jdiana

The ACBL has some resources that might be helpful - https://www.acbl.org/club-corner/ Howell - https://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/VACB/howell.pdf Mitchell - https://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/VACB/mitchell.pdf (I'm not a director and have no experience with this.)

"For me 3NT shows a solid 6/7 card suit." For us, a jump rebid of the major shows that type of hand. I think that's fairly standard, at least in American 2/1 systems. I agree, though, that 2NT would have been a better opening bid. After that, it depends on agreements. I've been considering adopting the simpler of the two approaches described here - https://www.advinbridge.com/this-week-in-bridge/225 - but haven't done so yet. With our current agreements, I think we would just bid 2NT - 4♣ -(Gerber) - 4NT (3 aces) - 6♣. (I'd be concerned about transportation for a 6NT bid.)

We play that opener's 2NT rebid shows either 12-14 or 18-19 HCP. (Responder assumes it's 12-14.) If responder then bids 3NT, opener will raise to 4NT to show 18-19 HCP. Opener's jump rebid of 3NT shows 15-17 HCP and a hand that didn't bid 1NT for some reason (probably 5-4-2-2). We also play that notrump rebids promise stoppers in the unbid suits but not everyone plays that way. We play the same way after 1M-2m, so this keeps things internally consistent and easy to remember.

Just echoing the recommendation of Larry Cohen's materials for a basic 2/1 system. You may have found these already but here are some links: LC's basic 2/1 ABCL convention card (old format) - https://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/play/basic2over1CC.pdf LC's "Conventional Wisdom Lite" series, which corresponds to that convention card - http://web2.acbl.org/documentLibrary/marketing/Conventional_Wisdom_Lite.pdf Larry's 2/1 series on his website, which goes into more detail - https://www.larryco.com/bridge-learning-center/detail/435 He has a set of three workbooks for sale called Larry Teaches Modern Bidding, which I'm sure are very good. Good luck!

Maybe this is too aggressive (I'm not used to playing with a weak 1NT) but how about 1NT - 2♦ - 2♥ - 5NT (pick a slam)? At least it's simple. :)

Fargo, Season 3

This recent article by Bobby Wolff defines it as a particular way of combining our chances, i.e., "cashing the ace-king of one suit and then falling back on a finesse in the other." https://www.goerie.com/go-columns/?amu=/acesonbridge/2022/11/01/parsimony-requires-no-providence-no-sagacity (Richard Pavilcek's "plan (1)" and "plan (2)" both start with cashing the A-K of hearts.)

Inspired by ruleof20's post looking for partners to play Gavin Wolpert's intermediate system, I'm wondering if there are any other intermediate players who have built their system around Robert Todd's teaching materials. (As an aside, I think Gavin's system is also good. If I had found his lessons first, I might be playing "Gavin Intermediate".) If you play Robert Todd's intermediate system and are familiar with his TWiB articles, etc., let's compare notes! For those who might not be familiar with it, the core 2/1 system includes: Opener's 2M rebid may be a 5-card suit ("waiting") Opener's 2NT rebid promises stoppers in unbid suits A new suit at the 3 level shows some extras It also includes a semi-forcing 1NT and 3/1 invitational, e.g., 1♥-3♦ would show a good 6-card diamond suit with about 11-ish points.

Thanks! I've also watched several of his classes and enjoyed them. He's a good teacher. I haven't adopted all of his suggestions though. You may have already tried this, but I think you can also look for partners on the Wolpert Bridge website. Good luck!

Just wondering - Is "Gavin Wolpert Intermediate" documented somewhere as a complete system? Or are you referring to having taken his lessons? Thanks!

Some of this seems overly complicated. If 2♣ promises a 4-card major, and opener is 4-4 in the majors, he can simply bid up the line. If he bids 2♥ and responder has four spades (and not four hearts), he will normally bid 2NT or 3NT and opener can correct to spades. The method that David mentioned, where opener's 2NT shows 4-4 in the majors, is used by the Argine bidding engine. Patrick Laborde describes the full structure here (you'll need to scroll down to find his comment) - https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/quantitative-sequence-after-1nt-2c-2h/

This is very similar to hand #5 in Root's How to Play a Bridge Hand (p. 7). "The only chance to win four tricks is to find West with a doubleton king. So lead low from your hand and finesse the queen. If the queen wins, cash the ace and hope for the king to drop. Note that leading toward the jack is a hopeless play."

