junyi_zhu

IMO, Mixed raise is a bad name. It merely shows a hand in the constructive raise range with 4 trumps. So it's better to be called a 4 card constructive raise. Of course, "mixed" is short. In that sense, Mixed raise simply says nothing about defensive tricks. It just shows a hand that is not as good as an invitational raise, but stronger than a preemptive raise, which is often made based on 6 or fewer HCP.

Agree. It's actually very ineffective to recruit recent retirees as the the major target of bridge in US. Most pick up this game late will never be as good or devoted to this game as young players. Of course, they may be able to pay the entry fee easily comparing with teenagers, but this is not a game about table fee IMO. More than ten years ago, in my early bridge life in China, I never paid anything to enjoy good bridge at schools. The bridge club in the university is free. At some senior students' dorm, one can always enjoy good bridge when the bridge club is not on. Also, I tried my best to teach my friends and roommates at that time. Some of them are still active players now. That's actually the key to this game. It's a game, not a business. It's all about devotion, competition, love, not merely a senior center activities.

It should be limited. The bidding after negative double is still in a big mess IMO.

It is a clear pass for south, regardless game format.

Agree. IMO, the biggest problem in USA for this game to attract more people is the game format. Basically, you pay entry fee, a lot of entry fee, to ACBL for nothing. Suppose you win some matches, in Poker, you may money, in chess your rate goes up to show your progress, in bridge, you make some master points, which reflect your attendance to this organization and don't reflect your skill level much. Few young people would really go into such kind of nonsense IMO. In Poker, some very young talents can make big money purely from their skill and luck. In Bridge, there is just no way. Even chess has a better format. They actually have a much better rating system which may attract young and talented players. This situation lies in the nature of this game, a partnership game. So it was designed to reward attendance and not to take it too seriously, otherwise, cheating would flow everywhere in this game. Still, IMO, a much better rating system can be devised based on pairs, not individuals. Since it's a partnership game, it doesn't make a lot of sense to say xxx is the best player. Instead, the proper way is xxx and yyy are the best partnership.

I think the opposite, find this one to be on the top of 4333 because all of our honnors are working, having 2 tens doesn't make it worse. Am I wrong? Having all of your honors in trumps is very bad not good. I don't know why you think a stray jack is "working", I mean it's better than a Jxx by a little bit but it's still a jack with no supporting honors. Likewise the tens in random suits are not that good. A JT combination would be much more valuable than J T T. Again if all of our honors were not AKQ tight then our tens might be working with other honors making them much better. Compare this hand to AJT xxx KQTx xxx for a hand that actually has all working honors + 2 useful tens (same A K Q J T T). That hand is infinitely better. Even something like Qxx KJT ATxx xxx would be much better. Basically any hand with an A K Q J T T would be much better than this one. I don't get the point. Averagely speaking, AKQ in trumps work most of times when partner holds 5 spades. They work OK when partner holds 6 spades, Q may not be important about slightly more than 50% of times. However, if you don't hold AKQ in trumps, your side suit honor may suffer a big loss if partner holds singleton or void and has a side suit wide open. When partner holds 2, your Q may or may not help him to pitch a loser. When partner holds 3 or more small cards, you are lucky. From partner's point of view, if he holds 5 baby trumps, he may easily downgrade his hand facing a three card raise, which make your AKQ of trumps more valuable. So I really don't get the point why AKQ tight is surely bad facing a 5 card or more 1S opener.

Um, what? I second that the reason is simply because it's worse. I think your comment is just untrue. Of course, it's worse. I am just saying that it's unpopular which makes it worse. Do you know any strong players play 4 card major with 2/1 scheme and a lot of gadgets and relays? If nobody studies and plays this system, this system can't be good. Still, if everything is quite optimized with a lot of people study and improve this system, 4 card major shouldn't be much worse than 5 card major. Just slightly worse IMO.

