rbforster

Just to follow up on with some probabilities, expressed as a % of all possible hands, we have: 1.76% a "normal" 4-10 hcp weak two 2M (no 4OM) 1.50% a "normal" 2♦ 4-10 hcp (no 4M) 0.93% pair of 5/5 hands, two possible suit pairs like D+C or D+S, with 4-10 hcp (5521, 5530, 6511 6520) 0.66% pair of 5/5 hands as above, but 7-10 hcp This means that depending on the strength range you allow for your 5/5's, you'd be looking at increasing the frequency of your weak two opening by about +40% to +60%.

Along these lines, how about this? 2♦ - weak two, or 5/5 ♦♣ or ♦♠. Then 2♥ invites, with ........2♠ natural 5/5 ........2NT good weak two ........3♣ natural 5/5 ........3♦ poor weak two 2♥ - weak two, or 5/5 ♥♣ or ♥♦. Then 2♠ invites, with ........2NT good weak two ........3♣ natural 5/5 ........3♦ natural 5/5 ........3♥ poor weak two 2♠ - weak two, or 5/5 ♠♣ or ♠♥. Then 2NT invites, with ........3♣ natural 5/5 ........3♦ good weak two ........3♥ natural 5/5 ........3♠ poor weak two This gets you all the 5/5's and weak two's in all but clubs, plus you actually have the suit you open which is lots better than transfer preempts for annoying your opponents. You won't have as much precision in your asks as the 4 steps for Ogust, but you'll have a lot more frequency. Probably that means you want the 5/5 hands to be "good" by weak two standards so responder with an invite can consider bidding game with a fit given there isn't a bid for good vs bad values on these. It's possible you can handle some of these issues by having various higher pass/correct responses besides step+1.

Ben - how do you handle 5/5 majors 15-17? If those go 1♣-1♠-1NT, can responder find the 5-3 fit if he's got a weak hand?

1D as I read it promises 0+ points and includes very weak H hands with less than 6♥. Competition is easy after anything but 1♦ since you don't need to force - responder is forced to bid if he's got the GF, so openers actions can be pure. After 1S, I think opener bids 1N a lot and gets dropped there, or rarely bids a strong 2C relay. He could bid 2X too with a 6 bagger, knowing responder is usually weak balanced when they're going to pass.

Well, I havent really estimated how much this would matter so I'm not sure I'm overestimating it. I was thinking about 24 board single session local events rather than multi-day events, where there's already a fair bit of uncertainty as to whether any "different" part of your system would come up at all. In long events, I agree these effects get smaller and/or less worthwhile. It's a little like swinging when you're behind, only you start out swinging because you're already behind the first place pair. Lots of people swing, especially at the end of a session when they think they need to recover from some bad result.

There's nothing wrong with making an agreement for 1♠-1N(f)-2X-3N that includes this hand or another balanced NT range that seems troublesome. You do tend to right-side NT as well. If you do include some GF hands in 1NT, which I used to do in an experiment at one point, we would alert it and describe as "forcing, could be game forcing" in case they wanted to inquire further. Without special discussion, I think it's "standard" to bid 2♣ here despite the short suit.

What about exiting a diamond now, and planning on reversing dummy with another heart ruff in hand if they continue them (or taking whatever finesse is offered by RHO)? If they play a heart, exit in clubs and plan on taking the spade hook at the end.

In some sense, precision is already a move in this direction. Limited hands in the 10-15 range come up a lot and are opened naturally for the most part, allowing for more aggressive preemption both from the opening itself and from responder's actions. The auctions after the strong club can be awkward, vulnerable to preemption, and lead to subpar part-scores. But strong clubs don't come up much, so most of the time you see only the benefits and none of the drawbacks.

It doesn't seem much worse than others with an art semipositive response though. Most relay systems can't relay opposite a very weak hand (double negative) and you wouldn't be any worse off for GF hands than playing pure GF transfer except when a very strong hand uses Step +1 to relay opposite the GF (and then losing a step isn't so bad since you'll have lots of space). It seems better in competition too, since the DN hands get shape info in early and can be easily separated from the GF ones later. And while there is little room to explore strain opposite the DN hand in some cases (there still would be for the lower transfers, open could often bid a natural 2M for example), most precision systems can't do this well either. You have normal precision auctions like 1c 1d 1h (strong) 1s (DN) blah, where opener guesses a suit at the two level instead of responder but that's not clearly any worse. Or 1c 1s (DN) blah.

