rbforster

That would be an encrypted splinter, like 1♠-3NT* showing the A or K of trump (only 1) and unknown shortness. Now when opener asks with 4♣, you respond in your favorite way, but differently depending on if you high honor is the A or K (bid your version of "normal" with A, and cycle the suits up one with the K). For example 1♠ - 3N (weak splinter, unknown shortness, exactly one of A or K♠) - 4♣ (asking) - 4♦ - ♦ shortness (A), or ♥ shortness (K) 4♥ - ♥ shortness (A), or ♣ shortness (K) 4♠ - ♣ shortness (A), or ♦ shortness (K) Opener, if he's interested in slam opposite a weak splinter, will often have the other high trump honor, allowing him to correctly interpret the response. It will also make it harder for the opponents to double to suggest a sacrifice, since at most one of the opponents (if they have the other high honor) will know which suit the splinter refers to. Even if doubler has it, his partner won't know.

This pirates problem depends on 2 important things - how ties get broken, and what the incentives of the pirates are when faced with an equal $ choice. In the =>50% to win case, there are never issues with ties (they are broken in favor of the proposing pirate), and you get the recursive solution like this -- -- -- 100 0 (sucks to be last) -- -- 99 0 1 -- 99 0 1 0 98 0 1 0 1 In this case 98 is the right answer, and there are no issues with the pirates incentives in case of a tie. If you use the strictly >50% to win rule, and you assume that incentives are ordered Live > $ > Kill Others, then you get 97. -- -- -- X 100 (X = killed) -- -- 100 0 0 (#4 votes in favor, to avoid dying) -- 98 0 1 1 97 0 1 2 0 (or 97 0 1 0 2)

True, but this only works when your long suit is higher than partner's cheapest one. What if North held red suits and South had long clubs? Then 5♣ is pass/correct and South will have to play 6♣ without better methods. Since it seems unlikely you would ever want to play 4N (X or XX), you could have an agreement to help in these situations, taking advantage of both pass and XX. For example - (4♠)-4N-(X)-? pass - no length preference, please bid your longest suit (my shortest 2 suits are equal) XX - "rescue" - I have a long suit of my own, please bid 5♣ so I can pass or correct 5♣ - length preference for clubs over the worse of (hearts or diamonds), pass or correct as usual 5♦ - length preference for hearts and diamonds over clubs, pass or correct as usual 5♥ - my long suit is hearts, please pass I'm sure you could do better, but this preserves most of the original meanings of the 5 level bids, and just gives useful specific meanings to the (forcing) pass and XX.

When I pass my partner's takeout double! Don't you guys play takeout doubles? Maybe all these people who "feel good" about making penalty doubles do so just because there are so few penalty situations left in modern methods.

I'd be willing to believe that they might print another version of the GCC. However, given the history, I would bet money that "clarify" will not be the most common adjective used to describe the new rules.

2-way pass systems are even worse... It's not an original idea in the first place, and it doesn't work as well as you think. Most of the time I hear about 2-way pass systems, it refers to 2-way forcing pass systems where the strong option in pass is 16+ or something similar to a strong club. My suggested pass is neither strong in that context, nor forcing. If there are systems out there like my proposed one, I'd welcome pointers. I haven't seen any.

You can compromise and get both a strong club and most light (8+) openers with a semi-forcing pass system. You heard it here first :). P most 0-7 or 12-14 unbal 1♣ 15+ 1♦ 8-11 4+ unbal, or 12-14 bal 1♥♠ 8-11 5+ unbal 2♣ 8-11 5+ unbal 1NT 9-11 (1♦...1NT 12-14) higher - weak(er) bids to taste No fert, almost all the high frequency 8-11 openers, and a strong club for those more familiar with that. Might want to drop the very weak NT for a more traditional 12-14 NT and an unbalanced 4+ 1♦ at Vul. Pass is only "semiforcing" in that responder bids naturally with 8+ points and passes (or preempts) with less. Should even be legal in the US, although there will be some restrictions over the weak NT range. Heck you have to watch out for those soft balanced 8 counts playing a 16+ club - 24 3NT games don't always work out with a pair of flat hands, and 16 points balanced is the single most likely hand for the strong club opener (even more so when you're balanced). I agree on the NT range aspect of 15+ too - with 3 point ranges you can cover 9-14 balanced, but the ACBL makes it annoying to play <10 point NTs.

