4 HCP range for 1NT.

[EricK]

So what do you think of using a 4 HCP range for a 1NT opening? What about for a 1NT rebid?

 

The obvious downside is that if partner has a hand which wants to be in game opposite the very top of the range you risk getting too high if you are at the very bottom. How bad is this in practice?

 

The obvious upside is that you can show many more balanced hands at the one level (eg in a Polish Club structure 1♣ 1♦ 1M = 11-14 (or 12-15); 1NT = 15-18 (or 16-19); 1♣ 1♦ 1NT = 19-22 (or 20-23)). How useful is this?

 

What are the other upsides and downsides?

[jtfanclub]

So what do you think of using a 4 HCP range for a 1NT opening? What about for a 1NT rebid?

 

The obvious downside is that if partner has a hand which wants to be in game opposite the very top of the range you risk getting too high if you are at the very bottom. How bad is this in practice?

 

The obvious upside is that you can show many more balanced hands at the one level (eg in a Polish Club structure 1♣ 1♦ 1M = 11-14 (or 12-15); 1NT = 15-18 (or 16-19); 1♣ 1♦ 1NT = 19-22 (or 20-23)). How useful is this?

 

What are the other upsides and downsides?

I happen to like wide ranges...for Match Points.

 

In IMPs, you generally want a very narrow point range to look for game: say, 24 hcp for a 3NT game. But I don't think that's true in MPs. If there's a 50% game out there, whether I bid it or not doesn't make any difference in the long run: half the time it's good, half the time it's bad, whichever decision I make.

 

One partner I play with thinks that you shouldn't invite based on points at all (in MPs). If I open a 12-15 1NT and he has a 10 count without a 5 card suit, he just passes. If we have the 25 hcp total, game is only about 50%, so it's no loss. If we have the 22 or 23 total, 2NT is far from a sure thing, so so we win when the opponents invite to the 2 level and then can't make it. When he has 11, we might end up with a 1NT-3NT auction with only 23, which isn't good odds double-dummy. But it's not double-dummy: we haven't revealed anything to the opponents, and the best defense may not be obvious. I think getting to where you're going quickly is often better than a point or two.

 

So, we don't lose much on the 1NT, but we gain a great deal on the other bids, because of the large negative inference (all balanced hands under 16 hcp either pass or bid 1NT). So I like it, but it's just me.

[MickyB]

In a Polish Club structure, I don't think it is terribly useful - you already have three ways of showing a balanced hand with a 1NT bid, so stretching the lower two is throwing away one of the advantages of your system. Stretching the highest one can be useful, it is the least frequent after all. In a natural system, there are definite advantages to stretching the ranges slightly.

 

Regarding invitational 2NTs opposite a 1NT opening - I am quite happy without one available opposite a 3 point range at IMPs, and I can cope with it at matchpoints, but I think having no invite available opposite a 4 point range is pushing it a bit. The reason I prefer it at IMPs to MPs is that 2NT+1 (field is 1NT+1) and 2NT-1 (field is 3NT-2) can still be good scores at MPs, whereas at IMPs you'd rather have been in 3N or 1N on both.

[mikeh]

I play 11-14 with one partner, reluctantly, because he loves it. I don't play a lot of mps, other than club games, where it doesn't matter much what we play.

 

We tend to overreach a lot... we reach a lot of 24 point games (which I think is good at imps, but not at mps unless the opps are weak, as they usually are in a club game) and a few 23 point games (which I think is bad).

 

My personal preference is for a tighter range, but that has its downsides as well. Thus in my 11-13 partnership, a 1N rebid is 14-16 and a 2N rebid is 17-19, with 17 being too weak on many hands, since we respond light :rolleyes:

 

And in my 15-17 partnerships, we pass balanced 11 counts, because our 1N rebid is 12-14...

 

Its an imperfect world :D

[cherdano]

My personal preference is for a tighter range, but that has its downsides as well. Thus in my 11-13 partnership, a 1N rebid is 14-16 and a 2N rebid is 17-19, with 17 being too weak on many hands, since we respond light :rolleyes:

That's one of the reasons Han and I play transfer Walsh. (The other being that we like an artificial 2N rebid by opener.) We always open 1C with 17-19 balanced; breaking the Walsh transfer for a 1N rebid by opener shows 17-19. Only in the case 1C-1S(diamonds) we have to jump to 2N with 17-19.

(This is with 14-16 1N, but that doesn't change the problem.)

 

Of course, this has the drawback over other xfer Walsh schemes that accepting the transfer 1C-1H(spades)-1S is pretty ambiguous, in particular can have 2 or 3-card support.

