jwmonty

Funny story about this. At some point a couple friends of mine were playing precision in a regional with the same agreement to open 2♦ with (43)15 hands and the director was called over. He agreed with Cascade that this was not a three-suited pattern and therefore not a legal method. My friends explained that "Meckstroth and Rodwell play it this way, Greco and Hampson play it this way, Cohen and Berkowitz play it this way" and the director then changed his mind and said their 2♦ opening was fine. In effect the rules on the ground seem to be: if a strong, famous American pair uses the method, then it is general chart legal. Otherwise it is not. Actually it is pretty clear that the term "three-suited," at least as used by the ACBL, includes hands with shapes like 3=4=1=5 and 4=3=1=5. If you visit the Defense Database page on the ACBL website, you will find a list of available defenses to Midchart conventions. Defense 1.a. is described as being the defense to a "2H opening which is 3-suited, short in diamonds," and is reachable by a hyperlink. Follow the link and you get a page headed "Versus 2H Opening which is 3-suited, short diamonds, 11-15 (Can be 4-3 in majors)." The rest of this page contains the actual defense to the 2H bid. It is obvious that the ACBL does not consider a 2H opening that may contain a three-card major to be something other than"3-suited" just because one of the majors may contain fewer than four cards. The GCC states that one of the allowable meanings for a 2D opening is "a three-suiter with a minimum of 10 HCP." I conclude that 4=3=1=5 and 3=4=1=5 are acceptable shapes for a Precision 2D opening under the GCC, because those shapes are "three-suiters." The only way this could be untrue is if the term "three-suiter," as used in the GCC, has a different meaning from "3-suited" as used in the Defense Database. I think you are going to be hard-pressed to make that argument.

I disagree . . . [T]o say that youre going to have 3 bad board for 2 good board is laughable. Why is it laughable? He wasn't expressing an opinion in his second sentence, he was stating a fact. He says it has been his *experience* that not opening 2NT on strong balanced hands loses more often than it wins. The only way that could be "laughable" would be if you believe it can't possibly be true, which is to say, if you believe he's lying about what his experiences have been. Is that what you mean to say? I also believe that opening a strong 2NT is a useful "preempt," and my experience also supports that idea.

3D. I remember this hand from when it ran in the magazine. Hardly anyone on the MSC panel wanted to bid this, and it seems the same is true here. It seems really obvious to me to bid diamonds now. Partner has five good diamonds at least, and is more likely to have six. With Jxx, you have more, and better, diamonds than you could have been expected to hold on the auction. With AK A A on the side, you contribute four tricks in a diamond contract, plus a likely heart ruff (if partner has a weak hand with a doubleton heart, the opps have nine combined and probably either will, or should, bid 3H anyway). If partner has KQ109x(x) of diamonds and out, a diamond contract is where you want to be. In notrump, opener will hold up his ace and kill partner's hand. If partner has more than that, or holds the ace of diamonds instead of the king, he can bid 3H to ask you for a stopper. Bidding some number of notrump now won't get the job done. Partner will think you have some kind of, perhaps, 4=3=1=5 shape with extra values. Even if he credits you with more than one diamond, he will expect a doubleton rather than three of them. In any event, if you are going to play a partscore diamonds has to be better than notrump. You don't want to be in notrump unless it is game. A 3D bid here clears away any confusion that could result from a different call. It tells partner: Good hand, unexpected diamond fit, let's consider game, and we can expect to make 3D if there is nothing better for us to do. Isn't this just about perfect? The only argument I can really see against it is that this hand is so strong you should gamble on a game anyway (because partner won't necessarily know when to carry on toward game). So if not 3D, blasting 3NT (another bid with little support) seems like the alternative.

How does this change when responder is a PH? The GF hands with exactly five spades won't be there anymore, and many of the hands with six spades will already have opened a weak two, or a light 1S opening. You also won't have a four-card spade suit with GF values either. Their PH methods must be considerably different, it seems.

If West really had J10xx of hearts, wouldn't he at least consider refusing to overruff? He still has a natural heart trick.

Sure, go ahead.

