bids by weaker hand? Over interference, how do you handle cue bids? Do you transfer "around" the cue bid, or transfer to the cue bid suit? How do transfers interact with the unusual-over-unusual convention they recommend for dealing with 1NT overcalls showing both minors?

Why? I was certainly surprised by some of the results, some of which directly contradicted what I have seen in other data-based analyses derived from actual human tournaments. But the methodology impressed me, because it keeps precisely constant all elements except the variables being tested, and does it across several thousand boards. I'm inclined to give his results quite a bit of weight. I wish he'd open-source his program. I can imagine many further experiments I'd like to do. Furthermore, imagine how useful it would be for bidding system designers to be able to quickly test different variations and ideas!

Yes, he had a section devoted to the question of whether strong club systems were vulnerable to interference. He programmed a number of different interference strategies, and found that none of them were particularly effective at diminishing the value of a strong club system. The more destructive the interference (e.g., bid 1S over 1C no matter what), the less it helped. The most effective interference strategies were ones that were plausibly constructive for the interferers in finding a useful contract to compete in, but even against these interference strategies, the strong club systems still outperformed the others. He concluded that his results effectively debunk "the myth" that strong club systems are defeated by interference.

Interestingly, "Good, Better, Best" looked at Neapolitan Club as well; it fared quite poorly.

I recently read the book "Good, Better, Best" by Jan Eric Larsson, in which an AI researcher programs bots to understand a variety of bidding systems, and pits them against one another. Generally speaking, the Precision systems outperformed Standard and 2/1. Interestingly, the top bidding system (excluding the author's own unpublished system) was the Blue Team Club system, a strong-club canape system that predates Precision. I know there's a strong overlap behind the kind of people who enjoy artificial systems and the kind of people that are "data-driven", so given this result, I would expect to see a resurgence of interest in Blue Club. After reading Good, Better, Best, I was certainly very eager to learn more about this system that had bested the others. I found a few English resources for Blue Club, which I have really enjoyed reading: * The original English translation for the system: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0571092659/ * A description of the system written by Omar Sharif: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GX0ECA/ * A modern, somewhat simpler adaptation: https://smile.amazon.com/Simpler-Blue-Club-System-Mississauga/dp/1771401893 * A free English translation of another modern version of the system: https://bridgewithdan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/BTC2000_gmeier.pdf All the links given in the last document for the Blue Club community appear to be broken. Is anyone here aware of a current online community of Blue Club players?

Maybe. But if you have 4 controls, the scenarios before skipping ahead to Queens are AA or AKK or KAK or KKA or KKKK. Seems like it gets awkward quickly. And if you aren't taking a shortcut scan based on your holdings, I think it could be hard to even remember that you need to enumerate all the possibilities for the opponent, because maybe you could have taken a shortcut with different holdings.

His scheme does resolve this question. Usually you scan three suits for AK with 5-4-2-2, but once you've shown all your controls, you assume your partner knows it and skip ahead to scanning for Queens. So, with the first hand: Step 1 - Yes, I have Ace spades. Step 2 - Yes, I have King clubs. [We've shown our controls, so skip hearts and start scanning for Queens]. Step 3 - No, I am missing Queen spades [so you bid this step]. With the second hand: Step 1 - Yes, I have King spades. Step 2 - Yes, I have King clubs. Step 3 - Yes, I have King hearts. Step 4 - No, I am missing Queen spades [so you bid this step]. Partner can infer in the second case that you have three kings because if you had A and K in spades and clubs, your third step would be a scan for Queen of spades, and he can see there's no way you can answer Yes to that question (since partner has the Queen of Spades). So if it takes you four steps to get to a "No", you must have scanned all three suits, therefore you must have three kings. Kit's claim is that you can nearly always make these sorts of inferences, which is why you skip to scanning for Queens as soon as you've communicated your Aces and Kings, assuming your partner can work it out. But these inferences are subtle, which is why I am wondering how you communicate this to the opposition. You can likely work out whether they scanned two or three suits before skipping to scanning for Queens (after hearing the bid, not before), but this is not knowledge available to the opposition.

Probably more accurate in this particular case would be "A/K ♠, A/K ♣, ((A/K ♥ and no Q♠) or (no AK ♥, Q♠, and no Q♣)". It gets messier the more steps. And if you have only two control points, there are three possible junctures at which you might skip ahead to scanning for Queens, depending upon whether your control points are in your first one, two, or three suits scanned. So with two control points, every step could be representing three possible scenarios. It's hard enough to think through the actual logic of the specific cards you are facing with your hand and your partner's, let alone try to describe all the possible scenarios to your opponents with other potential hands. How does anyone communicate this reasonably in real games when a bid could represent denial in three potential suits, each with their own history of what was affirmed by the intervening steps?

