rbforster

6 card regular weak 2♦ is quite effective with opps sometimes not having both majors to double comfortably. 5♦/4M or longer seems reasonable too, DONT style. Some people liked this for showing both minors, 5D/4C or longer. I haven’t really tried it, but supposedly worked ok.

Thanks for the followup. I'm not designing as many bidding systems lately, but it's good to keep up with how things are interpreted currently.

Thanks everyone for your commentary and suggestions. I felt like the hand too much potential for a textbook 2♦ (having slightly higher standards for 3♦), and upon reflection think the 2♥ reverse is probably the best choice. Obviously with such a treatment, it's important partner be aware of the possibility.

Not obviously good, not obviously bad. Fun but weird. With the silent club, after P-1D/1M, 2C was the precision club hand and 2D was drury (including the passed precision 2D hand of course). I didn't normally pass the 13–15NT but of course you could add that as well. Uncontested auctions are clearly better since precision since you don't preempt finding your 4-4 major fits by opening 2C and can still stop in 2C if you want. Of course you might have preempted them or they might have preempted you, etc, hard to say for sure, but it's better in constructive auctions anyway since you get more space and use it. Passing out is rare when you have the balance of power (max is 22, 15 vs 7). I'm not sure about that argument about strong NT. I'd rather open a weaker NT earlier since it's only worth one bid. A 15-17 hand could double a preempt or rebid NT more easily. Thinking back, I think the opening structure with P = weak or 13-15NT was to play two weaker NT ranges, i.e. P 0-7 or 13-15NT 1C 16+ 1D 10-12 NT or 8-15 natural 1N 8-9 super light NT

Yeah, Silent Club has P = normal pass (0-8/9ish), or Precision 2♣, or Precision 2♦ I played a two way NF-Pass system for fun that was basically light opening precision where P = weak, or 13-15 NT 1♣ 16+ 1N = 10-12 bal rest as per precision, 9-15ish range, with 1♦ natural 4+ After the P, you opened light just like in 1/2nd seats, 8-15 suit hands with 10-12 NT, only now 1♦ could be 13-15 NT. P-1X-1N showed the 13-15 NT hand, barring a Drury raise or similar, and you just passed with the typical weaker P-1X-1NT hand type since partner was limited by not opening 1C. You can extend this to having basically all 13-15 hands pass initially, along with the 0-7/8 weak ones, and then have partner open any 8+ in 3/4th. You won't miss much despite passing these intermediate opening hands. It was not obviously a good system, but it was kinda fun and playable.

Tough IMPs game, uncontested auction. You open 1♦ and partner responds 1♠. What's your rebid? ♠KTx ♥KQ9 ♦AKT9xx ♣x Discussion welcome. I made my choice and subsequently wondered if I could have chosen better.

When was the last time your opponents let you play at the one level when they had 28 highs? I think you might do better with more sequences in 1H by opener if accepting the transfer was forcing, and have the jump acceptance of 2H promise the worst hand and be typically passed. Yes, it might be a 2-4 "fit", but maybe that's not too likely and if responder is unbalanced and often with 5+ hearts, it could be ok. Side question - does 1D deny a balanced hand, ie would you transfer to 1N with 1S and pass or retransfer as a weak and balanced responder? If that's too pushy for you, consider having a 1S rebid be forcing and fold in some stronger problem hands, ie strong minors as well as unbalanced C+S. Responder assumes the natural spade hand and bids cheaply 1N or 2C most of the time with a weak hand, leaving space for opener to further describe. If responder makes a more forward going bid instead, ie 2D+, there will be plenty of strength and you can untangle things. You didn't say how you respond to 1C with both majors, but maybe if you didn't have hearts with 4S hands bidding 1C-1D (those were in 1C-1H instead, showing spades first), then it makes less sense for openers 1C-1D-1S rebid to be natural since even with a 4S/4+C opening hand, you won't miss a spade fit. Then that 1S rebid could be forcing and all the "strong 2D" type hands, only cheaper and with lots more space.

Helene - if you want a symmetric relay structure for 5/4+ majors over 1N-2♣ (GFR), I used to play one in my strong club so I've got the notes so just ask. It typically finished up shapes resolution at 3♦-3♠ . You could shift everything up a step to make 2♣ asking for length preference (with 2♦=equal) if you wanted better partials. The bids other than the relay weren't obviously defined, so there's plenty of room for scrambling bids, various conventions, etc.