This may be what you're looking for - http://learn2playbridge.com/

"Someone tried to encourage me to go there for a fun game once but they are usually just teachers looking for a victim." I don't think that's really fair. I did sign up for it and, with respect to Maureen Hall (who started it), the BIL's website is pretty much useless. But several teachers run teaching games on BBO, there's a partnership desk (again, not really high tech), and Maureen sends out a monthly email. Sure, teachers would like to have new students, but I think that's true of most bridge teachers who put out free information. Some of the teaching games are, I believe, restricted to those who have paid the membership fee for BIL, while some are freely available to anyone. I've pretty much stopped using BIL and won't renew my membership, just because I've kind of moved on to other ways of working on my game. But I think it was a nice idea when it was started. It just hasn't kept up with technology. I'd actually like to see more places for advancing students to try to improve their games and maybe share ideas with peers, as opposed to always being in the position of asking for help, if that makes sense.

I agree that learning 2/1 is a good idea, especially if you're in North America. Be aware that there are a few different versions of 2/1 in common circulation. These articles summarize the two main approaches, as well as a "third way" called the Schuler shift. https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/building-a-better-21-structure-the-troublesome-2m-rebid/ https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/building-a-better-21-structure-the-schuler-shift/ https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/better-21-bidding-the-nebulous-2c-bid/ Probably best to start with one of the two mainstream approaches. I don't think the "Schuler shift" is very common among intermediate players. If you have a regular partner, my advice would be to take a good 2/1 class together and talk it through while building some system notes.

A few thoughts: 1. Defense is, of course, a partnership undertaking so if you have a regular partner, I suggest working on this together. Having good written agreements for defense is helpful. 2. I agree with David that double dummy analysis can be useful in some ways, for example in looking at opening leads. 3. BBO Helper has some very useful features including listing the opening leads for each board and providing a view where the boards are sorted by auction. I've been lazy about doing this myself, but I think it would be helpful to isolate the boards where other people defended the same contract, after the exact same auction, to see what they did differently. Since the information we get from the auction affects our defense, I think this will help compare apples to apples. As for book recommendations, Eddie Kantar's books on defense are probably a good place to start. Good luck!

Thanks Paul!

That was great - thanks! Is there a similar video on how to use saved deals?

Can someone direct me to a simple, plain English explanation of how to set up a bidding table on BBO and set constraints to practice, for example, 2/1 hands, of NT hands? I'm sure it's meant to be obvious, but I've tried several times to figure it out, with no success. I go to Practice - Start a Bidding Table and start the table. I go to Deal Source, constraints and I see that I can supposedly set the range of HCP and number of cards in each suit. But when I do that, the hands seem to be random anyway (as if the constraints weren't saved or applied). Same if I say that opponents should "pass throughout". They bid anyway.

@pigpenz I recently installed BBO Helper but haven't used it much. It provides a huge amount of information, which can be a little overwhelming. I just looked again at the My Hands- Traveller information and, in addition to providing opening leads, if you scroll to the bottom, there is a table sorted by auction. Matthew Kidd deserves a huge "Thanks!" for this. It must have been an incredible amount of work. It would still be nice to have some of this immediately available in the "Other Tables" view on BBO itself, but the fact that it's available with BBO Helper is also great.

I'd like to see some additions to tournament results that would make it easier for players to diagnose where they went wrong. For example, when I click on "Other Tables", it would be nice to have a column showing the lead at each table, have the rows where the auction was the same as at my table be highlighted, and let me sort those rows to the top (and, of course, re-sort them back to the default). I'm sure others have additional suggestions, but the idea is to give information "at a glance" or with a simple click or two, before analyzing a particular hand in detail.

Nigel: I just saw a reference to this site on another forum - https://www.mybridgecontracts.com/ I haven't tried it, so can't give any opinion. If you (or anyone) decide to give it a try, please post and let us know how it goes.

