rbforster

They seem good, and I like them for several reasons: - preempt hands can sometimes overcall or preempt at a higher level, so they aren't all lost - they are hard to defend against because they are natural and non forcing, as well as consuming lots of space - they allow finding 4-4 major fits that may be lost when overcaller is minimum and can't bid again - they offer some useful negative inferences when partner overalls instead At a given strength level and unconditional on the opening bid, a specific two suited combo with 4=5 or longer is roughly as likely as a classic weak two shape. With a weak two in the 4-10 range vs a Roman Jump with 8-15, I think the Roman one is going to be the same unconditionally and only a bit less frequent due to the lower strength ranges being more common given the opponents' opening bid. I'm not sure how the expected shortness in opener's suit effects the odds of the Roman vs single-suited shapes, but it's not obviously going to matter much.

I imagine Adam's or other SP-first style strong club systems might work well in 3/4th. These are the ones were 1♦ is DN or GF, most cheap replies are transfer SPs, and the high responses are specialized GFs. It should be better in competition than your "new" structure which conveys no shape information on the vast majority of SP hands.

The version of OC I learned did not have a strong "takeout" bid per se. You pick to either show strong balanced (power double) or two suited (maybe 4-4). All two suitors combos and strengths are covered: Cue - two suits touching the suit cue'd, unlimited Roman jumps - suit bid and next higher one, limited 2N - one of the Roman combos (adjacent suits), 4.5 losers or stronger

Sure you get bad outcomes sometimes, but I think the odds favor the NTO. Yes, if the opponents have excellent methods and agreements over the NTO, bid passively and await your scramble, and you have no fit to scramble to, you might get doubled for a bad result. But that's a lot going wrong and these alternatives seem a lot more likely to me - - you may have a fit (partner does have shortness in their suit), and partner is able to bid or jump to the law level quickly, leading to the opponents missing their best contract or at worst bid over you for a similar result as without interference - opponents methods over NTO or it's advance lead to confusion or an imprecise competitive auction where they are worse off on average than if you had not interfered and they may not be able to penalize you even if they wanted to - your doubled part score may be a better result than their game Remember many of the same criticisms you make about NTO can be made of a strong balance NT overall - no guaranteed fit, opponents have announced strength, could be doubled off and go for a number. The standard NT has a wider range of shapes than NTO, being 2-5 cards in 4 suits (vs 3-5 cards in 3 suits and known shortness), so clearly if you want to play a contract other than 1NT you are much better positioned to do so after NTO than 1NT balanced. So how likely is a natural NT overcall to be the best and final contract? I don't know, but if it's not that often, I feel like putting yourself out there at the two level is risky, while the similar hands starting with a power double can often scramble to a suit at the one level which is a lot safer.

1D-0-7 or H+ .....1H min bal or min 1 suited (artificial) ..........1S-0-7 ...............natural .....1S min 2 suited (artificial) .....1N 19-21 ......2C any 22+ ......natural 19-21 There are a bunch of tweaks and quirks, but that's the basic idea.

I might restructure this to have the majors at +1 and the minors at +0, or closer to that anyway for the GF responses. Theres less space below 3N than 4M, and the minor hands are usually headed to 3N and hence could use a little more room. Also, by zooming into minor(s) with 2C+, you may avoid wrong siding NT. it's likely better to have opener, who is both stronger and less described, declaring 3N in these cases.

Split range 1♦ reply probably works well too, most GF or DN, leaving most responses for descriptive SPs and higher ones for specific GFs.

There's no problem with the strong club being 15 balanced, although that's 1 hcp weaker than I play it, you just raise your GF response standard by the same amount. The SP hands are handled by a combination of artificial rebids over 1C-1D and relay breaks by opener. Admittedly they aren't handled as well as they could be when 1D is purely weak, but I think with better methods over 1C-1D they can be handled about as well as in normal precision (not great, but ok). There's no holy grail unless you start using tempo breaks for extra bidding space - there's only so much space and you try to find the best probability and score-maximizing adjusted methods in that context.

there was some shuffling of the 3-suiters, but basically I put the GF H/H+m hands into 1C-1D along with the 0-7 hands. There were more artificial responses after that, but it was designed so that when responder had the GF, opener would usually bid 1H (catch all but no extras, and completing the transfer). Then 1N+ over 1H relayed the GF shapes at -1, while 1S confirmed the 0-7 hands and natural nonforcing bidding followed since opener was limited. Having removed those GFs, there was space for everything else over 1C to be GF at -1, and nice transfer symmetric relays.

thanks for the welcome, sorry I've been too busy with stocks and not so much with cards lately. There was another reason for 0/2 vs 1/1 that I remembered. Again assuming you will relay both GF and SP hands when you have GF total values, SP relays are less frequent since the probabilities favor more even distributions of HCPs. So having 20 vs 6 is less likely than 16 vs 10, and so forth, even after you condition on the strong club opener. this means that you'll get more value out of GF relays than SP ones on a frequency basis, which favors lower resolution for those GF ones. You may recall that my relay system took this one step farther and didn't relay SP hands at all, in order to get -1 on GF but worse for SPs.