Example from the book, describing the following hand: S: AQ764 H: 93 D: 72 C: KJ95 This hand has just bid 3S showing 3 control points and is now going to begin denial cue bidding in response to 4C. Ordinary scan of suits would be spades, then clubs, then hearts (skipping our shortest suit - diamonds - for the AK scan). The first denial cue bid with this hand is 4NT. The scan of Spades is Yes (A) The scan of Clubs is Yes (K) But now, we take a shortcut and skip Hearts in our AK scan proceeding directly to Queens, because we assume our partner can deduce we've got the A of Spades and K of Clubs which equals all our control points. So the next step is a scan of spades for Queen (Yes), and so we bid 4NT to show a "No" for the scan of Queen of Clubs. Our partner knows we skipped over hearts and the "No" represents a no for Queen of Clubs. But this is not public information. If our hand held the K of Spades and K of Clubs, our scan would have needed to include the hearts, so the 4NT bid would represent a denial of a completely different suit. How does one alert this, when the actual suits scanned are dependent upon holdings? The following truthful statement is way too complex: "This bid means A or K of Spades, A or K of Clubs, A or K of Hearts if not all the controls have been shown yet, otherwise Q of Spades. The final step means no Queen of Spades or no Queen of Clubs depending upon whether spades and clubs held both the A and K."

The KK Relay book describes a series of shortcuts when doing Denial Cue Bidding. For example, after you've communicated the Aces and Kings in your hand, you skip any remaining suits and begin scanning the Queens. The assumption is that your partner can infer all your Aces and Kings from their own hand and your control point total, so no need to continue. How are you supposed to alert these bids in a game? You and your partner both (theoretically) know that you are now scanning for Queens, and know which suit you're on, but it's based on private information that the other partnership doesn't know. It's a very similar issue to other sorts of "encrypted bids". I can only imagine how the discussion might go. "What does that bid mean?" "It's a denial cue bid which allows me to know whether my partner is holding or not holding certain honors." "Which suit?" "That depends on our holdings." "What honors?" "That depends on our holdings." So what do you actually type into the alert box on BBO? How do other partnerships deal with that? Do they complain to the director?

I don't know anything about SCUM. Where would I learn more about it? Is there a book that describes it in detail? I'm definitely interested to see more examples of how symmetric relay can be applied pervasively across a bidding system, as opposed to just in the 1C opening. Any pointers would be appreciated.

I have begun reading KK Relay, thanks to the recommendation here. This has to be the thickest Bridge book I've ever purchased! Very impressive depth and clarity of content. But I was surprised to discover that despite its epic length, the book doesn't really describe a complete a bidding system (at least from what I've seen so far). It appears to just describe a 1C Relay for your favorite Strong 1C system. What do the authors play over other openings? What bidding system are you KK Relay fans pairing the relay with? How does KK Relay differ from the Symmetric Relay described in Nick Hughes' book?

Lots of good explanations here. Thinking about it further, I speculate another factor is that weak 1NT is often intended more as a kind of a preempt, and so there's more of a need for an "escape hatch" opposite another weak hand -- a way to scramble to any kind of fit rather than suffer in 1NT. This case requires different techniques than strong 1NT.

There seems to be pretty broad consensus on how to handle strong 1NT (Stayman, Jacoby Transfers, Texas Transfers) but weak 1NT systems are all over the place. I haven't yet found any two books describing weak 1NT that have a remotely similar response structure. Why the higher variance? What's your favorite weak 1NT response structure?

I just read through the two different Symmetric Relay documents posted here, to get a feel for the system, and the charts are quite different. I gather that one is transfer-oriented and one isn't. Does this mean there's no standard meaning of the term "Symmetric Relay"?

I've noticed that pretty much universally across every bidding system I've seen, NT bids are limited to a narrow 3-4 pt range. Is there an underlying bidding-theory reason why it needs to be this way, or is this just to comply with an ACBL rule? Are there any bidding systems out there that have embraced a wider NT range? What sort of tinkering would be required to make a wider range work?

What is the best published book on symmetric relay? Is there any current software for practicing it?

In fairness to the book, I think one the author's main ideas is that game/slam/etc for unbalanced hands depends a lot more on distributional factors and fit than points. So I suppose the idea is that QP gets you started with opening, but then you're using judgment beyond that. I suspect the author is rather intentionally refraining Still, I haven't developed that kind of judgment yet and need some help figuring out how to use this QP measure effectively to gauge whether I'm in range. The document hrothgar shared has some data that provides a good start for me.

Thanks, that's interesting material! The link in your document (http://dealergib1.bridgebase.com/tools/dealer/dealer.php) seems no longer to be valid. Do you happen to know where this tool currently is accessible?

I'm currently reading the BFUN system book, and it uses a QP (quality point) scale for unbalanced hands: A=3, K=2, Q=1. Unfortunately, the book doesn't describe what the QP targets should be for game and slam, or how to categorize hands as minimum / invitational / maximum. It says things like, "Jump bid with a maximum hand" but it gives no guidelines as to what constitutes maximum. I can come up with some basic estimates by taking the HCP system and multiplying the numbers by 3/5, but that seems like it defeats some of the value of using this custom system which ignores jacks. Presumably if QP has independent validity from HCP, someone's done some computer simulations and come up with good thresholds for QP, which I imagine would be close to HCP * 3/5, but not quite the same. I'd like to know what the guidelines are for "thinking in QP". Any suggestions?