Wide range 1NT

[firmit]

Been reading about Red Club - which got a pretty wide 1NT range: 12-17hp. They argue that they open 1NT with 15-17hp any balanced distribution, and 12-14hp WITHOUT a biddable major ( 4+card major). Does this sound playable?

 

Zar 1NT backbone opening also got a rather wide-ranged opening. 1NT is bid without any biddable major (4-5 card). Thus a 1NT bid always defines a minor/major holding of 7-8-9/4-5-6. This got some other merits I guess. However the hp range is also pretty large: 11-17hp, where 4333 may be up to 17hp and the 5422 is the lower part of 11hp. (not sure if the 5431 is opened 1NT but it does apply the rules - lower limit is 10hp! )

 

With Zarpoints the distribution is valued and is within the nt range. Has anyone tried any of these ranges, or does anyone have any comments? It sure does not give away the exact hp range to the opponents, but a good system for handling the wide range is rather important here, no?

[uday]

In ACBL land, use of such a wide range triggers a blanket restriction on all use of conventions after the 1N opening. So range inquiries etc are out, as are xfers, SOS redoubles, scrambling, what not.

 

I occasionally play a wide-range NT (11-16) for amusement ( the inability to use any artificial calls is crippling )

[hrothgar]

I used to play a fair amount of Blue Club, using the original 1NT opening

 

1N =

 

16-17 balanced or

13 -15 with 3=3=2=5 / 3=3=3=4 shape

 

The primary purpose of the 1NT opening was to discipline the 1♦ opening.

 

The opening worked fine so long as there was no interference. Now a days, when everyone and their brother has a pet structure to overcall 1NT, I'd be a lot more leery about using this type of method.

[jdonn]

I used to play a fair amount of Blue Club, using the original 1NT opening

 

1N =

 

16-17 balanced or

13 -15 with 3=3=2=5 / 3=3=3=4 shape

 

The primary purpose of the 1NT opening was to discipline the 1♦ opening.

 

The opening worked fine so long as there was no interference.

That's tough to believe. When partner has 17 I want to be in 3NT when I have some 8s and almost all 9s. These hands are not safe going higher opposite 13.

 

I have personally never played a wider range than 12-15, and even that I found too wide.

[paulg]

I used to play a fair amount of Blue Club, using the original 1NT opening

 

1N =

 

16-17 balanced or

13 -15 with 3=3=2=5 / 3=3=3=4 shape

 

The primary purpose of the 1NT opening was to discipline the 1♦ opening.

 

The opening worked fine so long as there was no interference.

That's tough to believe. When partner has 17 I want to be in 3NT when I have some 8s and almost all 9s. These hands are not safe going higher opposite 13.

 

I have personally never played a wider range than 12-15, and even that I found too wide.

The shape restrictions meant that 90% of the 1NT openers were 16-17 balanced (I'm sure someone will sim this, but it felt like this percentage or higher when I played it). Like Ben says, the wide range never felt like a major problem except in competition, when the strong NT hand really had to make another call.

 

After all, if it was good enough for Garozzo ... :P

[firmit]

Some numbers - with zar points

http://firmit.bridge.googlepages.com/nt.png

Edit: A.cp - average controlpoints A=2, K=1, ZP - zarpoints , rel.prob, all.prob.cum.prob.

Green - "pre-emptive" zone ( 22-25zp )

Blue - normal opening range ( 26-30zp )

Red - medium strong range ( 31-35zp )

Edited June 9, 2007 by firmit

[uday]

How does one interpret that?

[firmit]

The tables are maybe irrelevant. The point is that they display the zar nt backbone level.

 

When playing with a 12-14hp nt range, people always tend to upgrade and downgrade the 4333 and 5332 to "follow" the 4432 hand ( i suspect ). But is it playable with a defined wider range? If one upgrade the hand with solid controllers, and downgrades accordingly when lacking them, one should be able to bid this wide range nt also, and expecting to bid with the same accuracy - no?