There have been several threads on this topic on Bridge Winners. See, e.g., https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/besteasiest-way-to-type-up-bidding-system-notes/ https://bridgewinners.com/article/view/structuring-system-notes/ I think it comes down to a few factors: 1. Is your process collaborative, with you and your partner both editing the notes as you go along? Or will you be primarily writing and keeping the notes for your partnership? If collaboration is important, then something like Google Docs might be better. If you'll primarily be the keeper of the notes (as I am for my main partnership), then MS Word might work. (That's what I use.) 2. How tech savvy are you? Something called LaTeX seems to be popular, but it looks like a lot of work to me. 3. How extensive are your notes? The simpler they are, the more likely that MS Word or something similar will do the job. Mine run about 35 pages, with a lot of examples, white space, etc., and MS Word is adequate. I had to do some self-training in how to use styles and the automated table of contents, but it's not hard. Good luck! P.S. FWIW, this is how I structured our simple 2/1 notes. (Apologies for the messy copy and paste - the formatting didn't carry over to here. I tried to indent sub-topics but it doesn't seem to have worked so I tried putting the main headings in bold.) General Agreements ..................................................................................................................... 1 Notation ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Definitions and General Principles ............................................................................................. 1 Forcing Principles ....................................................................................................................... 1 Treatment of Doubles .................................................................................................................. 2 Helpful “Rules” ........................................................................................................................... 2 Notrump Bids and Responses ...................................................................................................... 3 Systems – Stayman and Transfers ............................................................................................... 3 Handling Interference After a 1NT Opening .............................................................................. 4 Slam Bidding After a Notrump Opening .................................................................................... 6 Majors - Standard Bidding .......................................................................................................... 8 Help Suit Game Tries .................................................................................................................. 8 Two-Way Drury .......................................................................................................................... 8 Jacoby 2NT ................................................................................................................................. 9 Splinters ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Majors – 2/1 ................................................................................................................................. 10 Responder’s 2/1 Bids ................................................................................................................ 10 Opener’s 2nd Bid ...................................................................................................................... 11 Opener’s Special Rebids ........................................................................................................... 11 Responder’s 2nd Bid .................................................................................................................. 12 Responder’s Special Rebids ...................................................................................................... 12 Opener’s 3rd Bid ........................................................................................................................ 12 Handling Interference ................................................................................................................ 13 1M – 1NT (Semi-Forcing) ........................................................................................................ 13 Minors – Standard Bidding........................................................................................................ 15 Invitational Jump Shifts ............................................................................................................ 15 Inverted Minors ......................................................................................................................... 15 New Minor Forcing ................................................................................................................... 16 Fourth Suit Forcing ................................................................................................................... 17 Minors – 2/1 (1♦ - 2♣) ................................................................................................................. 18 Other Constructive Bids ............................................................................................................. 19 Strong 2♣ Opening .................................................................................................................... 19 Reverses and Opener’s Jump Shifts .......................................................................................... 19 Preemptive Bids and Responses ................................................................................................ 20 Showing or Asking for Stoppers ............................................................................................... 21 Slam Bidding ............................................................................................................................... 22 Control Bids .............................................................................................................................. 22 Gerber ........................................................................................................................................ 22 1430 RKC .................................................................................................................................. 23 We Open With a Suit and They Interfere ................................................................................ 24 Over Opponent’s Takeout Double ............................................................................................ 24 Jordan 2NT .............................................................................................................................. 24 Over Opponent’s Overcall ........................................................................................................ 24 Negative Doubles ...................................................................................................................... 25 Reopening Doubles ................................................................................................................... 25 Over Opponent’s Preempts (Jump Overcalls) ........................................................................... 25 Weak Jump Shifts...................................................................................................................... 26 They Open and We Interfere ..................................................................................................... 27 Takeout Doubles ....................................................................................................................... 27 Overcalls.................................................................................................................................... 28 After Opponent’s Preemptive Opening Bid .............................................................................. 29 Michaels and Unusual 2NT ....................................................................................................... 30 Modified DONT ........................................................................................................................ 31 Balancing ................................................................................................................................... 32 Defensive Agreements ................................................................................................................. 33

Not an expert but if 2/1 is GF (as we play) then the opponents don't "turn off" our GF by overcalling. Therefore, in our simple 2/1 system, pass by opener is forcing. In this example, if opener would have rebid 2♦ or perhaps rebid 2NT but lacks a ♦ stopper, then he can pass but responder is expected to bid again. A double by opener is for penalty; a cuebid shows support for responder's suit and slam interest. Other bids are natural and still GF. I agree that this doesn't seem to come up very often.

You might try Larry Cohen Teaches Modern Bidding, a series of 3 short books, which I believe is available for about $45. There are a number of other good resources but I think he gets the complexity level about right for advanced beginners. Not overly complicated but detailed enough to get an understanding of the underlying logic. Good luck! P.S. This is probably U.S.-centric so something else might be better depending on where you live and what games you play in.