Questions about 18-20 balanced hands

[NickToll]

The idea of reserving an opening bid for balanced hands of 18-20 points is not new. I have three questions about this subject: your ideas and comments will be welcome.

 

1) Is it useful to remove these hands from one of a suit and show them at once with a specific bid at the two level?

 

2) Assuming you have answered yes to the first question, which is the most appropriate opening bid? 2♦, 2♥ (with Multi), or even 2NT? which are the relative pros and cons?

 

3) For those of you who prefer 2♦ or 2♥, what development do you use or like?

[whereagles]

I've played 2NT as 18-20 for a while and it has the obvious problem of you going a couple down when pard is broke, which is a always a bad result and can be even worse when vulnerable.

 

But, if you can stomach this inconvenience, it certainly is as playable as anything else.

[paulg]

Both Bocchi-Duboin (2♣) and Versace-Lauria (2♦) dedicate a 2-level bid to these hands.

 

This is a heavy investment, so I presume that it fixes a big problem in their fairly natural system base. It might be related to competitive bidding, but I've never seen a comment from them on why they play it.

 

Paul

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

 

#1 my guess is, that if you remove the bal. 18-20,

than openers 2NT jump rebid becomes game forcing,

which means you have solved the problem with the

BW dead hand, you can use the 2NT rebid for those

hands

#2 I would say using 2C may be best, because you

have the most room available to sort it out, and may

still stop in a reasonable contract at the 2 level,

and my guess would be that because of similar

reasoning, 2D is better than 2H, because of the add.

space

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[Cascade]

The idea of reserving an opening bid for balanced hands of 18-20 points is not new. I have three questions about this subject: your ideas and comments will be welcome.

 

1) Is it useful to remove these hands from one of a suit and show them at once with a specific bid at the two level?

This isn't a question you can answer in isolation.

 

There is an obvious gain from moving these hands from one of a suit in that it frees up a 2NT rebid. This is only useful if your system needs the space for other problem hands.

 

The flip side is that there is a cost. That cost is that you are opening these hands at a higher level which means that sometimes you will get too high and also that you have less space to explore for the right contract.

 

The gains and losses are relatively infrequent. We use the 2NT jump rebid to distinguish between hands with a six-card suit that have and do not have a fragment in support of partner - I think this hand is sometimes called the Bridge World hand of death.

 

For us:

 

1x 1y

2NT denies 3-cards in support of responder's suit

 

and

 

1x 1y

3x promises 3-cards in support of responder's suit

 

Otherwise these bids both show around 16-18 with a decent six-card suit. Actually we play 2NT as forcing and therefore unlimited.

 

Others use this now free 2NT bid for some other purpose.

 

There are other minor gains on other auctions from knowing that partner is not 18-20 balanced. Actually we play 18-bad 20 - which seems to repeatedly prompt the joke "who ever had a bad twenty count". And our 2NT opening is good 20-22.

 

The losses are primarily that we get too high on some hands that partner might have passed (usually) a 1minor opening. These too are infrequent. Additonally you claw back some here since 1minor is not always a decent contract when passed. So we have played 2NT down one or two when a similar score was had in 1minor at the other table(s). We have also play 2NT down which turned out to be a good sacrifice against the opponent's part-score - it is easier to jump into the auction over 1minor than 2♦ showing 18-20.

 

It is certainly playable and having played this way for three or four years I like the feel of our opening bid structure with these hands removed from one level openings.

 

2) Assuming you have answered yes to the first question, which is the most appropriate opening bid? 2♦, 2♥ (with Multi), or even 2NT? which are the relative pros and cons?

 

Again this isn't a question to be answered in isolation. It depends on what you want to give up. We gave up the multi-2♦ which I do not miss at all so this was the natural place to put these hands for us. In isolation 2♣ is probably ideal in that it gives you more space. Another pair here were playing 2♣ and the cost for that was that they needed to play 2♦ as their GF opening. 2♣ GF is already a blunt instrument so you have to make a judgement about whether the cost of moving this one step is too much. The local pair playing 2♣ were using transfers at the two level which enabled them to get out in hearts or spades (or clubs by passing) at the two level. We too use 2♥ as a transfer which means that we can only get out in spades or diamonds at the two-level. This other pair have recently changed to 2♦ but I have not talked with them about the reasons for this change.

 

3) For those of you who prefer 2♦ or 2♥, what development do you use or like?

 

Danny Kleinman in "The No Trump Zone" has a structure that is designed around getting the 2♦ opener to declare as often as possible. If you think that is important I suggest you take a look there.

 

Initially we played a crude structure:

 

2♥/♠ to play

2NT to play

3♣ etc as if we had opened 2NT - Puppet Stayman and transfers etc

 

Now we play a two-way structure with transfers at the two-level:

 

2♥ spades

 

2♠ puppet to 2NT and there after we use our 2NT structure - Puppet Stayman etc

 

2NT puppet to 3♣ either weak with clubs or strong with hearts

 

3-any is our structure over 1NT (the same as 1NT 3any). We use these to show hands with shortages

 

We also play 4♦/♥ directly as Texas transfers

 

Anyone can invent their own hybrid structure in a similar way by using

 

2♦ 3any as the same as their 1NT 3any

 

and

 

2♦ 2♠ puppet

2NT 3any as the same as their 2NT any structure.

[gnasher]

I certainly wouldn't want to start more auctions with a 2NT opening or the equivalent. When the auction starts that high, you can't sensibly investigate the best game - for example, see the current thread entitled "wtp" - and slam auctions also are usually fairly imprecise.

 

From what Cascade says, its sounds as though life is better after a 2D opening, if you're happy to give up its existing meaning.

 

 

I expect that the biggest benefit is in competitive auctions where opener opens at the one level and then shows a good hand. In an auction like

 

   1C 4H pass pass

   dbl

 

knowing that opener is unbalanced could be very helpful.

[glen]

If you don't want to waste a two level opening, and are willing to suffer some complexity, try BRASS

The objective of the convention is to make additional use of the 2♣ opening, so that it covers more hand types.  Using this style, 2♣ is opened with these hands:

-  All hands with 22 or more points;

-  18-21 point hands with a six card or longer major, and no second suit;

-  Balanced hands with 18 to 19.

With 20-21 balanced, open 2NT, so 2♣ covers the rest of 18+ balanced. Sometimes 2♥ or 2♠ is played from the weak side, but the counterbalance is that 2♣-2♥/♠ stops low opposite 18-19 balanced without a good fit. As far as I know, nobody but us are using it (except with range 18+ to 20-), and we are quite happy with that, so please move on now to the next post.

[benlessard]

Playing a strong club.

 

white

1C! ---1D----1Nt = 15-18

2D=19-20

2H=21-22

2S=23-24

 

red

1C---1D----1Nt=16-19

2D=20-21

2H=22-23

2S-24-25

 

I think its better to play a wider rebid range/nt range then to have 3 notrump range under 19 pts. I really hate to open 2Nt 20-21 , and to think that some are even playing a strong club & 19-21 2Nt (like Meckwell) is something i cant understand.