Tcyk

It is interesting that you mention the rarity of the weak two bid. Hrothgar as written a very complete description of Frelling two bids. As I recall, they occur 4 or 5 times more often than weak two bids. Essentially, a Frelling two bid is preemptive and is like playing DONT in the opening position instead of over a 1NT opening. 2D is diamonds and a major. 2H is both majors. 2S is a normal weak two bid in spades or four spades and six clubs (My memory may be wrong on this one.) I have always thought that anyone playing DONT would be very happy playing Frelling two bids. I once tried the exercise of determining the probability of finding a 7-card or better fit when you hold two 4-card suits. My calculations (which might be in error) said this is true 67% of the time. Occasionally it is not in one of your 4-card suits. Someone can correct me if they have better information. Anyway, I have always thought that using DONT or Frelling two bids with two 4-card suits was not terribly risky with 67% probabilility of finding at least a 7-card fit. There is also the fact that the opponents may save you. Frelling two bids are similar to the 1-level bids used by some systems to show 2-suited hands. The difference is the levels are reversed. As I recall Lambda with about 8-12 HCP shows 2-suited hands with 1H, 1S, or 1NT (CRM) and 5+ cards at the 2-level. Someone playing Frelling two bids would show 5+ cards (perhaps unlimited) at the 1-level and 2-suited weak hands at the 2-level. When I was reading this topic, I couldn't help but note Fred's comments. If you give up weak two bids for some other method you are likely to gain when hands fitting your method occur and lose when they don't occur. This is true of any system you might use. The question boils down to, "How often does the situation exist?" and, "How much will we gain if it does exist?". I guess there is a third question, "Does it match your personality?" For example, I had a partner that hated playing in a Moysian fit. When playing with him, you carefully avoided this situation. It's better to keep your partner happy than to find that magic fit.

I wonder why Precision is in an non-natural system discussion. I can't imagine anything being more natural. The 1C opening is little more artificial than a 1NT opening bid. Unnatural to me seems to be the multitude of gyrations created to handle opening bids whose strength varies from 12 to 21 HCP. Yes, the 1D opening in Precision can present problems but the problems exist for the defenders as well as the openers. I usually consider 1D opening as searching for a 4-4 major-suit fit and bid accordingly. Partner can rebid diamonds if he has a real diamond suit. I tend to believe that the 11 to 12 HCP balanced hands should be passed in first or second position. This is certainly in agreement with Edgar Kaplan and the Kaplan-Sheinwold system. When you add complex-diamond or changes that would qualify the system as super precision, then I agree, the system becomes somewhat artificial. Asking bids in themselves are not artificial but perhaps you consider Stayman as artificial like Bergen, Jacoby transfers, Jacoby 2NT, takeout doubles, Blackwood, Gerber, ... the list goes on and on.

It seems to me that the play at IMPs and Matchpoints would be the same. I would immediately take the diamond finesse. If it loses and east continues with the heart ace and a heart ruff. I've lost 3 tricks. I can still make my contract if the spade king is on side or I can find the club jack. The worst disaster would be for east to have the stiff diamond king. I think I can afford to risk this. If the diamond queen holds the trick, I can afford to lose two hearts, two clubs and a spade. The hand would have to be very unkind for this to occur. I think most of the field would play the hand the same way. I wouldn't be a big loser even if I were a big loser and it gives me a good chance of making overtricks.

I personally like all doubles of no trump to be penalty oriented. They don't necessarily show a big hand but usually contain a good suit which I expect to run. Partner's doubles and my repeat doubles are all for penalty. They are not for takeout. An interesting aside is that, on hands played on the Internet, the weaker the no trump the better the expected results. A 10-12 HCP no trump opening tends to score better than 12-14 NT openings and they score better than 15-17 NT openings. I examined some 20 million hands to obtain these statistics. 8-10 HCP NT openings did very well but the sample size was too small to draw any conclusions. The only explanations I have for this is that the weak no trump players are better than strong no trump players or opponents don't know how to defend against a weak no trump. Take your pick. The important thing is that you and your partner have a firm understanding of your bid meanings and how to defend against all levels of no trump openings.