I have just finished the third edition of the Revision Club book. As usual, it is available for download in zip format at Dan Neill's website: http://www.geocities.com/daniel_neill_2000/sys/ You can also download the individual files (there are thirteen of them) from box.net. The addresses for each file are as follows. Foreword: http://www.box.net/shared/yk8m7lzubx Introduction: http://www.box.net/shared/n2ol767nv5 Part 1, Major suit openings: http://www.box.net/shared/xa0v09yfen Part 2, 1D opening: http://www.box.net/shared/vo08fq7l2m Part 3, 1NT opening: http://www.box.net/shared/30czj25vym Part 4, 2NT opening: http://www.box.net/shared/bu29m9unvo Part 5, 2C opening: http://www.box.net/shared/jites5v4dz Part 6, 2D opening: http://www.box.net/shared/3e6pdvzv5b Part 7, 1C opening: http://www.box.net/shared/iatb9uz5b9 Part 8, preempts: http://www.box.net/shared/nucigyh8he Part 9, defensive bidding: http://www.box.net/shared/emg3koqci0 Part 10, miscellaneous extra ideas: http://www.box.net/shared/d3iplkri1t Part 11, carding: http://www.box.net/shared/p82xcl6cb0 For those of you who prefer to receive the files directly from me as email attachments, or who wish to communicate with me for other reasons, the email address is as before, jwmonty@earthlink.net. Most of the changes made in this edition were the result of playtesting and bidding practice sessions (thanks to Greg Morse for partnering me). I was gratified to learn that almost everything in the system seemed to work well enough. There have been no major disappointments. I noticed a few things that could be added or improved. Here are some of them: 1. The 2NT response to a 1M opening, which shows a limit or better raise, did not give opener enough different rebid sequences to show different hand types. This created problems in slam auctions. Opener is now allowed to define 18 different hand types without going beyond 4M. It works much better now. 2. There were some idle bids in the 1NT opening structure that could be used to show slam tries by responder. I added some sequences. 3. I never liked the followup auctions in the sequences 1D-1M, 2M and 1H-1S, 2S. I have always believed opener should be allowed to raise with three-card support, but this resulted in problems when responder had a game try. The 1D sequences have been rewritten so that there are more ways to stop in a partscore and avoid getting to 3M on a 4-3 fit when opener does not accept a game try. Slam tries in these auctions are improved also. As for the auction 1H-1S, 2S, I learned that a lot of the pressure could be taken off of this auction by redefining the sequence 1H-1NT, 2x-2S to show exactly four spades, invitational values, not forcing. The 2S bid here is not really needed for any other purposes, and this allows you to play either 2S or 2NT when opener is rejecting the game try, something that formerly was not possible with the 2NT bid in the auction 1H-1S, 2S-2NT being used as forcing, as it should be. 4. Previously, when a 2C opener had a four-card diamond suit on the side, without extra values, there was no way to stop in a diamond partscore facing an invitational hand. This proved costly, since many of responder's invitational hands that are short in clubs (so that there is no 6-2 club fit to use as a signoff spot) contain four or five diamonds, and you need to find the diamond fit on these hands. In the new version, it is possible to do this. (There is also an equivalent method for doing the same thing when opener shows clubs after opening 1C.) I thought my methods after a 2C opening were good before, but now they are even better. If you play Precision with a 6+ 2C opening, you should at least have a look at this chapter even if you have no interest in the rest of the system. 5. Defensive bidding methods when the opponents open at the one level in a suit have been rearranged. There are now more ways to show a canape hand, 4M and 6m, without going past 2M. This is accomplished through various cuebids and canape jump overcalls. There are hundreds of other changes, most of which are really just corrections of typos and the like. If you found the previous editions to be of no more than casual interest, you don't really need to read this one. However, I thought that since I have finally cleaned up the details to my own satisfaction, I ought to make the results available to anyone else who is interested.