I like your methods over 2M, and I will point out that these are perfectly good methods to play over a weak 2M as well (adjusting responder's strength accordingly). Over 2♦, it's about twice as likely that you'll have a side 4M as not. This suggests, together with the typical priority given to major fits, that you want to put your major-showing responses to the 2♥ relay lower in the order. You might also want to be able to sign off with a weak hand in the major. As it stands now, 2♦-2♥*-3m*[showing 4M] is ambiguous about strength which seems poor. In particular, bidding that major must now either be a sign off or invitational (which will give you problems on weak hands with 3♦/4M or on 4M fitting invites, your pick). How about this? 2♦-2♥ relay 2♠ has a 4M ---2N asks further ---------3♣ 4♥ min ---------3♦ 4♠ min ---------3♥ 4♥ max ---------3♠ 4♠ max 2N 6+♦ no 4 card major, extras 3♣ 4+♣ 3♦ 6+♦ single suited, no extras

HAHAHAHAH! oh seriously, even the most careful readers of the convention charts around here (who spend WAY more time thinking about weird conventions and the rules) don't understand what the rules mean in many cases. Sure you know what the rules say, but what they say is often so vague as to be quite difficult to interpret definitively. This ambiguity, together with the lack of expert knowledge of most directors in this area of the rules, means you can basically play any convention you can convince the local director is ok. As for the original question about 2♦ Precision or Flannery, I think it's pretty clear that it is allowed under the "both majors (4/4+) 10+ points" rule. There is no rule that says you have to open ALL hands with both majors a particular way, if you have a better systemic bid available. There are negative inferences here (since certain balanced hands with 2+ diamonds would open 1♦ precision) which were correctly volunteered by the players in describing which types of "both majors" hands would be opened this way. After all, nobody complains if your weak 2M bids promises a 6 card major and NO 4 card other major. Yet the majority of players use this restriction, choosing an alternative systemic option ("pass" typically) as preferable to bidding 2M with these 64 shapes.

Some (many?) precision systems include an opener's rebid of 1♥ as "Kokish" - artificial showing a stronger hand. If you play this, then 1♣-1♦ (0-7): 1♥ art 20+ points 1♠ natural 16-19 1NT natural 16-19 2m natural 16-19 2♥ natural 16-19 higher suit bids - limited to 16-19, but more distributional and strongly invitational This way the natural bids are limited and can be passed, raised invitationally, or a new suit offered with a decent responding hand. There are some issues with this (like the uncomfortably high 2♥ bid with only 5 hearts), but it does let you play a second negative: 1♣-1♦-1♥: 1♠ 2nd negative 0-4 (after which 2♣ is again artificial and forcing 23+, other bids are limited to 20-22) other responses besides the 2nd negative show an invitational 5-7 range, either natural or 5 suit transfers to taste.

(nevermind, misread something in Gerben's post)

I understand the whole (frequency * level) issue where you trade off the level of the bid at which you resolve exact shape against the probability of such shapes showing up. That said, I don't think the costs to including extreme shapes would be very much, or rather, that they come at the expense of only-slightly-less-extreme shapes which weren't very likely either. For example from symmetric relay (from here), your 1-suiter table resolves like this 2S high shortage 2NT middle shortage 3C equal shortage (7222 or 6322) 3D low shortage, zoom (5332) 3H low shortage, 6331 3S low shortage, 7321 3NT low shortage, 7330 Now a specific 7330 is only a little more common than a specific 8221 (by 4:3 or so), so it's not entirely unreasonable to continue the single-suiter table like this: 3N low shortage, 7330 4C low shortage, 8221 4D low shortage, 8320 4H low shortage, 9310, ... What does this cost you? Typically after using a shape relay (symmetric or otherwise) to resolve exact shape, relayer will have the option of relaying again to ask about strength (controls, points, keycards, etc). Using the "zoom" principle, where you would start answering strength if you hit the last shape in the table, before our single suiter table really looked like this: 3S low shortage, 7321 3N low shortage, 7330, and minimum strength 4C low shortage, 7330, first step of extra strength 4D low shortage, 7330, second step of extra strength ... So adding extra shapes will make it a little harder to resolve the strength of the 7330 hands (since you can't zoom), at the expense of being able to show more extreme shapes. This is a much more minor cost I think than Richard suggests - it's not like somehow our balanced hand relays lose their 3♥ strength ask since they finish higher than 3♦. Of course at some point you'll run into the issue of resolving shapes too high. When you haven't promised enough values to make more than game, so you don't want your minimum 8221 hand pushing past 4♠ for example. But that aside, I don't see why everyone's so enamored of getting a little extra edge in their 7330 auctions but don't care about their 8221's.