 

Arend

[paulg]

My personal preference is for a tighter range, but that has its downsides as well. Thus in my 11-13 partnership, a 1N rebid is 14-16 and a 2N rebid is 17-19, with 17 being too weak on many hands, since we respond light :rolleyes:

That's one of the reasons Han and I play transfer Walsh. (The other being that we like an artificial 2N rebid by opener.) We always open 1C with 17-19 balanced; breaking the Walsh transfer for a 1N rebid by opener shows 17-19. Only in the case 1C-1S(diamonds) we have to jump to 2N with 17-19.

(This is with 14-16 1N, but that doesn't change the problem.)

 

Of course, this has the drawback over other xfer Walsh schemes that accepting the transfer 1C-1H(spades)-1S is pretty ambiguous, in particular can have 2 or 3-card support.

 

Arend

We play the same scheme, but accepting the transfer means that we would not have raised with 3-card support in 'standard'.

 

So, in practice, we will only have 3-card support with very balanced (4333) hands.

 

Paul

[cherdano]

My personal preference is for a tighter range, but that has its downsides as well. Thus in my 11-13 partnership, a 1N rebid is 14-16 and a 2N rebid is 17-19, with 17 being too weak on many hands, since we respond light :rolleyes:

That's one of the reasons Han and I play transfer Walsh. (The other being that we like an artificial 2N rebid by opener.) We always open 1C with 17-19 balanced; breaking the Walsh transfer for a 1N rebid by opener shows 17-19. Only in the case 1C-1S(diamonds) we have to jump to 2N with 17-19.

(This is with 14-16 1N, but that doesn't change the problem.)

 

Of course, this has the drawback over other xfer Walsh schemes that accepting the transfer 1C-1H(spades)-1S is pretty ambiguous, in particular can have 2 or 3-card support.

 

Arend

We play the same scheme, but accepting the transfer means that we would not have raised with 3-card support in 'standard'.

 

So, in practice, we will only have 3-card support with very balanced (4333) hands.

 

Paul

(Edited) So you raise to 2M with 3-card support as in standard?

[paulg]

The sequence 1♣-1♥(=spades)-2♠

 

shows 11-13 balanced (with 3-4 spades) or

a minimum with 4 spades with 4+ clubs

 

The sequence 1♣-1♥(=spades)-3♠ shows a non-minimum (but less than 15 HCP) with 4 spades and 4+ clubs.

 

p

[mike777]

The sequence 1♣-1♥(=spades)-2♠

 

shows 11-13 balanced (with 3-4 spades) or

a minimum with 4 spades with 4+ clubs

 

The sequence 1♣-1♥(=spades)-3♠ shows a non-minimum (but less than 15 HCP) with 4 spades and 4+ clubs.

 

p

I always see these type of bidding auctions. Do your partner's never respond very light?

[joshs]

Its ok for an opening bid of 1N, especially if you use a weaker NT range, since the accuracy loss you get from the 4 point range is compensated for a decrease in the opps accuracy.

 

A 4 point range on the NT rebid isn't very good. I often have such a range in a number of systems in order to gain me a free bid else where (like an ART 2N opening bid), but you really do have a net loss from that large range.

[paulg]

The sequence 1♣-1♥(=spades)-2♠

 

shows 11-13 balanced (with 3-4 spades) or

a minimum with 4 spades with 4+ clubs

 

The sequence 1♣-1♥(=spades)-3♠ shows a non-minimum (but less than 15 HCP) with 4 spades and 4+ clubs.

 

p

I always see these type of bidding auctions. Do your partner's never respond very light?

Yes, transfer responses lend themselves to very light responses (and we prealert as such). We only really play IMPs and this style enables us to 'preempt' fairly quickly - we have not noticed poor results due to this style.

 

We are more careful on the rare occasions we play matchpoints.

 

paul

[pigpenz]

John Kiernan who wrote the book on kamizazee NT started off with 10-12 range and then changed to 10-13....at a regional in Denver back in 1978 i asked him why the change....he said....that one more point makes it alittle hard for the opps to count out your hand.

[awm]

Seems like some tests with bridge browser could pretty much resolve this. The basic question is, given two balanced hands with specific point totals, what are your expected imps in 1NT, 2NT, 3NT? Based on this you can decide things like: (1) With what point total, if any, is it better to invite game opposite a specific notrump range? (2) How much do you lose by playing a wider range versus a narrower range?

 

Without the data to really analyze, my general feeling is that assuming two balanced hands (let's say 2344 opposite 3442):

 

(1) With 26 hcp, 3NT will make substantially more than half the time. Playing a partscore with this point total will generally score poorly.

 

(2) With 25 hcp, 3NT will make roughly half the time. At MPs, you will be slightly above average playing these hands in 1NT or 3NT and slightly below average playing them in 2NT. At IMPs, you want to be in 3NT on these hands.

 

(3) With 24 hcp, 3NT will occasionally make. At MPs, you will do best to play these hands in 1NT, slightly worse in 2NT, and pretty poorly in 3NT. At IMPs you will be a little above average playing these hands in 1NT or 3NT and a little below in 2NT.