I don't find 1S and the pass so objectionable. I have a nice spade suit and an opening hand (rule of 20). The pass shows a minimum hand and there is also some probability the 1NT can be set. Now, what about 2H? The double (negative I presume) promised four hearts. Partner is aware of this. I pass. Partner bid them, he gets to play them. He is telling me that he only has one or perhaps no spades and he believes his hearts will play better than my spades. He didn't open with a preempt. That seems to point to a spade void or long hearts lacking in top honors or both. My early mentor was Dennis Dawson. He always said "Support support." When he overcalled a suit, the one thing he wanted to know was, "Did I have support for his suit?" If I bid another suit, it showed that I had no tolerance for his suit. The pass of the double is perhaps a little troubling. A redouble would have shown three spades. It couldn't have been a trap pass. If he has long hearts there is no way the opening bidder could have four. This again supports my opinion that the hearts are long without top honors.

I still think the FDCC should be able to be broken down into modules that could be called to build a complete system.Some play Bergen, some reverse Bergen, some fit jump shifts. some limit jump shifts, some weak jump shifts, some play mini-splinters. The list goes on and on where the same bids can have different meanings for different people. If each of these were written as an individual module things would be much simpler. There is another problem with FDCC that needs to be addressed and that is the 1M limit. I've hit it and I know others have. When you start trying to include competitive bidding sequences and different meanings for bids in different positions or vulnerability the file grows quickly. The responses also have to change to accommodate the different positions and vulnerability. File size doubles and triples before you know it. I know there must be a depository of FDCC somewhere in this form but I can't seem to find them. It seems like someone has surely written a file for Diamond-Major and I have little doubt that Hrothgar has written one for his version of Moscito and Frelling Two Bids. Where do I find these cards? I actually have thought that someone should build an FDCC-Wiki to serve as a depository for FDCC and let the users built, add-to, and correct the cards.

I am a BridgeBrowser veteran. By that, I mean that I have been using it for a number of years. I was one of the early testers. I am not an expert. However, I can search on just about any criteria you can imagine. Hand shape, strength, opening bid, overcalls, doubles, vulnerability. The interesting thing is that I can perform this search for many millions of hands. I can limit the hands to only those played by the stars (for those that are worried about the average caliber of play). The only real limitation is how much time you want to spend doing these searches and the availability of hands to search. The advantage is that the results are those played by humans, not some double dummy analysis program. Sometimes, the BridgeBrowser results are not what you might suspect. I did an extensive seach on 1NT openings with no shape criteria but with HCP in 1-point increments from 8 to 20. I searched some 20 million hands. Yes it took several days. What amazed me was that the lower the no trump strength the better the results at both IMPs and MPs. I could attribute this to two things, the declarer advantage and lack of experience or defensive tools against weak no trump. I suspect that no simulator could verify or refute these findings about 1NT opening bids. The poor results of the super strong openings is probably because someone miscounted the strength of their hand or was an absolute beginner and saw nothing wrong with being too strong for the bid. Partner had no way of knowing of the extra strength. I once ran extensive searches of psychic opening bids and their results. I just looked for 1S opening bids with less than 4 spades and less than 10 HCP. There may be a systemic meaning to these opening bids but they are rare. I manually examined a sampling of the hands that were found and I saw none that were alerted. The average result for the hands found was not very good for the psychic opening but there were large variations in the resulting scores. (... and I had a list of people that psyched.) You could never find this information using a computer simulation. I think there are times when a computer simulation program does have advantages. When trying to learn a new convention or system, I can deal appropriate hands to practice bidding. I usually deal hands in groups of 16, either random or constrained. If I find a hand I don't know how to bid, I search the documentation until I find the answer (or sometimes no answer). I also have a program that strips, player, auction, play, and results from hands written in pbn format Using this program, I can search for hands using BridgeBrowser with specified criteria, strip the extraneous information, and bid the hands myself. Then, I can go back to the BridgeBrowser hands and see how the hands were bid in the real world and the results. By doing this, I can evaluate the effectiveness of my own bidding. You can't do this with a computer simulation. I am interested in the effectiveness of some of the newer bidding systems. If I want to see how Revision Club or Diamond-Major does in IMP games, I can search for hands played by the author of the system. I can do the same thing with other systems if I happen to know the user name of those that play the system. You can't do that with a computer simulator. - end-of-rant

I have not figured lout how to use BBO with Linux. If I knew how, I might give up0 windows completely.

