semeai

Interesting setup. Let's go through the hand types and advantages/disadvantages: On hands that would bid a NF 2♦, the systems are identical. On hands that want to force 1 round with diamonds or with clubs, yours does better when responder is weak, especially with 5♠-1♥ and 4 of your minor. You'll usually do worse on hands where responder would bid 2♦ over the Gazzilli 2♣ bid, though, I believe. On weak 3-5-1-4 hands for opener: You're at a slight advantage. I'm happy raising immediately to 2♠ on these, though, but if that isn't your style I understand. Others: Gazzilli can already handle the bridge world death hand (though not with one bid). You lose the 3m jumps to show big distributional hands. These will be slightly worse going through 2m. I'm going to guess that Gazzilli is preferable at imps, but yours has merit and may be desirable at matchpoints.

If you hover over a response (or any bid of yours) it should show you what it would mean to GIB before you bid it.

1) Double of 3♥ would be a heart raise that doesn't want to commit to 4♥. For example, it could suggest sacrificing in 4♥ over 3NT without committing to it. 2) Double of 5♣ is penalty. It does imply some strength given the sound of the auction, though. That is, probably West was bidding 4♥ to make instead of sacrificing with a weak hand (he can't have a trump stack!). Thus East may pull more often than calling it "penalty" suggests. I wouldn't double with this West hand. 3) At imps at least I'd say yes, given the complete lack of defense (the sixth heart especially). 1) My first thought was yes. On this hand, though, it would leave you on a guess of how many hearts partner has and whether he has the ♦Q. That is, declarer could be 2-1-3-7 with the ♦Q. You don't want to lead 3 diamonds and give away the contract. The conclusion is I'm not sure. (Added: The 2-1-3-7 hand isn't relevent, as partner can't be AKQ10x and out.) 2) Yes. It's doubtful partner has 3 hearts, so you have no useful cards in your hand other than the ♦Q. 3) Yes, I think so. Declarer played the J and 8 of diamonds. Partner would have played 10 and then 2 with Q1052. I suppose this is declarer's error and he should play J and 2 it seems. Added: I seem to have it all wrong. I missed the udca comment, and thought East had encouraged. Will rethink and edit shortly. New analysis: 2 as above. 3) Declarer's J and 8 make partner's holding unclear. Given that partner discouraged, I would play him for a heart trick. If he has the spade ace, it doesn't matter.

Good question. Psyching artificial opening bids is not allowed, so your argument would have to be that you upgraded it. I don't know what the ruling would be here. I doubt state of the match considerations are relevant, or if they are they might work against you, as you don't want to be arguing that you psyched the bid.

Funniest in retrospect: The way some friends and I played after reading some books, playing some at school, and showing up to the local club. I remember bidding 2♥ weak, partner tanking and bidding 3♥, and then me tanking and bidding 4♥. Our opponents were quite taken aback. The director was called, and she explained to the opponents that 3♥ was our invite. Funniest at the time: Somehow playing forcing pass was always the most hilarious, though I haven't tried in a while and don't remember specific systems I used. Most enjoyable: Actually having quality agreements in a mostly natural framework.

Neat. Is it online? It does sound potentially good. Can you answer the question I asked lowerline? That is, what happens with a minimum opener with 5♠ and fewer than 3♥ faces an invitational responder with 2♠ and 5♥? Maybe 1♠-2♥;2♠ is nonforcing? Nice idea. I've usually played that with a game going hand you bid your longest suit first, but surely if it helps the system it would be workable to bid 1♠ first with 4♠-long minor. Of course you still need to figure out what to do over 1♠ openers now. Having one of these lebensohl-like bids like your impossible 2♠ or lowerline/gerben's 2NT (or rubensohl-like as I was thinking above with transfers starting at the 4th suit) somewhere in your system seems valuable. Precisely where to put it is not clear.

This seems fine (but see (2) below). If you do it frequently, your explanation should include "we may upgrade with compensating distribution/spot cards/etc." For example, opening a precision 16+ 1♣ on 15 or 14 or even 13 could be fine, though if you often do it, it's good to tell the opponents. Precision 1♣ seems to be specifically protected by precedent, even if it would knock your 1♣ bid out of the 15+ "strong opener" range that is then allowed to have any responses you want, as enough top players do it. Here you're in much murkier waters. As barmar says, there's precedent against allowing a 10-12 NT to be opened with 9. There's also precedent against allowing weak twos with fewer points than you write on your convention card because they're restricted to having a 7 point range. For example, if you write 4-10, opening with 3 HCP is frowned upon (whether it's actually illegal maybe depends on whether you've ever done it before with that partner, etc). What does this mean?