Here's a system to play around it, all opening strength bids: 1C strong 1D multi / 5+ major, not other major 1H wide ranging balanced, 10-15 (then 1N or 2X sign off; 1S asks if potentially inviting, with 1N showing the low range and answering stayman if accepting) 1S both minors (5/4+) 1N both majors 2m 5+ natural

One's agreements on forcing bids varies in uncontested and competitive auctions. You can play 2/1 system with a forcing NT where opener is 100% expected to bid again after 1M-(p)-1NT(f)-(p) ? But very few people would play opener was forced to bid if the auction went 1M-(p)-1NT(f)-(2♣) ? Obviously your bid depends on the competitive action taken by the intervening bidder over the forcing-if-uncontested bid by partner. When intervenor passes showing weakness, you use your "uncontested" methods. When intervenor bids, you use your competitive methods including giving opener the option of passing, doubling, etc, with potentially different meanings than they would have had in the uncontested auction. In this context, it's not unreasonable for a bid over an intervening strong or unusual pass by opponents to mean something different, and potentially including pass as an option. The part where it gets tricky is in competitive auctions with an unusual pass by opponents, unlike a competitive bid by the intervening opponent, the competitive pass doesn't give partner a guaranteed second call and this can be very troublesome since he made a forcing bid that will often not be a contract he wants to play in. So when dealing with designing competitive methods over competitive passes, there are a lot more subtleties and more game theory (if I pass his forcing pass, how likely is his partner to be forced to bid) that go into assigning good defensive meanings to your bids over their unusual pass.

In practice, yes but that's mostly because the directors don't really understand system regs and just tell you it's not allowed if they haven't heard of it before. Canapé bidding is clearly allowed for opening one bids where you systematically have a longer suit than the one opened. For consistency, this means either a long time natural bidding style is actually illegal, or stuff like opening or responding in your short suit while promising a longer one (this response, some weak 2M openers with 4M/5+m, etc) are allowed as natural under the same interpretation. In practice, nothing is consistent and if you want to play something, you'd do well to describe it in more familiar terms.

Canapé natural if you manage to have 3+ In the bid minor. Otherwise, mid chart.

I see the issue - 1NT SF makes for fewer sequences. However, given your limited opener's range, I think you can still get most of the obstructive raises you seem to want since you've got a lot of extra space after the 2M-1 and 2NT bids. If you're going to force to 3M on any 3 card limit raise (which is not a particularly good hand for preempting), you might as well fold that into one of the slower forcing sequences. How about this: 1N less than 3 trump, SF/NF to taste 2H 3-4 card constructive or 3 card limit raise .....2S 10-13ish, not exceptional shape ..........P 3 card constructive raise ..........2N limit raise, then help suit tries ..........3X help suit tries with 4 card constructive raise (forces to 3M, LLOT style) .....2N max values (14-15ish), forcing. 3 card constructive will make 3X game tries, others bid game or over 3M .....3X shapely invites (12-15ish); constructive raise may counter or sign off at 3M, limit will accept .....3S long suit, distributional invite 2S weak raise 2N 4+ support, limit+ values (followed by relay game/slam tries, fast arrive for limit raises) 3S preemptive raise Incidentally, we play something fairly similar after the opponents double 1M - obstructive raises, 2 level constructive transfers, 2N Jordan, etc.

Thinking about your major openings, removing the club-M canapés could help the continuations a fair bit. Suppose 1C was expanded to: Mini NT strong+ NT 4H/4+ clubs 4S/4+ clubs 5S/4+ clubs This gets you back to pretty much a 2/1 GF style for your 1M openers: 1H-1S(Kaplan inversion / forcing NT): 1N 4H/longer D (then 2C cheap force, 2DH preference) 2C 5+H/4+C 2D 5+H/4+D 2H 6+ 1S-1N(forcing): 2C 4S/longer D (then 2DS preference, 2H cheap force) 2D 5+S/4+D 2H 5+S/4+H 2S 6+ Then your 2m openers can be 6+ single suited, or 5+ with both minors. I hear this should play pretty well.

The 1C opening should be fine, so few hand types and so much space. For example, Swedish club systems have a weak NT or any strong hand, while you have a weak NT or any strong NT. There are so many more unbalanced hands. OTOH, you're compressing a lot of hand types into the unbalanced suit opening at a relatively high level, so those are unlikely to perform well compared to standard methods. For example, your 1M has all the hand shapes of a standard 5cM opener, plus all the 4+ minor / 4M unbalanced canapés also - it will be hard to get to good partials since you won't be able to unwind opener's major lengths at a low level and even strong auctions will necessarily be less precise. Likewise, your 2m openers with 5+ are less well defined than precision or similar where 2m is 6+ (perhaps also 5m/4M depending on style), and hence it will be easier to miss major fits since for responder it will be harder to judge if to pass or try to improve the contract. I think you should work on the 1C continuations and you'll find that you have lots and lots of unused bidding sequences. Then you should think about what problem hands you've got in your other limited suit openers and consider putting some into 1C to fill the gaps there and to improve continuations for the remaining suit openers. Alternatively, if you're mathematically inclined, figure out what fraction of hands are opening each bid. Generally, lower bids should have higher %'s since there's more space to handle them, while higher openers should be lower frequency. I think the 1C will stick out as an underused outlier.