I would be interested in examples of ways in which their systems were bad. Lol, they played 13-17 NT and control showing responses to their strong club...give me a break. Did they even play keycard? None of this is meant as a knock against any of these guys, they were the best players of their era and got even better as times changed and there was more knowledge etc around. It's not like people now are born knowing bidding, we just don't have to figure most of it out since others have done it for us by studying the old systems and building on that etc. It is completely natural in all games that people start off knowing nothing, they try things out, some sticks, some is proven to be bad and is adapted, and then it keeps building on itself etc. I'm not sure why this is such a surprising concept. It's not even about the exact system, there are many auctions like 1S-2C-2H-2N-3S-4C which are now obviously cuebids for spades but before people would probably be like wtf? edit: Did I mention 4 card majors?! Of course I cannot prove that 5 card majors are better than 4 card majors, but given that probably none of the top 20 pairs in the world play 4 card majors when it used to be dominant at the top levels, one could rationally assume that people came to the conclusion that 5 card majors are better. 4 card major could be slightly worse than 5 card major because of the scoring method and nature of bidding. The basic trend I observe in bidding is that the higher the bidding is, the more precise the bid has to be defined. In that sense, 4 card major openings don't distinguish the difference between 1C and 1S and define 1S to a much narrower range, which is a key problem. In that sense, 4 card major systems should play better with strong clubs. Still the major reason for no top players play 4 card major is that really few theorists study it.

Agree, that's a very important rule. Also, I prefer you to add that bidding 3NT doesn't require any extra in a gf sequence. Now, even after 2/1 gf, bidding 3NT usually shows 13 HCP or more, which doesn't make sense to me at all. I'm not quite sure what you are suggesting. Can you give me an example auction where you think I should change the meaning of 3NT? Thanks. For example, sequence like: 1S p 2H p 2S p 3D p 3N, this 3NT always requires 13 HCP or more in the explanation. But you sometimes have to bid 3NT with 11 or 12 HCP and misfitted hands. There are just too many of them. Another example: 1H 1S 3H 3S 3NT, this 3NT requires 19 HCP. However, 3S already forced to game, so you have to bid 3NT with some weaker hands. A third example: 1H 1S 2H 3C 3NT, this 3NT also require extra. Basically, gib thinks that they need more HCP to make 3NT than 4M. Also, this kind of logic may lead to some failure of bidding 3NT in competitive auctions. I have observed many times that gib wouldn't bid 3NT in a gf competitive sequence with opp's suit stopped just because gib thinks he has a minimum in his range. There are also some extensions of this logic, For example, gib thinks that 1C 2C 2NT shows 14 HCP. However, with 12-13 HCP and 3 clubs, it's actually better to bid 2NT instead of 3C IMO. With 14 HCP, the game is actually very close. Also this kind of 14 HCP convention makes 2NT rebid very rare and is a huge waste of bidding space.

Agree, that's a very important rule. Also, I prefer you to add that bidding 3NT doesn't require any extra in a gf sequence. Now, even after 2/1 gf, bidding 3NT usually shows 13 HCP or more, which doesn't make sense to me at all.

Kickback can be better because 4m is a useful bid to show extra length in m which can be important in slam bidding. Often, a successful slam is bid because the exact trump number is known before RKC.

When you have 23 HCP and 9 card trumps, you usually have a few doubletons or singletons, which allow you ruff for the extra tricks. So really, I don't see why you should stay out of game with normal 23 HCP and 9 card trumps. Of course, if you don't have controls, you want to bid few suit games with marginal values. Overall, there is hand evaluation in this topic and from pure bridge logic, many 23 HCP hands with 9 card fit should bid game. Still, that doesn't mean invitation is useless, cause you may invite with 7-8 HCP and some shortness, which still requires partner to hold some sort of extra or lucky high cards or card plays.

well, all the treatments have some merits. Still, I just play both as forcing cause it's simple, it makes bidding with strong hands easier and it allows me to overbid invitational hands systematically, which isn't really that bad in competitive sequences.

