zenko

This is all very confusing to me, especially the definition of kamikaze preempt. The way I see it, it is way more kamikaze to open for example 2N for minors with K,Q10,xxxxx,xxxxx than with x,xx,xxxxx,xxxxx because with that first hand you are much more likely to generate a phantom save, or prevent your side from finding heart fit or, end up in minors suit game instead in 3N, etc, etc. Also, how exactly am i supposed to explain that when alert, maybe: "my partner (or I) will preempt only with hands that make sense to bid that way, but those hands might have a wide range of points, depending on their location, suits quality, seat and vulnerability", I mean if thats the way to do it I can say all that every time when we preempt but it surely sounds strange.

Weak twos are vastly overrated IMO, especially non-spade ones, except perhaps 1st seat favorable. Thankfully, these days the pendulum is swinging other way, away from Marty Bergen style, no doubt helped with success of Italian teams over the last few decades, who are all very disciplined weak two bidders. Even more so, if you examine convention card of current top European pairs (and some American ones, Boyd-Robinson for example) you will find them littered with 9-12, 10-13 and similar ranges for level 2 openings. I can go on in great length explaining the theoretical advantages of playing disciplined or even "semi-intermediate" weak twos, but I doubt I would convince anyone. Talking about this subject I find bridge players' minds curiously closed, I suspect many of them have some kind of ingrained disdain for this kind of "wussy" ideas, on the first glance the concept is just not mavericky enough I guess, bit like trying to explain the advantages of machine guns over sabres to some 19th century calvary officers.

AKxxxxxxxx x x x x Axxx Axxx Axxx laydown 7NT, with 4 HCPs to spare!

70% I would bet a good money that Hamman said "If 3NT is viable option –then bid it" - but I guess I would be wrong

I don't know about you but I am definitely not offering 3NT with the seven, four and three of spades. Well with Jxx vs 753 and enough overall firepower I would put your chance of making 3N at about 50%, the chance of RHO having singleton top honor in spades is about 43%, but really is much more since in the other 57% of hands LHO is very close to have enough to open one spade, but on the other hand it is possible that he opened with 5 card suit so overall 50% chance of suit being blocked seems like a fair guess.

Frankly I am surprised that this aspect of bridge theory is still in such a rudimentary phase, especially taking in account how many programmers play bridge. To build whole "system" might be too overwhelming task at the moment, plus I am not sure what's the objective of that, a system is like car, among other things it needs to suit driver's/player's personality well. Instead, I would suggest starting by solving some more isolated issues, for example effectiveness of opening 1NT with 5 card major, or even more narrow, say if you open 1NT with 5 card major, is it better to allow any 5M332 distribution or to require a tripleton on the other major (which is what Eddie Kantar recommends). I am sure there are plenty of other bidding questions that can be answered with decent software and enough computing power (Namyats, Flannery, natural weak 2s or multi, etc).

The issue of bidding 2 N with 17-19 BAL over 1S/1N responses might be more serious than you think. You can somewhat help by moving 5D332 17-19 hands to 1D opening, or finding another opening for 17-19 balanced hands. Even after 17-19 1N you need a way to stop in a minor if you have weak hand with 4M-5+m, probably the best way to do it is to use 1N-2C as a puppet to 2D, either GF or a prelude to sign off yes, yes, and it does not matter, odds of everybody passing after you accept (or not accept) the transfer with 8-3 (and a weakish hand) are not realistic Would you consider moving 4♦5♣ hands to the 1♦ opening? If not, what do you rebid with 3145 after 1♣-1♦?

3 clubs of course does NOT promise anything special except some common sense when bidding on level 3, possibly in jaws of misfit, and saving them from playing in one. Another valid point is that we bring no ruffing values, if pard really has a ratty suit, playing in clubs might not be much better anyway.

kjxx to atxx the queen is always onside! Well usually that is true, but in this case you are lacking entries, especially if there is a diamond lead, so you need to finesse club Q to get back to the hand with established spades.

The answer depends a lot on what did you (if any) decide to move from standard 1D opening to 1C. If you, like most, moved all balanced hands including 5332s, then it is advisable to respond holding diamonds even with very bad hand. There are several reasons for that, probably two most important ones are: 1) if opener has a strong balanced hand by passing 1C holding diamonds you risk playing 1C possibly in very bad fit, instead of playing in diamonds or NT, and :) since opener can have a weak balanced hands with 5C-2D as well as 2C-5D, it is helpful to locate fit ASAP to deal with competitive bidding But the problem with responding 1S with almost nothing (especially with only 4 diamonds) is that you risk 2N rebid by opener who can easily have only 2 diamonds. To restrict 1S response to 5+ diamonds does not really help, you just move the problem to a different place (i.e. 1C-1N-2N situation) and often prevent yourself from finding diamond fit. I found a neat solution to this problem, in my structure 1C-1S(4+D)-1N shows balanced hand with 2-3 diamonds and EITHER weak or strong hand. To make that work all you need to do is exclude from 1S response all hands with which you would pass a weak 1NT rebid by opener, but would not pass a strong (i.e.17-19) 1NT response. Those would be a balanced hands with diamonds in 7(or very good 6) to 10 (or 11 if you play 14-16 NT) range, with those hands (as well as with a similar hands with clubs that do not qualify for inverted raise) you respond 1N which is pretty natural anyway. With balanced hands outside of that range, as well as with unbalanced hands you always have a convenient 2nd bid or an easy pass. Another positive side effect of this structure is that discourages balancing by opponents after 1C-1S-1N, since the opener's range is unclear.