Opener's 3M rebid over the double should guarantee a five-card suit 100% of the time. Otherwise, it becomes impossible to find 5-3 fits with assurance. Getting to 4-3 fits is not a good idea in an auction where you expect a bad trump break. The way to get to your 4-4 major fits is by using choice-of-games cuebids. A cuebid of four of the opponents' suit, by either partner, is presumed to be looking for a suit and showing at least two places to play. It is not a slam try. The auction could go P-(P), 1C-(3D), X-(P), 4D-(P), 4H-(P), 4S. Opener's 4D bid shows at least two places to play, at least one of which must be a major. Responder bids 4H, natural, in case hearts is one of those places to play. Opener then bids 4S, showing a four-card spade suit with clubs also (the only possibility for his other place to play), and the fit is found. Another way to do the same thing is P-(P), 1C-(3D), X-(P), 4C-(P), 4D-(P), 4S. Opener rebids 4C to show his main suit, and responder's 4D bid asks for a major. Responder could have one major plus club support, intending to go back to 5C if opener bids the major he doesn't have. Here, he has both majors, and doesn't care which one opener bids. In the second auction, responder can't bid 4D and then go back to 5C to show a slam try in clubs, because that sequence simply shows that he doesn't like whichever major opener bids over 4D. The way to show a slam try in clubs, if that is what you want to do, is to bid 4NT over 4C. The partnership has already rejected notrump as a place to play (because nobody was willing to bid 3NT), so this can't be natural. It also shouldn't be any sort of Blackwood, because opener has a wide range for his 4C bid and a generalized slam invitation is more important.

I don't know what you are thinking to say this. The "Mathematical Tables" article in the Encyclopedia of Bridge gives the probabilities of getting a particular number of high-card points in a random hand. The entries for 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 HCP add up to 8.3%. And that's when the deal could be anything. When partner is known to have close to half the deck, the probability of your holding a very weak hand must be considerably higher, since there are fewer points left to be distributed among the other three hands.

I like to play this double as short in diamonds. An ideal hand would be KJxx/KJxx/x/AQxx, a hand that is unbiddable otherwise. Note that you are fairly likely to hold something like this on the auction, since many players will respond 1NT to 1C with 5332 shape and a five-card diamond suit, for exactly this reason (to make it hard for the opponents to get together in a major). Also note that playing this way, a bid of clubs by partner in response to your double is natural. It makes no difference if the opponents are playing that the 1C bid could be short if strong and balanced. If opener held this hand type, he would have raised the 1NT bid to 2 or 3. Alternative treatments are a delayed takeout double of clubs (not strong enough to double the first time), penalty (long clubs, good hand), and majors with unspecified length in the minors. There are problems with all of these. The first one gets you into the auction at the two level with no guaranteed fit when you are likely to be outgunned in high cards (the opponents can have as much as 13 + 10 = 23), and is unlikely to occur anyway, since you can double 1C with as little as 10-11 HCP if your shape is good and you have 4-4 in the majors. You would therefore not be using it at all unless you had, say, 4=4=4=1 shape with about 8-10 HCP. The second one (penalty of clubs) is unlikely to happen, and some of those hands can balance naturally with a 2C bid. The third one is also unlikely to happen, since you have already refused to use Michaels or to overcall at the one level. You wouldn't be using it very often unless you believe it is right to reopen this auction with any hand that is 4-4 in the majors and has a few high cards, gambling that partner has a four-card major for you. I suppose it could actually be right to do this (it would be interesting to know how often partner does have a 4cM on this auction), but I don't know of any experts who play this way. My suggested treatment at least gets you into the auction on hands with which it is clearly right to bid something at some point, and does so in a relatively safe way. (There is still the possibility that you will be misfitted and outgunned, but that is true of any balancing action you might take here.)

I don't like any of the lines that rely heavily on a club finesse at any point. I think RHO would have doubled the 5C bid with almost any hand that included CK, so the finesse seems doomed.