Gib holds S9 HAKQJTxxxx DK CKJ I held QT8532 9x xxx xx The bidding went 1D(LHO) x(my gib) 2C (RHO) pass(me) 3C(LHO) p p 3S(shows 3-8 total points and 5+ spades in the explanation, which fits my hand well) x all pass. It went -1100 for me. when 4H can be cold if I happend to hold CQ or one ace or H9 and make the right guess in C. The general "total points" based scheme is the origin of this ridiculous result. A sound improvement should discard the total points nonsense, cause this hand counts for only 2+17+2+1 = 22 total points, but it really justifies a 4H bid at any time and 4H should never be expensive when you hold the royal flush headed 9 card suit. At least, the explanation should be either 25+ points or 9+ total tricks. This really isn't a huge change IMO.

3NT should be natural, opener has limited his hand within a 3 points range (if not 2 or 1 points if you allow 3H to show extra) , I don't see a lot of points to play serious/nonserious 3NT here.

Only from bridge point of view, it's probably better for Ng's team to play pure weak 2 against Meckwell IMO. Multi-2D is not an effective convention against them. The space multi-2D saved for them to bid 2H/S can occur rather infrequently in that match and a natural 2D weak can occur more frequently. Anyway, I am off topic.

In my observation, the so-called sportsmanship occurs only when the sportsman(woman) has led a large margin.

One simple situation is if a double is made after two or more passes after opp opens the bidding, it has to be a penalty double, because you can't wait two rounds to make a takeout double. For example: 1S p 1N p 2C p 2H p 2S x, after two passes, this double has to be a penalty double. Another very simple situation is that a double against any natural NT bids above 2NT (including 2NT) should be penalty. Another very simple situation is that a double against any slam contracts should be penalty double. Another simple situation is that when you show gameforcing value and found a fit, a double against opps sacrifice is penalty and doesn't require any extra. (Also, gib does extremely poorly in this area, it often doubles with some very distributional hands when bidding or passing should be quite obvious, so advanced rules should be determined.) Another situation is that a double against opp's game contracts after opp has set up a gameforcing sequence is for penalty, for example: 1S p 2N p 4S x.

Is it possible to define some pure penalty double situations so that gib would never pull? Gib may not know when to make the penalty doubles, which is fine, cause human players can make them and take profit as long as gib doesn't pull the double.

Gib's 1D doesn't show any extra. You probably overbid for about 10 points IMO.

I think it just says I have some good values and no clear bid available and defense is certainly a good option. So the first doubler should sit the double with most balanced and semi-balanced hands. The doubler shouldn't expect that partner may hold a good 4 card major suit IMHO.

I have played inverted minor as gf raise and not denying a major suit for many years, of course, it works well. It is generally a good idea to bid one's longest suit first, otherwise people have difficulties show such kind of features later. For example, if you hold 4S + 6C and gf hand, and bid 1S over 1C, you will often have an extremely difficult time to show that you indeed hold 6 clubs later.

The 4S bid is wrong because by definition, 4S over 2H should show 4-2-5-2 shape if one plays "picture bids". Also, the overall strength is just too strong to bid 4S with north's hand. The bidding sequence for the 1S 2D 2H 3C ... is also very wrong. Even playing ACOL, north's hand is a clear 3S bid over 2H, which is gameforcing. This 3C then later support strategy works very poorly cause it wasted a lot of bidding space without showing the excellent support and controls at a lower level.

It is an easy pass. Once a blue moon, you may miss some juicy penalties against reckless opps, but it's just too dangerous to act at three level with the hand, cause it's aceless and DKx strongly suggests defense.

actually this involves with one of the biggest problems of gib bidding. Gib simply hates 3NT. So whenever possible, Gib wouldn't bid 3NT. For example, after a 2/1 gf sequence, a latter 3NT bid would show 13 or more HCP in gib's system, which is a huge nonsense IMO. Here, since gib hates 3NT, it would bid 3S instead. The new rule should be that 1 in a gf sequence, 3NT doesn't require any extra. 2 gib should never pull partner's 3NT without a good reason, for example, slam possibilities, blabla. 3 when 3NT is a possible good spot, gib should bid it instead of suits.