Playing 2♠ as a "range ask" does have advantages, as pointed out by others. Some expert pairs, including Meckstroth and Rodwell, use this. I think they have opener bid 2NT with a hand that would decline an invite and 3♣ with a hand that would accept an invite. The most obvious advantages: 1) Instead of bidding 1NT-4NT;Pass and playing 4NT with a balanced slam invite opposite a minimum, the auction is 1NT-2♠;2NT-3NT and you're still just in 3NT. 2) Extra space to explore with balanced invites (e.g. as helene describes) and/or extra bids if opener always bids 3♣ with an acceptance. For example, you can now decide on any meanings you want for 1NT-2♠;anything-3♦,3♥,3♠, as well as for 1NT-2NT. This being the B/I forum, let's leave it at that. Of course letting the opponents double 2♠ is a hefty downside, as is memory strain. I hadn't heard of playing 2♠ as a weak invite (i.e. 11 pts opposite a 12-14 NT) and 2NT as a strong invite (i.e. 12 points opposite a 12-14 NT). :P In case there are any unclear on why this is funny: it shows an over-reliance on numerical point count not to be able to break a 12-14 range into a "good" half and a "bad" half.

I worry this is too good for 4♥. If partner bids 5♣, will we know what to do? Even if we do know what to do, will we be allowed to do it if partner bids 5♣ slowly? A bid of 3♥, forcing to slam over anything but 3NT, and bidding 4♥ over 3NT would be the other plan (the other other plan is just force to slam no matter what). I hope 3♥..4♥ is more encouraging than just 4♥, as I already know partner has some heart wastage, but it may not be clear I have a void.

Where do opener and responder end up with non-GF values and a 5-2 spade fit after 1S-2H? Is the last auction how such hands would be bid? That's an interesting thought, to only bid 2/1 on invitational hands with a doubleton (or better) spade.

Thanks Adam, that's a nice setup. Do you play it 11+ or 10+, and is 1NT still (semi-)forcing? The heart raises in (6) seem decent. It seems at first glance not as good as just playing 2/1 GF on those hands perhaps, but maybe it's as though you've already bid a "serious" cuebid and not too much different from a 2/1 GF auction playing non-serious 3NT. The artificial catchalls seem good, and are the sort of gadgets I was looking for with my "analogous to bart" comment. A thought: Does anyone play transfers starting with the 4th suit? For example, on 1S-2D;2H-?, one could play that 3C shows a 3D rebid (F or not), 3D shows a 3H rebid (F or not), and 3H is "4th suit," basically always stopper asking (or maybe 3H is a spade raise, and 3S is stopper asking, but the opportunity to temporize after the 4th suit may be more valuable than the extra space after a spade raise). Are there problems with this?

Double is takeout of diamonds, so I'd play this as similar to P (1D) X (P); 2D. With a penalty pass of diamonds, East passes I would think. I admit East is stuck with long diamonds and a hand poor enough not to want to duke it out in 1NT. I wonder what 3D is? Not having a cuebid to help figure out strain seems too much to give up for those hands which would've passed 1D doubled but don't want to pass 1NT doubled.

It's standard (e.g. BWS 2001) to play this as non-forcing. In comparison, the standard for new suits at the 1-level is to have them be forcing. Another common treatment is to play transfers here, starting at 1NT, but this is certainly not standard or what you would guess with a pickup partner if that's why you're asking; whether it's common enough to be "mainstream" I do not know. That is, 1NT transfers to clubs, 2C to diamonds, 2D to hearts, and 2H would be a good raise to 2S.

That's a nice meaning for 3NT. Is 1S-2H;3N played as 5-4-2-2 by some as well? Then you could always splinter or bid 3NT with a GF heart raise and still have some room for cuebidding. Are there any nice solutions to the problems with this, e.g. as in my post just above yours, or is it all an uncomfortable mess? Also, are there adv/exp level Acol systems books that discuss things like the 3NT rebid above?

In this case, after 1S-2D;2H, wouldn't 3C be bid hands with long diamonds and GF values and hands with 4 hearts and GF values also? (Possibly also spade raises with GF values, but maybe 3S is GF if all limit raises just bid 1S-3S.) It seems a lot to untangle, especially if you then want to e.g. explore for slam below 4H if there's a 4-4 heart fit. For example, maybe it goes 1S-2D;2H-3C;3x-?, x = anything but diamonds. Now how do you have an intelligent heart auction? Probably there's a solution (I can pretend to make up some, but none too pleasing). Are there expert pairs that play this style of Standard American? (Added: or other style of non-GF 2/1 for which the answer to (d) is the same.)

