ulven

That structure was invented in 1990 in Magnus and my partnership. Lindkvist-Fredin started playing 1997, and this was pulled from the shelves. In the Junior Europeans 1990,I played it with Johan Ebenius, and one success of this design "flaw" came on Viewgraph vs Denmark. We bid 1C-1NT (8-11,bal,denies 4-card spades) down one and teammates reached making vulnerable 4S after being able to overcall 1S in 4th position.

I don't think so. Seems the direct 2M puts more pressure on 4th hand. Also conceals the more undefined hand (as declarer).

1D has been the best opening. Not a lot of double-digit gains but steady gains on a very frequent hand type.

Weak 2's are no doubt net plus over time. Canapé 2's are a lot more net plus over time. Simple as that. So we played the Nickell team, arguably the most successful team the last 25+ years, and you found 3 boards where we could've opened weak 2 or our action may have been affected by the lack of weak 2. Those 3 boards were push, win 8, win 3 for net +11 imps. What's your point? Btw those two last quarters were live-streamed on Youtube if you want to look it up. Meckstroth got the blue card right back at him. I wonder how times that ever happened to him :-)

That 1C structure was put together in 1990 when I played with Magnus. I'm not sure if I can dig up the notes any longer.

Disclaimer: I don't have any motivation to convince anyone about the merits of these opening bids. As foobar asked me to comment here I will do so on his request. A few observations and views: 1D as weak balanced only, is by far the best opening bid I have played in 30+ years, statistically. I did not anticipate that. 2M as 4M 5+m I have played on-off in various partnerships since late 90's, achieving among other results playing that, Spingold semi and Nordic Championship gold open. Last NABC I played, 4th place twice in NABC team events. This is just mentioned to clarify it's not bunny-bashing open­ings. The opening is dubious from a theoretical viewpoint and takes some handling/experience to get most mileage. Occasional bad result on misfits but HUGE winner overall. Matthew Thompson is big proponent of them also, see his books. 1M incl 4441 has been a revelation also, but not as much statistical data yet to back it up. So far clear plus. Increasingly testing treating almost all 5m422's as balanced is going well, still evaluating. Initially treating 5M332 as balanced is a closed topic IMO. It's a clear winner (but ofc nothing is "right" every time). I have moved on from theoretical assessments of methods, to trying things in practice, to evaluate how well it actually works. Certainly learnt from that. People telling me how bad certain opening bids are, are largely ignored. No problem with criticism. Another truly fantastic opening bid, but ofc more rare, is 2NT as opening hand with 64/46+ m's. Played for years, hardly any bad result and soo many good ones. If opening structure allows it, ie 2NT not needed for balanced, I always use it now. Currently I am playing and developing a non strong club version.

I've played the 2M-opening (10-14, 4M & 5+m) on-off for 20 years or so. In NABC's for the past 5 years. It's not a price to pay - it's fun and a clear winner. Does take a little bit of experience and continuations to get the most mileage out of it.

4th hand interference after 1C-1D in this case.

*ROTL* Maybe you're missing my point. If a situation doesn't' come up in practical play in 400 boards, then that's of (very) limited concern to me. Reality trumps theory. I don't have any incentive to prove anything to you. I am willing to share when someone asks, but with your attitude I don't care anymore.

My 2 cents. The hands that benefits from a weak relay and where the risk of information leakage are the greatest are the minimum balanced ones. 15-16, 16-17 etc depending on the rest of your opening structure. IMO, those are also the hands that most frequently puts you at a disadvantage when the opponents compete over 1C. If you decide to use 1NT as 15-17, like for example Muller-de Wijs (except favorable in their case) does, this problem isn't so much of a problem anymore.