It seems that there are quite a lot of legitimate chances here. Return to dummy at T2 with a spade finesse. Now you call for the low diamond. You are hoping for AK onside. A priori this is 24%, but the spade lead indicated a 5-2 split there, so if diamonds are 4-2 or 5-1, RHO is considerably more likely to have the length and this increases his chances of holding both tops. Let's say 30%. (I don't think the spade lead particularly suggests that LHO has a diamond entry. With five spades he would have led one regardless of the rest of his hand.) If RHO does hold both diamond tops, the hand is a guaranteed make. You go up with the queen if he ducks, and if he splits and switches to clubs, you win in dummy, cash the rest of the major suit winners (claiming if the queen of hearts falls), and continue diamonds. East can win, but even if he is able to cross to partner's queen of hearts now and let partner cash the fifth spade, that is only four tricks for them. Suppose RHO plays low on the diamond, you play queen, and it loses. If diamonds were 3-3 originally, the opponents cannot continue the suit profitably, now or later. If LHO started with AK, AJ, A10, KJ, or K10, he can cash the second honor and establish two more tricks for his partner, but he cannot see your hand and he is very unlikely to think of that. Similarly, if he started with AK10x, AKJx, AJ10x, or KJ10x, he won't know that he can lead a low diamond now to partner's hand. Surely it is most likely that he will simply play another spade. You win the spade and play a low heart from the dummy. You don't care who wins it. Let's say LHO does and returns the fourth spade, setting up his winner. Now you cash the AK of hearts, to see if the queen falls. If it doesn't, you play the king of clubs, your last chance. You can still make your ninth trick in clubs if there is a singleton honor on your left, or QJ doubleton on your right. (Also QJ doubleton on your left, but presumably you will finesse when LHO drops an honor.) If LHO switches to a heart when he gets in with the diamond, you play more or less the same way. Win the first heart and then play a low one. You cash the other top heart later. What are the total chances of making the hand by playing this way? You already have 30% or so from the diamond suit. You also make when an opponent has stiff Q, Qx, or Qxx of hearts. (LHO most likely, but it is not impossible that LHO started with five or six small hearts to go with his five spades, in which case you will have the pleasure of seeing the queen drop on your right.) The hearts will be 5-3 47% of the time. You will get Qxx 37.5% of that 47%, times the 70% chance that you haven't already made the hand with the diamond play, which adds up to a 12% chance out of your initial 100%. So add that to 30 and we are up to 42%. Hearts will break 6-2 17% of the time, and you get Qx one-quarter of those times, for another 4% times .70, for another 3% to the total. That brings us up to 45% overall. The last chance is the club play. Clubs will break 3-2 68% of the time, and a priori RHO will have a doubleton 34% of the time, but RHO is more likely to have the club length (because of the known spades), so let's say actually 28% of the time he will have a doubleton club. The doubleton must be specifically QJ, which occurs 10% of that 28%, for 2.8%, times .7 for, let's call it another 2% overall, which brings us up to 44% making. Clubs will also break 4-1 28% of time, so that a priori LHO will have a singleton 14% of the time, but LHO is more likely to have the singleton than his partner (again because of the known spades), so let's say he has a singleton club 16% of the time. That singleton will be an honor 37.5% of that 16%, or 6% of the time, multiplied by .7 overall, so let's say another 4% there. That gets you up to 49% overall, and you can add a quarter of a percent overall for a stiff queen of hearts. So it seems that you have roughly a fifty-fifty chance of making the contract legitimately, assuming that the defense lets you try all of your suits one after the other without cashing five tricks first. What can go wrong? Well, there is the possibility mentioned earlier of the diamonds breaking in such a way that the opponents have four tricks in the suit, and have to set them up (by cashing LHO's second diamond immediately) before you have time to try the heart play. I consider this too unlikely to worry about. But it could also happen that RHO has AJ10x(x) or KJ10x(x) of diamonds and plays low the first time. When you try the heart play, RHO can go up and cash the rest of his diamonds. So let's say that you are going to go down whenever LHO started with stiff A, stiff K, Ax or Kx of diamonds originally (with Ax and Kx meaning the low spots, not the 10). I give him about a 10% chance overall of having started with one of these holdings (4/15 of possible original doubletons, times a 30% probability that he started with a doubleton, for overall 8%, plus another 2% or so for stiff ace or king). This ten percent overall of losing cases must be subtracted from the fifty-fifty chance I calculated earlier, bringing us down to about 40%. Another worry is that after you lose the diamond trick to LHO, he will find a club switch that attacks your entries. If LHO has xx of clubs and leads one now, your options are reduced. I don't know what the likelihood is of LHO's finding this play, if indeed it is available to him. However, he might also come up with the clever idea of switching to a high club from Jx, playing partner for club strength, which would give you a chance to make on misdefense. Again, the probability of this is hard to quantify. Let's say your chances remain at about forty percent overall. How does this compare to the proposed alternative of finessing dummy's club seven at T2? Assuming RHO will always win the trick when he can, you make against Qxx and Jxx in his hand. But if RHO has Qx, Jx, QJx, or QJxx, your chances are now very poor. You are only getting one club trick, the opponents have at least two and perhaps three diamonds to cash whenever they like, and dummy can be endplayed to give up heart tricks. In fact, you will probably go down more than one. So you really need to catch him with that Qxx or Jxx. The a priori chance of a 3-2 break is 68%, half of which or 34% will give RHO three of them, but as noted earlier RHO is known from the spades to be more likely to have the club length, so let's be generous and say he has exactly three clubs 40% of the time. Of these, he will have Q or J but not both 60% of that 40%, for a total of 24%, so you are only going to make the hand about a quarter of the time. (There is also the possibility that LHO will already have played an honor when you led the club from your hand. This will let you play him for a singleton, making when you finesse on the way back, but this risks going down disastrously when LHO started with QJ or split from QJx and you could have made the hand with the diamond or heart plays.) I think my proposed line is best.