[awm]

I think the point is that playing a 1NT opening with a wide range of actual values is difficult. Most people upgrade/downgrade hands though, and you can specify this if you want without really changing the value of the 1NT opening. For example the following should be playable:

 

1NT = 15-17 with 4333 shape, or 14-16 with 4432, or 14-16 with 5332 and a weak five-card suit, or 13-15 with 5332 and a robust five card suit, or 12-14 with a good six-card minor.

 

Really this looks a lot like "14-16" except that you downgrade 4333 hands by a point and you upgrade 5332/6322 if your five card suit is good. In principle this is a "12-17" notrump opening, but you aren't opening 12-counts with the same distribution as 17-counts.

 

Perhaps you should play 1NT opening promising "no singleton/void/6cM and between X and X+6 ZAR" or something of the sort, keeping in mind that ZAR points are kind of double the standard hcp count.

[pbleighton]

Perhaps you should play 1NT opening promising "no singleton/void/6cM and between X and X+6 ZAR" or something of the sort, keeping in mind that ZAR points are kind of double the standard hcp count.

 

Adam, I assume you're joking. 99% of bridge players have never hear of ZAR points.

 

If you upgrade and downgrade a lot, you can do one of twp things:

 

1. Announce/alert the *normal* range (say 15-17), and deal with complaints as they come up. I thik this is a reasonable thing to do, but you will get complaints. I don't think that a competent TD would rule against you, but not all TDs are competent...

 

2. Announce/alert your range as 14+ to 18-.

 

Peter

[Double !]

I have been working (for about 30 years off and on) on a home-grown system that is based on a 13 to 16 hcp 1NT opener with some good 16-counts omitted and handled differently. It is an antithesis to todays' trends toward lighter opening bid: to some degree, it is a sound opening system, at least as far as opening 1m. 1M can be opened lighter. 12 counts with good spots can be upgraded if they look more like 13 or 14: i.e. with two good 4 card suits and opened 1NT. 12- poor 13 hcp hands with a 5-card minor are opened 1m and rebid. A rebid of 1NT can also be made holding an off-shape 12-15/16 hcp hand that has some major flaw (usually a stiff in responder's major and no other convenient rebid at the 1-level). I know, this is strange and possibly less efficient having both an opening bid and a rebid of 1NT to show minimum to moderate balanced hands. (FWIW, the system plays neg X & Lebs if the opps compete over the 1NT opening.) But, with this approach, the partnership is opening 1NT on almost 2/3 of the hands that weak NTer's open and a little more than half of the hands that strong NTer's open.

 

I've always felt that one should have a reason or purpose behind playing one bidding approach as opposed to another. There are two primary (hopeful) purposes for this approach. 1) to reduce competition by the opps, or to already know to a greater degree than in standard system more about opener's hand. Using this approach, the opps will often need to risk and start competitive bidding at the 2-level. 2). Using this approach, opening 1M or 1m usually shows a 5+ card suit or else extra values. This is an advantage in competitive situations: knowing that your partner actually has at least 4, likely 5+ when he/she has opened 1m. Makes it more comfortable to support/ raise. Admittedly, the good balanced-semibalanced 16 to 17 point hand is a relative weakness in the system, but can be addressed by opening a 4-card major and playing a Gazzilli-like rebid structure.

 

Another aspect of this system is, in an attempt to reduce missing 4-4 major suit fits due to often opening 1NT, is to open 2 diamonds to show 12-15/16 with 4-4 in the majors (like a weak NT with 4-4 in the majors). As with any convention, there can be hands where you are playing in a 4-3, a poor 5-2, or in 2NT when the field is in 1NT. Interestingly, the number of times when this has occurred have been relatively few. And, again, if the opps interfere, against starting at the 2-level, responder has a reasonable idea of what to do. Interestingly, this convention works surprisingly well playing a 15-17 hcp 1NT system and weak NT (once consequence is that all 1D openings show either 4+ diamonds or extra values without having to play a short 2+ club). There are also a number of competitive situations, including when opps make a pre-emptive bid, when knowing that the 1m opener is not a minimum hand with 4-4-3-2 (-2-3) is a definite advantage.