Of course seven clubs is a silly contract, but was indeed cold and actually easy to make on normal line of play since everything was was just perfect, spades were 33 with split honors, clubs Q doubleton onside as well as KJx of hearts, etc.

Well that was one fun hand, you partner has 6304, AJ10 in spades and KJ in clubs. Your side is cold for 7 clubs (yes seven!), 5 spades, 4 hearts, and 3N. I doubled, and with flawed defense set them -3, scoring +300. Yes 300, since both opponents conveniently forgot that I doubled, of course director believed them, not us (no surprise there, directors almost never waste an opportunity to rule against me). Oh well, C'est la vie.

MPs, all VUL, partner opens 2S 1st seat, they bid Dble-3D(reluctantly alerted as lebenshol, a good hand)-3N You hold: 9 AQ108 J972 A1042 What do you do?

I agree with Jan. I play transfers for several years now both in weak and strong NT structures. It may appear no big difference but it really is. With strong NT a played that acceptance shows exactly 3, but that works only if you have some other opening for 18-19 bal (say 2 c or 2 d, like Italians) or you are willing to jump to 2 NT with 18-19 (which I hate), so we switched to acceptance showing either weak BAL with 2-3 card support or unBAL hand and exactly 3 card support and less than reverse strength (therefore NF), and 1N rebid to show 18-19 Bal with 2-3 card support. That works quite well with strong NT, with WK NT I would suggest some combination of option 4 and 5. Also I would strongly recommend examining what Towsend-Gold are doing, since they also play better minor and transfers (they accept with 0+ cards), for weak NT-specific solutions you should look up also what Fantunes are using, also you can check the Nightmare system, which is actually very solid, unlike its creators. Another important thing to mention is that playing WK NT you are not that much concerned about getting to level 2 with 3-card support and a minimal hand, since in that case you will have unbalanced hand that often plays very well even in 4-3 fit. Playing strong NT you do not have that luxury.

Did you include in 1D also 4D5C hands? If not you should probably consider it, at least 45(31), if your NT range lets you open 1N with 4522.

It may seem like a bit of an overkill to discuss in detail merits of say 13.5-15.5 range versus 13-15, or 14-16, but I strongly believe that the choice of NT range is the most significant system decision you make, creating a lot of scorecard "traffic". To answer what's the best range you have to take in consideration (at least) these 7 issues: 1) what is "the field" using, and how much we care about it 2) vulnerability 3) seat 4) how much HPC "flexibility" we allow 5) how much distributional "flexibility" we allow 6) can the rest of our system handle the range changes 7) are we more concerned about IMPs or MPs Whats the optimal range will in part depend on all of these variables, and how we subjectively feel about them. What we objectively do know for sure is that to open 1N is clearly beneficial, therefore the first step should be to use the most frequent range as starting point (but beware that most frequent range changes from seat to seat!), and adjust from there, keeping in mind above 7 factors. As a result of that analysis I am sure one can build a resonably strong argument for using many different ranges, depending of the seat and vulnerability, but on the other hand I am also sure that the same analysis would convince many pairs to stick to mainstream 15-17 or 12-14 ranges.