Besides playing for fun, most people also like to play bridge to win, and winning is usually thought of in terms of placing 1st/2nd/3rd in some event (and earning masterpoints), while 5th vs 25th doesn't matter that much. If you want to play for the top slot, maybe your bidding system should reflect this... What about a system that took ~2-3% of hands and just ignored them all together in terms of opening bids? Maybe you play a weak 2♣ (because it comes up) and just hope for the best when you get dealt a 22+ hcp hand and noone bids ahead of you. Some versions of EHAA have no forcing opening (bid a natural 3N and hope). Maybe you play a limited openers system, say 11-17 natural 1 bids, but don't have a strong club/diamond opening for the bigger hands (or treat your 1 bids as limited and NF, even if they could be unlimited). The point would be that you come out ahead most of the time (when these rare hands don't come up), but do (much?) worse very rarely when they do. This type of optimization should make your bidding system more like to win the top slot than your skill level would normally allow, at the expense of doing worse than your average infrequently. If you're not already a favorite to win your event, this type of strategy should improve your odds. Most of us aren't favorites to win, after all, and yet no one I know plays this way. Thoughts?

This seems like it would be pretty interesting - different than many structures I've seen and it seems to have a lot of potential for very efficient continuations.

There are a lot of considerations, but let me lay some out for you to think about. 1. You don't need to drop down the 9+ QP responses 1–2 steps since those are almost slam going anyway and should have plenty of space/safety. Remember DCBs are more efficient the more high cards you have since you don't stop and relay as much. 2. You might want to compress/drop down some of the 5-8 QP responses to 3NT or lower, if only because you might want to stop there. That's not the most important factor, but it matters a little. You might even want different schemes depending on the level of you ask, if you were really feeling ambitious. 3. Run-on responses by strong responders after open tries to sign off are much more economical if done over 3N than a suit sign off with 4♦ and having to start showing at 4♠+. ......3a. This suggests that a 3N sign off can be pretty wide ranging, say up to 11 QPs, since with no fit and needing a lot of strength, responder only goes on with 9+. Then there's plenty of space to ask more, maybe find a minor suit slam, etc. ......3b. A suited sign off (4♦ terminator or similar) should be much more limited, maybe <=9 or 10 QPs, since there is lots more space to ask below 4M/5m safely and since when repsonder goes on he's answering at a very high level. A zoom over 4♦ probably wants to be stronger, maybe 10-11 min instead of just 9. 4. Once you decide on your sign off rules, you can start estimating the average opener strength conditional on asking for QPs, and in light of that, what the relative probabilities are for responder's QP strength. I'm pretty sure these are just decreasing with QPs except maybe for 5 vs 6, but there are some variations that you can do when Step 1 > S2 +S3, or similar. Again, here you aren't just optimizing for probability order, but for allocating space to answer 1-2 DCB asks conditional on opener having liked the strength answer. 5. You may also want to consider compressing two steps (say 5-6), but then not separating them and just using DCBs with fewer negative inferences. This makes your 5-6 slam tries worse, but slam was less likely then anyway, and it makes all your 7+ slam tries one step better.

One way to think about this is in terms of how much opener needs to ask vs sign off, and how strong responder needs to be in order to make a move after a sign off attempt. 18-19 QPs is about the min for a slam, and 18 is going to be pretty optimistic without good shape opposite shortness, a long suit source of tricks, etc. What level is your typical QP ask by opener? 3♥-3♠? Some systems use step 1 - bad hand, fairly wide range step 2 - zoom into showing something about a slam invite hand

How do people decide when to make a 3 card very weak raise via 1M-1NT...2M vs just passing? I think just saying what the two hand types are is sufficient and leaving how often you decide to bid one vs the other to "bridge judgment". That's what all the standard players do when faced with a choice.

The very simple version is: 1C(16+) -1D(0-7 or ♥/♥+m/4441 GF): 1♥ min values, bal or 1-suited 1♠ min values, 2 suited 1N 19-21 balanced or 4441 2♣ near GF or better, "strong 2C opener" 2♦♥♠ 5+ extras, unbalanced 3♣ 5+ extras unbalanced As you can probably guess, I am not happy with a simple version when a more complicated version with 3rd round relays could be better. Adding various tweaks you can keep the club hands from forcing to the 3 level with only a 5 card suit, emphasize majors a little more in showing minimum 2-suiters, and stuff in various strong hands like extra strength 6m/4M or 5/5 hands into various jump rebids by opener. That's true to some extent, although opener is pretty limited in terms of range (20-22ish for not rebidding 2♣) so responder is in the drivers' seat with the rare GFs. Since the 0-4 hands will typically pass (or transfer and pass over NT), hands with SP or better values are GF anyway opposite 20+. This sometimes means you can't convey your extras as well, but it hasn't been a big problem. One drawback to these methods is that you don't get to use the full shape relays when opener has extras and responder has a GF. I judged that tradeoff to be acceptable since 1. it's not that common that responder has a GF positive when opener has 20+ points. 2. you have enough strength that natural methods can probably find the right strain and investigate slam without getting too high