Which serves primarily to tell us that Pavlicek has a crappy system, at least for hands like this one. Partner could have xxx/AQJx/KQxx/Ax and there are better contracts available than 3NT. Roth suggested long ago that after 1NT, 2C-2D responder should show shortness by jumping to 3S now. I play this way myself. In another thread, awm says that with this hand type, he either responds 2C puppeting partner to 2D and then jumps to 3H, showing a heart fragment with spade shortness to go with diamond length, or (if the longer minor is clubs) he responds 2NT, showing clubs, and then bids 3H showing fragment/shortness similarly. He also has special responses for 4441 types. His methods work too. The important thing is for responder to always have some way to show a short suit and suggest bailing out of notrump.

AWM wrote: "My major issues are with the idea that a 1NT rebid should have a huge range (say 12-16 in standard, or 11-15 in a big club) just so that we can rebid 1NT with all the potential problem hands with singleton that exist." You can say that the range is 12-16 or 11-15, but I don't. My practice, playing a Precision style, is to pass with 11 or a mediocre 12 points if the rebid is going to have to be 1NT over one or more of partner's possible responses. Often I will pass a hand short in spades that others might want to open (another Roth idea). So the range is effectively 3 1/2 points, not much wider than anyone else's. "My examples for the 1♦-1♠-2♣-2♥ fourth suit sequence were a 14-count and a good 15-count. Add a jack to the first example if you want -- I think these examples will be beyond the 1NT rebid range that most people are playing." They aren't beyond the range Alan Sontag was playing when he held Q/A9xx/Jxx/AKJxx. If Hannie is to be believed, you and others would also rebid 1NT with that hand. So we are all effectively playing that a 1NT rebid can show a fifteen count (sixteen is impossible, at least for me, since Precision opens 1C with that), which means responder must invite with eleven or a good ten. I don't really believe there are all that many people out there who restrict their 1NT rebids to a range of 11-13 or 12-14 100% of the time. If they did, they would have to open and rebid in five-card suits or rebid in three-card suits on some hands, and I don't see them doing that. Or open 1NT with a singleton, which neither you nor I like and which few people actually do. (It might be interesting to know how many people would go that route if it were not so strongly disfavored by the ACBL and its tournament directors.)