 

(4) With 23 hcp, 3NT will very rarely make. At any scoring you will do quite badly playing 3NT on these hands, substantially better in 2NT, and even a little better than that in 1NT.

 

Assuming this is roughly accurate, there is some benefit to inviting opposite a three point range. If partner shows 14-16 and I have 10 at MPs or 9 at IMPs, I really want to get to 3NT opposite a maximum and I will be slightly better off playing 2NT rather than 3NT opposite a minimum. Of course you have to balance this benefit against the chances of opponents speculatively doubling the invite auction, or the possible alternate uses for a 2NT invite in your system.

 

Opposite a four point range (13-16) there will clearly be some problems. If you don't invite at all, then you will either be playing 3NT on 23 (bidding game on 10) or missing 3NT on 26 (passing on 10) either of which is potentially quite bad at any form of scoring. On the other hand, if I invite on 10 I "get" to play 2NT substantially more often (10 opposite 13 and 10 opposite 14 at MPs, both scoring badly).

 

Anyways I think this would argue pretty strongly for playing a three point range rather than four assuming that my statements about points and notrump contracts are right. Interestingly, I suspect that when the high cards are less evenly distributed these statements become less true! But in any case the truth of (1)..(4) should be easy enough to verify by looking at hands.

[Free]

I'm used to play an 11-14 NT range. I also don't always count HCP alone, I look at the distribution. We've missed an occasional 14-11 (no invite) or 12-12 (invite not accepted) game, but in the end we win some because we open weak NT as well. I think opening a strong NT with 4hcp range is not a good idea, weak NT probably can handle it.

[jtfanclub]

Seems like some tests with bridge browser could pretty much resolve this. The basic question is, given two balanced hands with specific point totals, what are your expected imps in 1NT, 2NT, 3NT? Based on this you can decide things like: (1) With what point total, if any, is it better to invite game opposite a specific notrump range? (2) How much do you lose by playing a wider range versus a narrower range?

 

Without the data to really analyze, my general feeling is that assuming two balanced hands (let's say 2344 opposite 3442):

 

(1) With 26 hcp, 3NT will make substantially more than half the time.

(2) With 25 hcp, 3NT will make roughly half the time.

(3) With 24 hcp, 3NT will occasionally make.

(4) With 23 hcp, 3NT will very rarely make. At any scoring you will do quite badly playing 3NT on these hands, substantially better in 2NT, and even a little better than that in 1NT.

 

Assuming this is roughly accurate, there is some benefit to inviting opposite a three point range.

I'm not sure there's any benefit.

 

Using the three point range, and your numbers, if your total is 25-27 you just go without inviting, and if your total is 23-25 you just stop without inviting.

 

That leaves only one range, 24-26.

 

You win if you invite and your partner has the strongest hand and it makes.

 

You lose if:

-your partner bids game and it doesn't make.*

-Your partner has the weak hand, bids 2NT, and it goes down.*

-The opponents use the information given in the invite to take another trick, which is particularly true if declarer's showing a one point range by accepting or not accepting.

-The opponents see that they have distributional hands and that you guys are pushing a bit to bid it and therefore double (the old 1H-2H-3H-4H issue).

-If instead of inviting the bidding goes 1NT-P-P, the opponent's balance, and you whack it for a good score (which happens to us a fair amount, but that could just be the people we play against).

-And, of course, the loss of a bid.

 

The partner who doesn't invite based on point count thinks the third one alone is enough. In Match Points, failing to prevent an overtrick can be as costly as allowing a contract to make. The defender's lead may very different if they know we have about 22 hcp and a long suit vs about 30 hcp. If a quarter of the time the opponents guess wrong, and lead passively against the 22 and let us establish the long suit in dummy or underlead a tenace and give us an overtrick when we've got the 30, it's worth it not to invite even if we missed every 26 point game. This doesn't apply to IMPs: there, you always lead to defeat the contract, so the point total isn't as useful.

 

With a 4 hcp range, invitations do become useful, in my mind. But then, if you have a system that has the invitations, why not play a range where the invitation will be beneficial?

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*If you have a 2/3 chance of making 3NT with 26 hcp, and a 1/3 chance of 2NT going down at 24 hcp, these two alone make it not worth inviting, since you're more likely to have the 24 hcp total than the 26.

[Antoine Fourrière]

Personally, I prefer a two-point range 1N opening and a four-point range 1N rebid, because in the latter case responder has already given some distributional information and in the former case we need extra bids.

But I seem to recall that someone wrote years ago in the Bridge World that over a 15-17 HCP responder should invite with 8.5-9.1 HCP. (Sorry if I'm mistaken.) So maybe we should tune an algorithm with half points for notrump evaluation, and use a 2.5 opening range for a 1N opening and a 3.5 range for a 1N rebid.