Some notes on my Binky Points research. (1) I have specifically never made claims about how the research should guide bidding. There are some obvious points and some less-than-obvious points about how to use such 'fine' evaluations. When do you invite? When do you accept invites? These are all non-trivial problems, made even more non-trivial by the fact that the narrower you put the ranges for inviting, accepting, and rejecting, the more opponents know about your hand in these circumstances. I don't want to claim that my results have only purely theoretical value, but they were never meant to be a guide for bidding. (2) In particular, obviously, you want to open different strength hands differently depending on the shape of the hand (rather than the pattern.) Clearly, a light 5-5-2-1 is a better candidate for opening than a light 2-1-5-5. That's because the number of hands partner can have where game makes is higher, because he needs less for game in a major than in a minor, and if we're gonna play a suit contract, that suit contract is probably gonna be in one of my five-card suits. It's not a flaw in BP (or any other evaluation system) if it gives the same value for equivalent 5521 and 2155 hands, it's a flaw in bidding if you use one value for determining what to open all hands. When to open light is a matter of whether you have any defense, whether you have a safe rebid, whether passing might miss an easy game. Many moons ago, someone made much of the fact that my data showed that AKxxx xxx Ax xxx actually had lower playing strength than xxxxx Axx Ax Kxx - that is, that honors in your long suit were actually less valuable. It is a surprising result, considering all those expert recommendations over the years. Well, the difference between these two hands in Binky Points is actually relatively miniscule. On the other hand, consider what opening 1S does to partner's hand. When you open the second hand 1S and partner has Qxx in spades, he is going to over-value that queen. That means that partner is going to push to game often on precisely the wrong hands, because, from his point of view, you are likely to have honors in the suit. Even though the second hand technically has nearly exactly the same playing strength, it doesn't mean it is just as good an opener.