In all of my serious partnerships, at least past the beginner/intermediate stage, I've played 2/1 GF, so I don't have much of an understanding of good treatments of non-GF 2/1. Which styles of non-GF 2/1 are used effectively by expert pairs (let's exclude "GF unless suit rebid" from the discussion, as that's almost 2/1 GF.)? How do they manage choice of games decisions and slam interest auctions reasonably? Are there any little gadgets (not big ones like relay systems) that help out --- I'm thinking something analogous to how e.g. Bart helps 2/1 systems on hands that non-GF 2/1 is better at? By style I mean answers to questions like: (assume the auction was 1S-2D) a) Is 2S or 2N the catchall? b) Does 2D promise a rebid? If not, which of 2S, 2N, 3D are forcing? c) If 1S-2D;3D or worse 1S-2H;3H is NF, how do you bid with a good raise? d) What is forcing after 1S-2D;2H? How does bidding the 4th suit work here? My impression is that at the least there are expert "non-GF 2/1" American, British, and French pairs which answer some of these differently, so hopefully the answer is that multiple styles work well and have had some modern development leading to good cog and slam auctions. What are they? Any resources/write-ups not aimed at beginners/intermediates to look at?

Fortunately, or unfortunately for those who like to ponder reverse ethics violations, in this case a spade lead would be beyond reproach. Opening leader has the negative inference that 3♦ was not doubled! On the topic of reverse ethics: maybe we can hope to reach an equilibrium state in which the standard ethics violation and the reverse ethics violation are equally likely, and thus there is no UI in such an auction! http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif

Do you mean a program to play bridge with, like Bridge Baron or Jack, but instead of a list of conventions to choose from you want to tell the computer to e.g. open 1NT only if it has a certain number of "your" points (A = 6, K = ...)? If that is what you're looking for, I don't know of such a program. Perhaps others do? May I suggest instead using these points yourself but letting the computer evaluate hands by its own methods? For example, if you decide to use A=6, K=4, Q=2, J=1 and open 1NT with 19-23 of those points (my guess at an analogue of 15-17), you can just decide to bid that way, and when the computer opens 1NT with 15-17 it should be reasonable to decide it has opened with 19-23 of "your" points. Computer bidding is not so precise that this will make a huge difference, hopefully. If this was not what you meant, apologies, but please do explain what you do mean.

The decision is between pass and 5♥. It seems close, but I'll say pass. I'm not great at these decisions, so let me think it through: To make 5♥, somewhat simplistically partner needs maybe 4 of the 6 of: ♠A/void ♥A ♥K(maybe J) ♦K ♣A ♣K(maybe J) plus some breaks/finesses/spot cards if certain ones are held. To follow through with this simplistic analysis: If he holds 4 of them, it seems we're getting 650 instead of 300/500 (4 or 8 imps). If he holds 3 of them, we're getting -100 instead of 100/300 (5 or 9 imps). These are close, so if this all makes sense, it boils down to "bid 5♥ if you think you can make it," i.e. if you think partner doubling makes 4 of those cards more likely than 3. I still have no clue, but I guess there are also factors I've left out that make passing better (bad splits, extra spade tricks on defense, etc), so let's stick with that.

Thanks! That's pretty good, though not too surprising. I'm all for more data, but my curiosity is satisfied. Of course, if you do run it again, or always even, it would be neat to see how GIB does. :)

Do you (i.e. BBO) secretly run a table of four robots in the robot duplicate? If so, how does GIB do in the field? If not, why not? It would be very interesting to know how GIB stacks up with the robot duplicate field!

Ouch! Does GIB bid these hands by simulation? I wonder whether it was a case of lack of definitions or of failing to find enough hands in a simulation (or something else).

Both 1♦ and 2NT seem fine. Especially during an indy opposite a professed beginner I might choose 2NT.

What do you use 1NT-2♦; 2♥-2♠ for? I've played this as 5-5 GF+ with 2♥..3♥ as INV. I've also just given up the invite and played this as 5-5 slammish with 2♥..3♥ GF and don't recall it ever mattering. As I write this it occurs to me that it's harder to show 4♠-5+♥ slammish than 5+♠-4♥ slammish because the Smolen sequence 1NT-2♣;2♦-3♥ allows for 3♠ by opener, but 1NT-2♣;2♦-3♠ leaves little room. It could then be best to use 1NT-2♦;2♥-2♠ as 4♠-5+♥ slammish, or some larger collection of hands including these. Does anyone play this?

The ♥Q lead seems fine ethically, though it also seems unlikely to be best except in hindsight. It's not clear why partner wanting a diamond lead would suggest the lead, and there is authorized information that you're being forbidden from doing something. Follow-up question: It's UI that partner wanted to lead a diamond. It must, however, be AI that declarer doesn't want a diamond lead? Does this mean that if you are again on lead at a later time (the penalty card was picked up and now there's no strict legal prohibition), there's likely no UI issue regarding leading a diamond?