I really didn't intend to get into a discussion of methods of showing aces. A half century ago, I liked to play 4130CRM; like with two aces you can't figure out which two they are. Now days you have checkback Redwood, Voidwood, etc, etc. I can't count the number of times, when playing in an indy or with a new partner, 4NT has come out of the blue and I don't know what to do. Playing keycard, I have to know what suit is going to be trumps in order to answer the question. I guess the answer is to use the last suit bid if unsure (excluding cue bids of the opponents suit :)). Another no trump bid that can be confusng is 3NT after a suit fit has been found. Fred is creditted with using the bid to ask partner to cue bid but there are times when it is to play or used for some other purpose. 1D - 1H - 2H - 3N Probably indicated responder's shape is 3433 1H - 3X (limit raise) - 3N Is a Fred bid, asking partner to cue bid 1S - 3N Probably is to play but can be used to show a minimum splinter in an undisclosed suit. Better get that one straight with your partner.

Last night, I got in a friendly argument about Blackwood with someone on BBO. I had finished play in a tornament and was watching some of the hands still being played. On the final board, there were several pairs that had an auction that went something like: 1C (P) 1H (P) 1S (P) 4N (P) 5H (P) 6N All Pass Invariably, the result was down two. I commented that I didn't know why the opener didn't pass 4N since they had a minimum hand and 4N was obviously quantitative. That's when the argument started. I was told that 4N was Blackwood and that quantitative 4N only occurs over NT. As a result of our discussion, I searched the Web and found sites that agreed with both viewpoints. I was taught that 4N (ace asking bids in general except for Gerber) is only used when there is an agreed upon suit. Otherwise, 4N is quantitative. Other uses of 4N are: 1. Unusual no trump for some 2-suited hands, 2. D. I. (Declarer Interrogative) which occurs in cue-bidding sequences and almost always has an agreed trump suit. 3. Weiss (takeout of a 4S opening bid). 4. A final disparate stopping place when we can't agree on a major-suit fit. In my opinion, the jump to 4N in the auction given above just takes up too much bidding room unless it is purely quantitative. BTW, the auction at my table went: 1C (P) 2N (P) 3N All Pass When asked the meaning of 2N I was told that it showed 12+ points. What I really wanted to know if it denied a 4-card major. Tcyk - an intermediate forever.

I had a book entitled "Relay Club." As I recall the authors name was something like Bose. It was a canape system based on losers with 1NT=12-14 HCP. The greatest thing about the book was the 1NT opening treatments. Transfers were weak or invitational. Forcing hands began with Stayman and followed with a second asking bid which we called "Extended Stayman." The opening bidder's exact shape could be disclosed below the level of 3NT. 1NT opening bids could contain a weak 5-card major but never 5-4-2-2 shape. As I recall, Invitational 4441-type hands were shown by apparently transferring and then bidding 3NT (... and remember this was invitational). The suit bid for the transfer was the singleton. (Isn't that scary?) Thus 4=4=1=4 shape would be shown by the following auction (opponents pass throughout): 1NT 2D, 2H 3NT. The theory was that with 4-4-4-1 shape you must have at least a 7-card fit and God forgive you when opener's strength is in your singleton. That's why only weak 5-card majors were allowed. 3C and 3D showed 4-3 shape in the majors (either way) and a singleton in the bid suit. 3H and 3S showed a singleton in the bid suit, 4-cards in the opposite major and 3-5 shape (either way) in the minors. There were many example hands taken from international play and bidding contests where the author showed the superiority of these methods. Often, games were reached with 21 to 24 HCP that were missed by the field. These games were also often in Moysian fits. Of course, he didn't show the hands where the methods didn't work. Since transfers (and the 3-level bids were transfers of a sort) were invitational, rebids by the opener were very simple. They just placed the final contract. Scrambling to the best minor suit was not as difficult as one might think.

I think your third double is the culpret. You showed game values with the first double, spade support with the 2nd double. Over 3C, I think you should have bid 3H. It should be obvious to partner that West is manuvering, especially with the 2NT bid. There is absolutely no way West can have the values to bid NT when you and your partner hold at least 25 HCP and East has made a bid. The 3H bid is perfectly safe because you know you are not going to stop below 4S. By bidding 3H you are finally telling partner something about your hand in addition to 9+ HCP and spade support. I don't know how I would have interpreted your third double if I were your partner. If you are playing Revision, all doubles after the first double are for penalty. No doubt, the 2S call by East showed heart support. East obviously knew their partner because they promptly forgot about hearts after the support showing-bid.

I can concieve of only a bare minimum advantage in opening with four hearts but requiring five spades to open. I suppose that five spades are required because that is the more restrictive opening; less bidding room for responder. The system also seems to invite the opponents to compete in hearts.