Well apparently you didnt have a meaning for a 7♠ blast, so I guess it wasn't hurting your other bidding much :). I would hazard most strong club systems haven't bothered to define very high jump bids, so if nothing else filling in the gaps with rare meanings couldn't hurt (although admittedly it won't show up very often). More generally, with extreme single suiters, it might be worth turning captaincy over to responder to ask for aces and such. If you're sure you know what suit is trump (since you've got 8+ decent ones), it might be worth having a bid or bids where responder can ask for aces, then kings, maybe exclusion in case he has a void, etc. Depending on your preferences, this could happen before or after a first round transfer to the long suit. With such a distributional hand, it might be worth trying to shut out possible preemption by 4th hand by having the bidding start 1♣-3NT* or whatever you want your unusual asking bid to be.

Hyperbole aside, why would it be right for the US to reduce the entire country to radioactive slag? If the cold war taught us anything it's that credible deterrence is about all you've got when both sides have nukes. Whether or not it's right, it's important for us to claim that massive retaliation is our policy (not like Hillary, who's been backpedalling since she made some stupid statements about categorically not using nukes on Iran). It can't hurt anything to have the policy on the off chance it works, and we can decide later (hopefully never) about who to nuke when someone hits us first. You might argue deterrence is unlikely to be effective against either terrorists or religious fanatics (possibly including the current Iranian leadership), and you'd probably be right. Sadly having irrational enemies means that a preemptive first strike looks more like the best rational action. (and I mean this entirely from the game theory perspective, not the "let's start a war for self-aggrandizement" perspective of the current administration) As for believing Iran's protests about "peaceful power generation," they are clearly as full of it as some of the intelligence on the Iraq situation. They're building breeder reactors which are much more complicated technically and less effective at power generation, but they are good at producing plutonium for making bombs. That alone should make their intentions clear, but the fact that they claim the need it for their civilian energy needs when they are sitting on 9% of the world's oil reserves is just ridiculous.

I'm interested too. Right now there are a lot of "holes" in the (non-symmetric) relay structure I use. Bids higher than 2♠ are undefined for example, currently out of laziness and lack of a clearly good idea. Very high bids should be used for very specific hands, maybe something like 8221 or 8311 and a certain range of controls. The kludge for our current method consists of showing a 7 card suit and accurate shortness, either 7330 when we've got 8320 for example, or 7321 when we have 8221. We can't show 2 shortnessness though, except by lying and "inventing" a second suit which seems wrong (ie calling 8311 or 9211 something like 7411). After that if we like our hand in context and if partner signs off at game (thinking we've got 7321), we might make a simple raise - i.e. 1♣...(showing 7♠321)...4♠ (signoff) - 5♠.

Don't you know 2♣ mini roman is much better than 2♦? And it's a lower splinter too...

I would guess that the difference in the 2 poll choices comes down to how people play Garbage Stayman. If the auction goes 1N-2♣-2♦-2♥ is opener expected to pass since responder showed a 4♠5♥+ hand checking for a 4-4 fit (in which case pass is basically forced)? If so, it's too risky to try it with 4414 shape since you'll have to guess the major to correct 2♦ to and might play a 4-2 fit instead of a 4-3 fit (neither of which sounds great to me, frankly). Alternatively, some play that a 2♥ correction shows equal length in the majors and opener should take a length preference. if you play this way, then I guess 4414 is an ok shape if you're willing to play the 4-3 fit.

About as hard as smuggling 10 tons of cocaine into the US? I sure hope it's harder to get a working nuke, but I'm not keeping my hopes up. At least if Iran launched their nuke on a good old fashion ICBM we'd know who shot it and which country to reduce to radioactive slag. A bomb going off in a big city leaves us with millions of dead people and no target (or rather too many targets).

Nicolas L'Ecuyer and Zygmunt Marcinski are a Canadian pair who play a complicated strong club system with lots of artificial relays and relay breaks (5 card majors, nebulous diamond, variable NT). I've seen hints at their general systems in the Bridge World, where they are the reigning champions in the "Challenge the Champs" bidding contest. I've been quite impressed with their bidding results in the last few BW issues as they continue to win decisively against various challengers. Can anyone point me to where I might learn more about what they play? I'm sure we'd all learn a lot by studying such a successful strong club system.

The passers might also consider 3♣, if 2♣ showed more than this hand.

Thanks for some numbers on the odds Adam. I certainly agree that with an appropriate redefinition of the "constructive" range opposite a light precision 1M opener, game will be on a non-negligible fraction of the time. For example, my 1M opener is basically 10-15 (Rule of 18 plus higher standards for 8-9 hands). We play 1M-2M promises about 7-9 points and usually only 3 card support (Bergen raises also). After this, opener will often just jump to game with a strong hand and a 6 card suit. We have 2-way game tries as well. I certainly wouldn't want to give up my chances at game in this situation just to include some constructive hands with 2 card support.