AWM wrote: "I think that this is where the insults started, to be honest. The suggestion is that Elianna and I need to 'learn to bid better' and that our bidding would improve if we bid your way. I think that implies that you think you're a better bidder?" I don't agree with any of this. I certainly didn't intend to insult anyone, nor do I think I did so inadvertently. If any statement along the lines of 'I play A and you play B, and I think A is better' is to be taken as insulting, it becomes difficult to engage in civil discussions while expressing disagreement. Nor do I say that I am a better bidder than anyone in particular, although I do think I know something about bidding. I suppose it is possible to interpret any expression of disagreement as a statement that anyone who holds a different view is wrong, therefore in need of education, but most people don't take it that way. I appreciate that you give arguments and examples to show why you play a different way than I do. None of what you say is untrue in its particulars, and indeed, I knew about these problems and others when I adopted the style I use. Any style or system is going to have soft spots, categories of hands where it does not work as well as it does on others. What is important is how it works in the long run over the entire universe of deals you will encounter. Many years of experience have convinced me that avoiding the natural, nonforcing rebid of 2C whenever possible keeps you out of a lot of trouble. It is a bid you don't want to use unless you have to. I'm not the only one who thinks this way (although it is a minority view). Al Roth thought so little of the auction 1D-1M, 2C that in Picture Bidding, he tried to redefine the 2C rebid as quasi-natural (could be three cards), guaranteeing extra values, and forcing for one round. Bill Cole, in inventing the Cole 2C convention, made the bid totally artificial. I trust you will agree that both of them knew what they were doing and had reasons for doing it, even if you don't use their methods. If you have or can get hold of a copy of the November 1983 issue of The Bridge World, you will find it interesting reading. In the You Be The Judge feature on page 23, the following pair of hands is given: K10542 QJ1043 3 95 9 765 AQ95 AQ843 The players who actually held these hands bid 1D-1S; 2C-2H; 2NT-3H; 4H-P. There was considerable disagreement about what went wrong and what should have been done differently. Edgar Kaplan observed that the auction had begun with "the most awkward common sequence in standard bidding -- one-diamond opening, major response, two-club rebid." He suggested 1C-1S, 1NT-2H, P. Which is the auction I would have, except that the opening bid would be 1D. (If you don't like the 1D opening, either because of shape or weakness, add a point and move a small club into the diamond suit; you will have an auto 1D opening, and facing responder's actual hand, the problems will be the same. And yes, I do know that some people avoid this problem by playing reverse Flannery responses.) So you can add Kaplan's name to those of Roth and Cole as part of the faction that isn't crazy about the 1D/2C auction. Of course, when you actually hold these problem hands you have to bid something. For me, that something is 1D followed by 1NT. Kind of like what Alan Sontag did in a world championship when he held Q/A9xx/Jxx/AKJxx. I have found that using the 1NT rebid as a dumping ground for all of these problem hands is an approach that works quite well in practice, better than anything else I have tried. Sure, it's not perfect, but if something were perfect the hands wouldn't be problem hands in the first place. This is not something that can be proved true or false through armchair analysis. Only experience can tell you what works best. My experience tells me rebidding 1NT instead of 2C when you have a choice is what works. I don't think it is close, either. Although it is not necessary to understand why it works best -- if something works, it works, even if you do not understand the underlying reasons -- I am pretty sure of a couple of the reasons. One is that a final contract of 1NT (if that is where you end up) tends to score very well. It is much harder to defend, by a wide margin, than two of a suit (and this is even more true when declarer can have a lot of different shapes; the defenders won't know your hand for a long time). Another, and probably the more important one, is that a 1NT rebid serves as a launching pad for a wide variety of forcing and invitational auctions, many more than are available after a 2C rebid, whatever your methods are for advancing the 2C bid. Jlall said a while back (sorry, can't find it among his millions of posts) something to the effect that his idea of good bidding methods is lots of ways to look for the best games and slams, and that he really doesn't care about getting to contracts of 2D. Which is not to say that he would agree with me in the present dispute, but I agree with his general approach. Modern Precision is not designed to reach partscores with the greatest degree of accuracy. It is not particularly designed to find minor suit spots. It is about games and slams. That's how I try to bid, and my methods are biased in that direction. I don't expect you to change your mind because of anything I say here. After all, you've read my book, and if that didn't do it, fair enough. And your view falls into the mainstream of expert thinking, which mine does not. But know this: I'm just as aware as you are of the potential pluses and minuses of my approach, and of yours as well, and I'm satisfied that in actual play, mine works best. That's why I play it. Not because I'm smarter or better than you or anyone else, but rather because after many years of experimenting with pretty much every method on the market that is legal in ACBL play, I managed to stumble into an approach to constructive bidding that is at least reasonable on the vast majority of hands you pick up in the real world. Take my word for it, achieving results that even qualify as decent is more difficult than most people think. At least (and at last) I've learned to manage that much.