The discussion answers the question. If a system was superior to other systems everyone would want to play that system. It just doesn't happen that way. Everyone would play Revision when playing IMPs or Match Point Precision when playing MPs. It appears to me that you must play a system that matches your personality. Some players would go nuts playing Roth-Stone and others would find EHAA (light initial action) absolutely impossible. There are chess players who like positional play and others that prefer more active play. The same is true in bridge. Going against the field is an interesting concept. If going against the field conveyed an advantage, more people would play canape systems. Dennis Dawson told me that when he played canape, hands were often played from the opposite side of the board played by the field and he often picked off the opponents suit. With one partner, I played canape transfers over NT. Transfers were always either weak or invitational, never forcing. With an invitational hand, we transferred to a 4-card suit and then bid our 5+ card suit. It was great fun and resulted in tops and bottoms. Oh yes, we were playintg 12-14 1NT too. I've had partners that just die when they discover you have put them in a 4-3 fit. They don't have any idea how to play the hand. With these partners you never raise their response with less than four cards in the suit even if you have a useful singleton or void. You score low when the Moysian fit is the right spot but overall you gain by making your partner happy.

Most sane people play negative free bids at the two level, not at the three level. It is completely unrelated to responses after 1NT interference because the 1NT opener is strictly limited as strength and shape. The hardest part about negative free bids is the pressure that a pass places on the opening bidder. Pass is virtually forcing. It can be made with a strong hand or a weak hand. You have to play your negative doubles a little differently to take some of the pressure off of opener. We played (Peter Rossi and I) that a new suit after making a negative double showed a GF hand Most people seem to reverse this meaning. ... and this has nothing to do with Carrot Club.

The advantage of transfers is that you can get a second bid. If you open 1C and partner transfers, just play acceptance of the transfer as sowing a minimum opening hand and bidding the step above that as showing a strong hand. If responder has a weak hand they just repeat the transfer. Other bids would be treated like a positive response and you could show another feature of your hand.

AWM said: 1) Responder has to invite on as few as 11 points, which could easily mean reaching 2NT on 11 opposite 11. It also means your invitational range is quite wide since you have to invite with any hand that wants game opposite 15 and you can't force game with any hand where game is bad opposite 11. In your methods this means two different invite sequences (wasting sequences that could be used for something else). I really don't want to enter into this discussion. I happen to believe the best bidding system is the one that you and your partner know. However, I was struck by the final parenthetical statement about wasting sequences. Bergen raises are a case in point. They are extremely popular with those playing 2/1 GF. These jumps to 3C and 3D can be put to better use such as limit jump shifts as advocated in Revision or fit jump shifts as used by Oliver Clarke Precision or weak jump shifts or game forcing jump shifts or ... As far as fourth suit forcing, I have seen many cases where I wish the bid was natural, perhaps more often than when I would like it to be forcing to game. For this reason, I guess I have to agree with Inquiry, forcing to game if a reverse or at the 3-level otherwise, a 1-round force.

Hands like this make me glad that I play a strong club system, If I weren't, my auction would go 1C-1S, 4S. I have 20 HCP and a ruffing value. Even if partner only has 4 spades, the contract should make. Playing standard, I will almost always raise a major with 3-card support and a singleton or void. The only exception to this is when I know my partner hates to play in a Moysian fit. Often a 4-3 fit is the best place to play a contract and almost as often, my partner will have 5 cards in the major.

Yesterday picked up a nice hand while playing in a tournament, board 1. My approximate hand was: ♠Q 10 ♥A K Q X X X ♦K x ♣x x x I opened 1H and the auction proceeded -1S, 2H-4NT, 5S (2 key cards and the queen of hearts)-7NT. You guessed it. The opening lead was a spade, won by my LHO's Ace. My lovely partner asked what kind of a bid was 5S and logged off. I didn't even get to tell them that I was showing 2 key cards plus the queen (as per the information on their card). You also guessed it, my partner had 4 spades and a stiff heart. I don't know about others, but I don't bid 4NT unless there is an agreed trump suit or it is a quantitative raise of NT. It really made me angry that this so-called expert was mad at me for my "crazy" bid and left. They will probably never know of their error and will continue to think that I am some kind of an idiot. I can't count the number of times that I have opened 1 or 2NT and had a partner respond 4NT which I dutifully passed with a minimum hand. The other day, my partner had 4 hearts to match my own 4-card suit and a heart slam would have been easy. No, they couldn't bid Stayman first, they jump right to 4NT and when I pass they think I am an idiot for not showing my aces. Doesn't anyone know what a quantitative raise is or that you can bid again after using Stayman? If I were playing with a regular partner, we would have discussed these things and I would have known the meaning of their bid. With pickup partners, I must make standard answers to their bids. If their card says RKC3041, I can hardly assume that 4NT is asking for aces and not key cards. What really makes me angry is that these problems seem to usually occur with partners that rate themselves as expert or advanced. If you don't know how to use 4NT you can hardly be an expert or advanced player.