I agree with Adam on this. SP hands have all the same shapes as GFs, but with much tighter strength range. Thus it makes sense if you plan on relaying both shape and strength, to assign less space to SPs than GFs. For games this doesn't matter, but for slam purposes, you want to put your space to best use without risking going above game or your safety level while exploring. I don't mind the TOSR approach of GF positives with relays, and a 0-7 1D that can get on a relay+2 track if opener shows extras with 1H and responder doesn't bid 1S showing a bust. That gets the SP hands showing shape with 1N+ instead of 1H+. Having them both on parity, i.e. GF and SP hands resolve at TOSR+1 instead of +0 and +2 seems to be a step in the wrong direction as it were, for the reasons above. Myself, I downgrade the SP hands even more and don't even try to relay them. In exchange, I get my GF hands at TOSR-1 for the most part, which means a lot easier slam exploration. I'm not 100% sure this is the best tradeoff, but it doesn't seem like a bad one.

1C-1D-1H denies extras in my methods (with a few rare exceptions for jumps to 2N+ after a negative 1S response). After 1C-1D, with a minimum hand you bid 1H or 1S while with extras you bid 1N+ (naturally). After 1C-1D-1H-1S, the bidding is natural for min NT, 5+ minor, or 6+ major. Responder with 0-4 will typically pass, or with 5-7 can invite, employ strong NT methods, etc. For me, 16-18 opposite 5-7 is already looking for some pretty thin games, so a lot of these auctions are just about finding the right partial.

I see you're considering this in a precision base with a forcing NT. I've thought a lot about this particular case and stuck with Bergen and other artificial jump raises rather than IJSs. Here were some of the issues: 1. You can miss fits in openers major with 2 card M support, esp Hx as you mention 2. You will have invite hands that are 6m-4OM where you don't want to bury a fit in OM 3. Bergen is a better preempt when opener is limited than in standard Together this means you'll have invitational hands with 6m that will go through 1NT(f) anyway, so it seems better to find a way to handle those together with the "pure" IJS hands. Some suggestions along those lines: 1. It's precision, so you can pass the misfitting WJS hands and leave only invitational ones bidding 3m after 1N 2. Over 1♥-1N-2x, use the impossible 2♠ as a relay to separate 3m with an invite from 3m with a bust. 3. Over 1♠, I play 2N as a relay to 3♣ for various SJSs (3♣ is modified Jacoby). This means you can pass out the 3♣ relay with the ♣ WJS hand, and the ♦ WJS hand can pass or gamble 1N and try to bail out in 2♦. This leaves 1N(f)...3m as the IJS hands. 4. Over 1♠, you may not need Bergen as much for preemption (boss suit), so play IJS in spades only and take it slow with 2♠ on the weaker Bergen hand and bid 3♠ invitational with the better Bergen hand. You do lose the preemptive raise, but those are rare in precision anyway and less necessary in spades than hearts. One last thought - i'm not sure what is causing you to reconsider Bergen, but if you keep Bergen, I've heard it's worth playing 1M-3M as a mixed raise instead of preemptive specifically in precision. I haven't quite figured out how this changes the rest of the Bergen structure however.

I haven't played Gazilli in a precision context, but if you like to open 1M light (which generally seems to be a win if you can handle the followups), i think it would make sense to separate hands within a 8(9)-15 range.

1N seems ok with 2245. I would much rather raise hearts with 1345 than jump to 3C with all hands of that shape, but I haven't played that method so maybe it works better than it seems. Can you describe your follow ups to 1d-1h-1s that might be only 3♠? There is lots of space with XYZ type methods, but i guess the loss might be responder has to pick between pass and 1N and might guess wrong based on the uncertain spade length.