Can you clarify what your 1D opener is? I guess it's often 11-13 balanced, but then can be many unbalanced hands without 5M or 6m.

But at least 2C will be typically stronger, invite or better. That gives you enough values and space to get to 2N, especially if it denies a 4M unless it has GF values. My preferred methods may not be suitable to OPs goals, but over 1D-2C, I play 2D is a minimum without 4 clubs and can be passed if responder has diamond tolerance and doesn't want to continue to 2N or 3C based on strength or shape.

3 suited hands short in clubs aren't a problem to open 1D - if you've got 3-4 in both majors you can at worst raise to 2M if partner responds 1M (and pass 1N response if min). The only hand with only 3♦ is 4432 exactly which seems too rare to worry about corrupting an otherwise 4+ opener. I guess it depends on your response scheme to the proposed 2♣ opener, but if responder just bids his preference among non-club suits, that seems like it will be getting in the way of the strong hand trying to describe itself when you do actually have a strong 2♣. Better it seems would be to play a precision style 2♦ as 3-suited short diamonds (rather than short clubs), and then you could play 2C as a weak two in diamonds or strong. That way when partner almost always bids 2D in response, you strong hands are basically at the same place they would be under standard methods continuing over a 2D waiting.

What do you do with a balanced invite, say a hand that wants a natural 2N call? Seems like that one gets lost trying to cater to the weak long spades hands. Given they're already showing weakness and your opener is limited, it seems like you might not want to prioritize weak hands by responder.

Having worked on these 1C-1D-1H sequences a lot in a strong club, non-GF context, I would note that the tricky part of making a good system is to have most of the flavor of relays (lots of cheap bids have multiple meanings, which are separated later), but also to group those various hand types thoughtfully so that responder is able to sometimes bid something descriptive other than the next step in a way that doesn't cause you to get too high opposite the weaker options by opener.

Right now the system proposed is pretty symmetric and simple over both major transfers, for example: 1C-[1M-1] : 1N 15-17 bal, no fit 2C natural min with OM 2D both minors, min 2M 15-17 bal 4 card raise 3M 18-19 bal 4 card raise With unbalanced fitting or strong hand types as well as weaker and strong NTs going through 1 level forcing 1M rebids by opener. While this gets more precision for the various balanced hand types of different strength ranges, I worry about the weak 2m responses above reaching poor contracts. Instead, suppose you give up on the choice of clubs vs the 4-3M fit when minimum (just raise M) and instead have direct bids of 2C both minors, min, no M fit 2D 3 card M raise, min I feel like you can get some more mileage out of looking for spade fits too if 1C-1D-1H could have either fitting hearts or spades (or strong NT), and you have responder bid 1S by most of the time but 1N to show spades instead (or maybe higher if stronger). That way you get most of the same space for relaying out hand types, but get your spade fit information across cheaply enough that 1N is still passable on misfits.

Ok, but then 5C/4M hands have to go back into a precision style 2C, which is presumably what they were trying to avoid by having a 2m opening promise 6+. The structure in OP let's you put both m+M minor hands into 1D and handle things reasonably well, at least barring competition, while having both minors in there as well or in place of a balanced option, is much more problematic.

If 1D doesn't promise diamonds, balanced or otherwise, it's much much more annoying to reach minor partials accurately. Take an auction like 1D-1M-2C. in standard that would show both minors and no major fit, so responder could preference to his better minor. In this method, it would probably show clubs and 4OM (and not diamonds). But if 1D could be both minors or just 1 minor and a misfitting major, how will responder know when to play in diamonds? Plus, 1N for both minors can stop easily in 2m right away.

I would think it was competitive and NF, absent some special reason to think otherwise - you've already got a pretty narrow values range shown and I would think opener with extras to GF would have been forced to act but didn't in the case. Sounds like a part score auction to me. I guess it depends on your style of what to do with a semi positive values hand that has enough shape to force to game. I would normally upgrade to a GF and let partner worry later I might be light on values if he relays out an extreme shape, but I understand others prefer a more purist approach on min QPs, etc.

If you never forget your system, you aren't playing a complex enough one! In practice, I figure I'll probably forget a few things here and there regardless of what I play, so I might as well try to play a better version if that's obvious.