I believe you have to open these hands with 2D if you are going to stay within the system. There are ways to show the stiff diamond honor. On the other hand, I believe we should forget about opening 2C with only 5 clubs and a 4-card major and especially with a 4-card diamond suit. An opening bid of 1D (or 2D with proper shape) will handle these hands very nicely. When your partner opens 1D your first priority is to look for a 4-card major suit fit. This is done at the 1-level instead of the 2-level if you had opened the bidding with 2C. The only reason for opening 2C with a 5-card club suit is if you promise 3 or 4 diamonds when you open 1D (as many people do). When I open 1D and rebid 2C I always alert the 2C as "Clubs may be longer than diamonds." But then I do that playing 2 over 1 too since with xx45 shape and a minimum hand I will open diamonds instead of clubs.

Since June 2006 my pard and I play (a modified version of) John Montgomery's Revision Club. We use his basic princples as outlined. I can confirm that many times you respond 1D after a 1C-opening bid. That's no problem at all. After the openingbid of 1C and the 1D response most rebids are quite natural. All I can say is, playing this system is a pleausure. It's a well-thought-out bidding system and worthwile more then just a fast glance. At least Foreword and Inbtroduction of his free book (over 350 pages) should be read by any bridgeplayer, whatever biddingsystem You may use! Just give it a try. I agree. The Introduction and Foreword are worth the price of the book :lol: I just have a hard time finding anyone to play it with me. One of the advantages of having the 1D response being either weak or 8+ HCP is that fourth hand can't decide to jump into the bidding because of a 1D negative response to a strong club opening bid. He doesn't know if it is negative or not until later rounds of bidding. The true negative responses, 1H through 2H, have the advantage that they have told opener something about the shape and strength of the hand. If fourth hand enters the auction, opener is better able to judge what action should be taken.

This hasn't always been the case. K-S contained systemic psyches, but its been a long time since I played it. I believe that over a jump shift response (and possibly a forcing raise), if Opener returned to 3 of his suit, it revealed a psyche in 1st or 2nd position. You were allowed to open a hand like: Axxxx, xxx, x, xxxx with 1♠, but not something like: xxx, x, xxxx, Axxxx. Because the psyche fell within closely defined standards, and because the jump shifter can pass 3 major, it was systemic and the JS acted as a psychic control. I have played a lot of K-S and control psyches are definitely part of the system. Something like KQxx x xxxxx xxx would qualify as a 1S opening, but don't do it too often. The psyche is disclosed when you pass a forcing response. The jump shift is the only thing you don't pass.

I tried to find the program (Ill maccino) so that I could look at it but without success.

I can't help you with Italian but there is a nice little program called suitplay that tells you how a particular suit combination should be played and the percentage of success for each line of play. Look it up on the Internet. I think it's still free.

I am a certified ACBL director but have not directed a game in over 25 years. I remember some of the agony directing can cause and the difficulty in interpreting the rules at times. For example, the auction goes: 1D P 1S P 2S P P (after a long pause) and a final P After the hand is played (making 2), the final passer calls for the director and wants an adjusted score. It seems the 1S bidder had a minimum hand and absolutely no reason to hesitate before passing. The 1S bidder was a novice and the caller was a very strong young female bridge player whose nickname was Little Dynamite. She claimed that she would have balanced if he had passed in tempo. I wanted to go home. I did not adjust the score. I have probably been hated ever since. Yes, she was injured by the hesitation. After the hands were seen, balancing was a good proposition but very risky with so little information about the hands during the bidding. I didn't want to discourage the novice from continuing to play duplicate bridge. A director call can be unnerving to many people. He didn't even understand why she called. I explained that it was akin to fingering 2 or 3 cards before playing a singleton but not as obvious. The hesitation implied a stronger hand that was considering inviting game. I hope Dr Gene is still playing bridge today.