I've read this article before -- I do not think that the analysis is very convincing. The issue is that causality in these situations is somewhat complicated. Arguably the better pairs or teams are likely to win IMPs whereas the weaker pairs or teams are likely to lose IMPs, regardless of their methods, simply due to better play, defense, judgement, etc. There is some correlation between the skill level of a pair and their methods; in particular pairs who play very "old-fashioned" methods are probably likely to be weaker pairs since they have not kept their bidding up with the modern trends. I find it hard to believe that 1NT "16-18" isn't a huge winner when you open 1NT. You get a great description of the hand right away, it helps on your slam auctions a lot, etc. Obviously I'm in no hurry to play this range because of frequency issues, but I find any analysis which indicates that 16-18 notrumpers lose large numbers of IMPs when they open 1NT inherently dubious. Much more likely is that the pairs playing 16-18 notrumps are very old-fashioned, playing outdated methods and perhaps weaker declarers than those who are up with the times (and presumably playing more regularly). It's also true that there are arguments for/against various notrump ranges based on the rest of the system. For example, it's easy to believe that a 10-12 notrump is a winner when you open 1NT (at least at NV), but especially if your system structure is relatively "standard" it's hard to bolt this method on without substantial issues on hands in other notrump ranges. The problem with 16-18 is that the frequency drops off very fast (i.e. 16 count is way more likely than 18) so making marginal game invite over 16-19 (with a hand that you would not chase a game opposite 15-17) tends to be a losing proposition. I agree that superiority of MINI-NT is somewhat suspect, but I do agree with his two main conclusions: a) it does not pay to play wide ranges, either systemically or by liberal widening ;) NT opening is a winner Nevertheless the issue of "the field" is a serious one, if you notice in his stats 15-17 is superior than 14-16, but 12-14 is also better than 13-15, and thats why I think. Playing non-standard ranges I think it is crucial to make to set "natural" borders and not playing it to wide. For example what RM are doing, playing 1NT good 13(i.e. at minimum a hand that would in standard accept invitation in 1m-2N sequence) to bad 16 (i.e. at maximum a hand that would not accept invitation in standard 1N-2N sequence) has a lot of merit. So taking all that in consideration playing "standard" my personal preference is to play something like 14.96-16.95 range, except favorable 1st/2nd seat when I can not resist to push opponent around a bit by opening (11)12-14 NT. Playing strong club I would probably recommend something similar, but I might try to spice it up a bit since I have more options available.

here is one very interesting analysis on that subject http://www.migry.com/Articles%20and%20othe...he%20winner.pdf NT Ranges: The Comparison IMP Gain/Loss analysis on suitable championship boards from 1992 to 2002 by By Pietro Campanile In short the conclusion is to pick the most frequent ranges since NT opening is a winner (except 16-18 which is a loser). Other than that, I would add that the math changes slightly with the seat and with vulnerability (for example after pass-pass you are more likely to hold 14 then 11 points, etc.) So I would say 1st/nd position non vul 10-12 or 11-13, vul as low as you can stomach it, and 3rd/4th 15-17 always (14-16 also is OK I guess)

Thank you for the link for Heeman structure, seem interesting, kind of resembles a bit Klinger's KERI which I play often. The problem with it is that is whole big structure to learn which most people have no patience/interest for, the convention I mentioned is simple and "small" i.e. it nicely fits into any NT structure and can be explained and learned very quickly.

How about this one, I stole it from Bocchi-Duboin and is one of my favorite conventions: 1N-3M= showing exactly 4 cards in the other major and GF+ strength, usually balanced and with intention to play either 3N or 4M. The key advantage is that it is showing, not asking, so there is very little to none info disclosed about the declarer's hand, unlike when using Stayman sequence.

http://www.acbl.org/about/competitionConvention.html

Most pairs playing transfer responses to 1C opening deploy rather fuzzy meaning to the 1S response, for example this is how is that bid defined on Garner-Weinstein's CC: 1♣-(P)-1♠ = No 4-card Major, may be very weak, not suitable for other bids Looking at ACBL Charts this kind of bids do not appear to be legal (at least on general and mid chart level). This seem to be the relevant rule, part of the mid-chart sheet: "ALLOWED 3.* All other constructive rebids and responses are permitted, except for: a. relay systems that show less than game-forcing values" One can argue that this bid fails to meet BOTH criteria, i.e. it is not really "constructive" since it can be made holding prett much no values at all, and also, since its distribution requrements are so meager it is really nothing more than a "relay" bid made possibly on less than GF values, which is also illegal. To make it clear I am not writing this to pick on G-W, but to point out that there is a need that ACBL finally clarifies its stance. The issue was brought up on the last two ACBL's Competition Committee's meetings in 2009, and they simply refused to discuss it (check the minutes of the meetings if you do not believe me). If anyody knows more about this issue please let me know.

Not so sure about relaxed suit quality rules, other than that seems quite nice, frankly I would ditch classic weak twos altogether (except maybe 1st seat favorable vul, and even then 2 spades is the only one that has any significant impact). Weak twos are way overrated IMO, especially vs quality opponents.

While ago somebody made a study about it. The conclusion of it is, and my personal experience is in line with it, that upside down attitude is clearly superior, but upside down count is about equally good as the standard. Some players, especially in Europe prefer to play just upside down attitude, mostly on grounds that it is not worth the trouble to learn something that is not clearly beneficial. Other players especially in NA insist on UDCA, playing both attitude and count upside down, on grounds that it is easer to play "everything" reversed. Frankly I never understood that argument for UDCA, for example most of those players continue to play standard suit preference instead of upside down. Bottom line, if you got used to one way of showing count there is not advantage to switch either way, but there is an advantage to switch to low encouraging.

ha ha ha , can you believe that somebody opened 6S? I might try opening 1S (actually I probably would on MPs)