Ah, I misunderstood the basis for your argument. I thought you were claiming the limited context of partner somehow constituted a psychic control (which I disagree with), rather than the rule about conventional followups of a maybe-weaker-than-10-point-1NT. Sure, full disclosure of common psychs seems like a good thing. I would argue this should be true whether or not the particular psych is "easily handled" (although if it's not, hopefully you'd learn to stop doing it!). I agree there's a real issue here, although I'm not sure what the best resolution is. Certainly if I claim to play a 10-13 NT but often bid 1NT with only 9 points, I'm really playing a 9+ to 13 NT and shouldn't get away with conventional followups just by claiming I psych a lot (even though playing a 9-13 NT is legal by itself). I think it's probably a matter of frequency - if you psych 1NT too often then maybe you shouldn't be allowed to play stayman, etc. I'm not sure what "too often" is, but I would probably define it as a ~2% of such hands (or some other %), rather than a strict number of psychs like you suggest. Twice out of 50 hands is very different than twice out of 5000. I will point out that others in this thread have suggested they would have psyched a strong 1NT in this situation, but not a weak NT (since the opponents would still likely find game). Your argument applies equally to those playing a strong NT who psych with a weak balanced hand - I just want to make sure you would treat the strong NT'er equally in this situation. Will you really ban a pair from using stayman the second time they psych a strong NT? Something to think about.

Perhaps those not involved in this actual hand could comment on what typical hands might be expected for partner's 2♣...X.

There's also Twisted SWINE, which includes some nice descriptions of when to psych your short suit with a 3-suiter (and then XX for rescue), etc. I thought SWINE sounded great until I realized it doesn't seem to have a bid for Clubs+Spades (unless P-XX-2♣ is either ♣+♦ or ♣+♠, which leaves opener guessing when clubs is his 2nd longest of clubs, diamonds, and spades). Fundamentally you won't be able to show all possible single suiters and 2 suiters. For example, there are 4 hands with clubs you might want to show, ie clubs, possibly with each of the other suits or alone. There are only 3 different ways to get to 2♣: 1N-(X)-2♣ direct bid 1N-(X)-P-XX-2♣ indirect bid, after pass forces XX 1N-(X)-XX-2♣-P XX forces 2♣, to play You just have to pick where you want your ambiguity. One common treatment is to give up showing both minors at the 2 level and use 2NT for that as "unusual". Then you've got enough ways to show all the hands. Alternatively, you can use SWINE and have some uncertainty as to exactly which is partner's second suit in one case. When I learned weak NTs, we used this runout, similar to Brozel and SWINE (less so). Direct suit bids show two suits including hearts and the suit bid (2♥=majors, 2♠=nat, 2N=minors) Pass forces XX. Pass with a good hand, or bid showing two suits - spades and the suit bid XX forces 2♣ pass or bid your single suiter

Well my psych certainly didn't work out well, but I've gotten a lot of advice thanks to all this discussion. I'm not sure I'll put this to use any time soon, but its always good to learn to think about what makes an effective psych from others' experiences (rather than having to subject your poor partner to them very often!). We intend our weak 1NT (10-13) in 3rd as somewhat preemptive, but play it sounder (14-16) in 4th when there's noone left to preempt. I'd be the first to admit our bidding system is far from optimal, and maybe there's a better way to use our NT ranges. Our responses after P-1NT are much the same as by an unpassed hand - lots of signoffs, together with stayman which probably only includes garbage or 5-4 majors signoffs (rather than any inv+). We just don't use the bids higher than 2N by a PH realistically. Right, the definition of a psychic control is a bid that asks partner if he psyched, and we certainly don't use any of those (except Drury if you count that, but it's officially allowed). Some psychs are just safer than others when partner's a limited hand, and I guess this is one of many such situations. I think that's a really good point. Certainly, if I were directing, you'd get away with this once. Ever. It is so tempting to make the 1NT bid "0-13 hcp, balanced if 10-13" that if I got a whiff of that you wouldn't be playing the system any more. Wow, that's a pretty strong position to take! You realize there's an important difference between an (often illegal) psychic control bid/agreement and a perfectly legal psych made in a "relatively safe auction" where partner's normal responses are unlikely to work out badly. If you really meant this, I hope you would apply the same rule to everyone out there who's bid 2♠ after 2♥-(X) with a weak hand and heart support. After all, partner's shown a weak two bid and won't jump to game or anything (at most raising to 3♠ which you can pass, and then correct to 4♥ if doubled). Don't tell me playing the system of weak two bids must be banned under this logic...