 

This is still a work in progress, handling some types of hands still need to be worked out, and it does have flaws. (What system doesn't?) It's just a general template: one can use any of their favorite toys or raise structures with it, you can play 2/1 or not, it's up to you, and it doesn't require inverted minors: it's almost better without them. Many people, when hearing the NT range, have flatly dismissed the system as being unplayable. But, FWIW, I had relative success (considering my overall bridge skills at the time) when I played this system with my one regular P at the club and tourney level when I played many years ago, and I actually got better results playing this method than when playing a 15-17 NT system.

 

But, most importantly (to me), playing this approach is so much more fun than playing sayc (yeech) or 2/1.

 

DHL

I can't believe that I actually posted this, but the question of a wide range NT was like saying "shave and a haircut" to Roger Rabbit.

[Tola18]

I had during a period played a home-made system when ALL suit 1-openings were normally 5+. Exceptions were of course the 4441 hands and 18-19 NT. Otherwise everthing natural. Worked OK!

 

The trick to make the 5-openings possible was by playing with 13-17NT.

 

With time, we did worked up sequences to nuance what we had and how many points. But frankly, it wasnt necessary. In the beginning we had it raw. Our common NT-scheme and 13-17NT. With some careful invitings...We didnt see any missed contracts or faults.

Of course, we didnt compete against first class adversaries....

[mr1303]

When announcing a 1NT or similar opening bid, are you allowed to announce something like Zar points (e.g 28-32 ZAR points, where Zar points = number of cards in 2 longest suits + difference between longest and shortest + x + y etc)? if that is what your agreement with your partner is?

[pbleighton]

When announcing a 1NT or similar opening bid, are you allowed to announce something like Zar points (e.g 28-32 ZAR points, where Zar points = number of cards in 2 longest suits + difference between longest and shortest + x + y etc)? if that is what your agreement with your partner is?

 

Not unless you have reason to believe that your opponents will understand it, which you certainly can't assume is the case.

 

Peter

[hrothgar]

When announcing a 1NT or similar opening bid, are you allowed to announce something like Zar points (e.g 28-32 ZAR points, where  Zar points = number of cards in 2 longest suits + difference between longest and shortest + x + y etc)? if that is what your agreement with your partner is?

Regretfully, there really isn't any good way to handle this problem.

 

Almost by definition, different hand evaluation metrics don't map neatly onto one another. (The whole idea behind developing a new metric is to capture elements that are missing in existing hand evaluation structures). Furthermore, lets assume that a case in which Pair “A” is only familiar with one metric: High Card Points. Pair “B” uses some other metric to define their auction structure: This could be Kaplan-Rubens point count, Zar Points, or what ever.

 

You're left with one of two unpalatable choices:

 

1. Pair B is able to accurately describe their agreements using “Zar Points”, however, the information doesn't provide Pair A with any useful information.

 

2. Pair A translates their agreements over to the HCP metric. Pair B is able to understand the explanation, however, the information provided is going to be inaccurate.

 

I can think of some fairly complex ways to try to provide accurate disclosure. As I've noted before, one interesting hypothetical would be to base the disclosure system on hand sample. Rather than providing a verbal description of a third seat white on red 1NT opening, you provide 1000 examples of a third seat white on red 1NT opening. The players who receive the hand hand sample then have the option to use a software module to collapse the software module down to a set of summary statistics that they can (hopefully) understand. However, I'm not holding my breath expecting anyone to implement this type of system any time soon. (Honestly, I'm more excited by the idea in the abstract than I am in trying to figure out how to implement such a thing)

[mikestar]

I've played 13-16 in a big club context for years and it has a fairly small net loss when used vs. a narrower range. The gains come from 1♦/1♥/1♠ guaranteeing either 6+ cards or another suit. Our practice was to quickly pass balanced 12's--this led to more losses than the wide range, but still came out OK over all.

 

I've experimented with widening the range to 12+-16 with no changes in the response structure. We get to 2NT/3NT going down just a bit more, but pick up some good 12 opposite 12 games in compensation.

 

As an aside book Keri works quite well over wide ranges--playing declined game tries in 2M rather than 2NT or 3M is even more helpful than over a narrower range--game tries are both more frequent and more frequently declined.