I think +0 GF and +2 SP is clearly better than +1 each, given you're set on relaying both whenever you have sufficient values. this is because there is a lot more need for space to describe the values range of GF responses (since they are unlimited), while for SP hands their strength range is already quite narrow.

Not ideal, but for those stuck with ABCL rules, not passing opposite a 17+ possible Pass is also unplayable (by law). I'm sure I could put together a GCC two-way pass system that wasn't unreasonable - remember you only have to pass a few hands systematically to make the opening pass legal/non-forcing. If after Pass you bid with 0-7 2X weak with any 5+ suit, and open all your 8+ hands naturally somehow at the one level in 3rd/4th, that only leaves you passing a balanced 0-7. This is mostly bad when partner has a big balanced hand and you miss 3N, so maybe you put the strong balanced hands into 1C or 2N openers instead of passing those. Now you only have opener's strong unbalanced hands to deal with opposite your 0-7 balanced, and often the opponents will bid here or preempt (since they're unbalanced too), and this gives partner a second call. Since you're balanced, raising or bidding NT with 2 card support for partners suit should make for pretty easy competitive auctions.

I worked on a system that included in 1S-1N most GF hands, as well as the 6-9ish regular 2/1 forcing NT hands that just pass or preference to opener's natural rebid. This freed up 1S-2X to be natural and non forcing (intermediate 5-11ish), and allowed 3rd suit auctions after the forcing NT (1S-1N-2m-2DH) to be a cheap GF ask. I came to a similar conclusion that 1S-2C needed to do some extra work. In my case, I had this be inv+ clubs (could be two suited if GF), and was F1. This allowed the NT to include only those GF hands that had one or both red suits. The reason 2C natural helps is that there are many sequences like 1S-1N-2HS where 3C by responses wants to be the cheapest ask and hence it's important to offload the club hands elsewhere. I also played an invitational 2N rebid by responder so that step wasn't available.

My reading of the ABCL rules suggest that a two-way pass would not be illegal on its face (only forcing passes are banned). Opening hands in the 8-16 hcp range naturally is also allowed. The only tricky part might be whether ones favorite conventions could be used in sequences like P-1X-?. My suggestion would actually to have a lighter strong pass option, because for GCC it's hard to open sub-8 hcp hands in third seat, and you might not want to pass out 7 vs 17+. Weak openings at the two level in 3rd and 4th seat could cover some of the weaker hands too.

I don't scan singleton suits at all. You just count the stiff honor at full QPs and partner figures it out eventually.

At some point is correct. It was a while back, Midchart only, and was retracted in the last round of revisions that further gutted anything interesting you can do in Midchart events. You could never play a decent transfer openings system since 1♠ could only be spades.

I think a natural introduction to relay precision is to just do full relays on balanced hands. For example, an early system I learned was 1D 0-7 1H 5+ ♠ unbal 1S bal, including 5332s 1N 5+ ♣ unbal 2C 5+ ♦ unbal 2D 5+ ♥ unbal 2H ... The point is that if you're willing to learn relays eventually, it's better to focus on that since with relays you don't need to separate the 8-11 vs 12+ strength early on. There's lots of space to do that later.

It doesn't hurt as much if they don't know the strain or who will be leading, and besides most relay systems give plenty of artificial bids to double for lead and yet almost everyone agrees that symmetric shape relays are very good and don't cite this as a big drawback. In addition, giving up the 4♦ terminator in favor of direct bids of 4M or 5m to play has a real cost too - responder with undisclosed extras can show them a lot more economically with 4♠+ instead of bidding 4♥ as requested, while bidding over openers game sign off is guaranteed to put you one level higher.

Seems fine. Nothing seems obviously problematic.

In my circles (not top experts certainly, but reasonable US players), the majority play (1m)-3m as stopper ask and a minority play it as a regular 3m preempt. I don't know anyone who plays it as strong natural.

If you want to get in their way and preempt their auction, bid 1NT for takeout! Then at least you have somewhere to run.

Better or worse than being a muppet?

I don't find it hard to handle opening hands with 44xx shapes in standard or precision. You find your major fits pretty well opening 1m when partner responds naturally. As for other options, my current use for 2♣ is clubs + major, preemptive. You can play this as 4/4+ either way which is super common (most 4432's qualify) and super aggressive. For regulatory reasons I play 5+ clubs and 4+ major. This latter version is about twice as common as a 6 card weak two and safer on law level grounds, etc. The former is something like 8-10x the frequency of a normal weak two, but is somewhat less safe in terms of expected fit.

You've got 2♦ available to ask for the longer major, so it seems a shame not to include more shapes than just 44xx. Especially as a preempt, having 54/45/55 there too will significantly up the odds. I hear 2♣ makes for a good majors preempt, but have not played it myself. Here's a write up on Ekren 2♣ - majors weak or strong balanced. http://www.chrisryall.net/bridge/weak.two/assumed-fit.htm#ekren-2c

I did the exact calculations with the help of some programs I wrote. Now it's easy to just look up the results :).