Since you challenge my assertion about strong opposition, IMO it was competent by ACBL standards. 1st day regional Swiss, 2nd place after losing final match to Bob Hamman's team. 2 days of Soloway (failed to Q for KO after bad 4th session), 2 days Mitchell BAM - tied for 4th place, 3 days of Keohane NA Swiss - 4th place. I guess that's about 400 fortunate deals then. Different partnerships should focus on different areas in their system for improvement, I can't make a general assertion here in the forum. Maybe you should spend time on this but probably you would get better "mileage" on something else given how rare this 'problem' is. If everything else in your system is perfect then fine. I do have a very good structure after 1C-1D to develop the subsequent auction. And I do know which auctions that need room, doing just fine in the slam department, thx. Not to shappy in the game area either, btw. I do not agree that negative bids that show no shape are borderline stupid but maybe that just means that I'm incompetent. I do think that when you are playing for many days you should try to have symmetric solutions, resusable modules and easy to remember agreeements rather than a tailor-made optimal set for each situation. FYI, our set of notes are 6 pages for constructive bidding and not many partnerships have a more effective bidding system than I have. That probably a statement that's hard to believe but I stand by it.

"There is a lot of discussion on responses to a string 1C opening. As an experienced user of 1C-1D=negative or Semi-positive hand, I encounter a lot of trouble in the Bidding sequence 1C-(pass)-1D-(bid) holding a Semi-positive hand as the 1D bidder." Just played 15+ 1C with 1D 0-8 reply for 8 days in SF NABC against top level opposition. Not once did we encounter an overcall after 1C-1D. This thread is a lot of hoopla for a non-problem IMO. Mess up the structure and add a lot of complexity. You are focusing on the wrong area for improvement.

Mild invite, 5

2D negative, 0-6/7.

When I search for a specific player, I only get matches until about a year back. One used to be able to find matches from at least 2006. Anything changed? I asked Fred in Atlanta and he was not aware of any changes.

I suspect prevalent theory and my experiences doesn't match. Or maybe I fail the objectivity test... and just keep playing shitty stuff that doesn't work :-).

Yes, yes and already did, but will take it a step further now and test that. Two comments: - A 2-suited hand with a 5-card major is the hand type that's the most vulnerable to interference after a strong club. Each silly result you might see when opened 1M has to be compared to the silly results you end up after a contested 1C auction. What's the plus/minus bottom line? And for the argument about 1M-4M being good. Sure. But 1M-2M, 4M is also good and should be compared to auctions like 1C (strong) - 1NT, 2M - 3M etc in terms of available space for slam investigation and anonymity / information leakage. - The key to make this work is keeping the strong 1-suited M hands in the 1C opening.

Is there a question for me? In current system version 1M denies 5332 in 1st & 2nd, 10-19 if 54+, 10-14 if 1-suited. The system is really good, and I am capable of judging that. Yes, limited hands have some advantages, but this approach has bigger upsides if you really think about it. This summer NABC included beating Zimmerman Multon Helness Helgemo in the final of a bracketed KO.

Yes, I played this for a couple of years in the 90's. About break-even when having H, good success rate when having D.

Do remember that theorethical gains/losses may not reflect actual outcomes, often due to frequencies and human judgement. I just came back from Summer NABC. Played strong 1C (17+ if BAL) and wide range 1M for 400+ boards against top notch opponents, winning two regional imp events and losing in R32 in Spingold. IMHO: 17 BAL in 1C was never a problem. Limited opening bids in 1M is over rated, prefer including 5+M & 4+ sidesuit in 1M instead of 1C since these are easily the hands most vulnerable to enemy interference. That works very well and makes 1C-1D continuations must easier.

Back online.

Temp

http://viewsfromthebridgetable.blogspot.se/2008/02/suit-quality-paradox-and-more.html

2D. No 2nd choice.

I'm pretty done with the weak opening preempts. Constructive intermediate 2-openings is my choice now. And a quick glance at the Denver Sun-Mon BAM showed that six 2-level openings resulted in six wins (against competent opps, such as Gawrys, chinese etc). I remember two occasions where we didn't have a weak 2M available and had to come in later into the auction. That was another two wins. So, no fancy weak for me. How do I measure? With at-the-table results against good opposition.