What do you do with xx45 after 1d-1h? Bid 2c, or fudge with off shape NTs/1S rebids if you're 2245 or 3145? I'm not seeing how you can easily promise the 5th diamond for your 2C rebid. I would think in my methods that 1d-1s-2c-2d would be the artificial force and even better than 2H for that purpose (where 2c shows C+4H, and you don't want to play in diamonds).

it seems you are close but not quite able to promise a 4M if unbalanced with your 1♦ opening. However, you still have 5m/4om hands there. This seems problematic when the action goes 1d-1s-2c for example, which is often 5C/4H but could be 4C/5D too. No safety for partner to correct to hearts with 54xx, no good way to find diamonds without getting too high, etc. I would consider putting the 5-4 minors hands into 2m. At least that way you're more preemptive and responder knows that looking for a 4-4 major fit is unlikely (or impossible depending on if you open 6m/4M 1♦ vs 2m).

Why don't you use one of your low level rebids by opener as GFR? It seems a waste to have limited responder to sound SP+ values if you don't have a way for opener to relay the SP hands. NT hands especially are good for this - why would you kill your slam methods by jumping to 2N just like the standard players?

Well, that depends on what 1N shows. If 1N is bal, you can just play a strong NT structure without relays. Still, SP hands aren't going to make high responses, so you can put some of the strong relay shapes there. In my example, I put single suited, balanced, and both minors minimum openers into a 1♥ rebid. This works out very well when you have that (or extras to relay with 1♠), but unloads the problem hands of unbalanced minimum two-suiters into rebids of 1N-2♠. I admit I didn't think though everything with the proposed structure I gave above (most strong NT interference schemes can be adopted instead, Meyerson or whatever, and you don't need to include single suiters). For the 1N-2♠ by opener, the design goals for your system would be very different than mine so I'd have to think hard about the best thing there. Ideally you want openers bids to be well defined with respect to major length but also NF so the SP responder can stop low (pass) without worrying about missing a better partial. You also want space for forcing asks in case responder is strong ( possibly relays?), etc. In my case own system, I have the DN responder hands to manage, and that means having opener make natural passable rebids a lot whereas you might want to be thinking more along the lines of transfers with step being GFR and relay breaks being SP. Obviously this has to be worked out for each of openers rebids, so it's not an easy task. This can be done, but it's very tricky and involves a lot of thought/planning in laying out your bidding structure. How do you use high responses by opener to the non-GF relay ask? Either you need to give up these since they aren't safe vs SP asker or start separating your relay responses into extra--vs-not so all high ones show extras (which breaks symmetry often and uses up more space). It often helps if you can limit the number of SP hands by unloading some of them elsewhere. This makes it easier for there to be a sensible SP relay break opposite each possible low level relay response by opener. For example, in my prior structure with 1♦ SP/GF bal/H/H+m, a direct 1N was free and might be used for SP H/H+m so there was no ambiguity in the 1♦ continuations about what values responder had when showing those shapes. I'm not sure I see a safe bid as SP responder above with 3244? Is that 2N? You can't really relay since you get forced past 3♦ when opener has H/D. You have a diamond fit, sure, but no guarantee of safely at the 4 level or values for 3N.

It seems to me that if you want 1♦ to be SP or some GFs, you should consider a couple things: 1. Try to use symmetric relays, so avoid things like 2♣ being ♣+♦, while 2♦ is ♣+♥. 2. Include heart GFs for transfer purposes, especially if opener is going to rebid 1♥ a lot (whatever it means). 3. For continuations, consider something that shows extras by opener and requests relays even by the SP hand. For example, 1♣ - 1♦ (SP any, or GF bal, or GF H/H+m) - ? 1♥ no extras, balanced or single suited or minors ........1♠ SP only (others show GF hands by relaying) .................natural bidding, NF ........1N reverse relay, askes opener to show his shape (responder is GF balanced) ........2♣ H/D ........2♦ H ........2♥+ H/C 1♠ extras, GF relay (your favorite relay scheme starting at +2) 1N 5+ clubs and 4M, limited 2♣ majors, limited 2♦ 5+ diamonds and 4M, limited 2M 5M and 4+m, limited 2N+ strong specific hands by opener not wanting to relay Here could be the opening symmetric structure: 1♦ SP, GF bal or H/H+m 1♥ S unbal .......1N S/H or 3 suited majors .......2♣ S/D .......2♦ S .......2♥+ S/C 1♠ DN 1N free! maybe some SP hands here not in 1D 2♣ D or 3 suited minors 2♦ C 2♥+ C/D