Third seat openings

[awm]

Suppose you're playing a strong (15+) 1♣ opening. Your style is to open almost all ten-counts in first or second seat, along with the occasional nice nine-count (with extra shape or whatever). What would you recommend with regard to 3rd seat openings?

[hrothgar]

I'm a pretty strong believer that a light opening style in 1st/2nd works best with a sound open style in 4th (and I am happy to use the same in third as well)

 

Consider the implications of a first second seat pass playing a light opening style

 

1. The pass denies much in the way of values

2. The pass denies much in the way of shape

 

I want to design my 3rd and 4th seat opening structure such that partner is going to be able to make effective use of bidding space on those occasions when I do open. To me, this means using a fairly sound opening style...

 

When I playing MOSCITO, I normally play a light xfer opening style in 1st and second. In third and fourth, I play old fashion Blue Club with sound openings typically showing 12+ HCPs

 

For what its worth, this same style gets use a lot with non-strong pass based light opening methods.

[han]

Same as in 1st/2nd. I think it is a big winner to be allowed to open light in 3rd.

[mike777]

Suppose you're playing a strong (15+) 1♣ opening. Your style is to open almost all ten-counts in first or second seat, along with the occasional nice nine-count (with extra shape or whatever). What would you recommend with regard to 3rd seat openings?

Same style in third seat as in your first or second seat, not lighter.

I might increase your nt range one hcp in third seat, perhaps. :)

[awm]

Here's a counterpoint to hrothgar's point though.

 

Suppose the auction goes Pass-Pass to me. Since we are opening quite aggressively in first seat, odds are that anyone playing a more standard opening style will also see the auction Pass-Pass to my chair.

 

Now the "standard bidders" are going to open quite light in third seat. Why are we passing hands that the standard bidders open? It seems like many of the advantages of opening light are still there (might find a good fit, might get partner off to a good lead, might make it harder for opponents to bid their game or slam accurately) whereas a lot of the disadvantages of opening are gone (partner can't have the "invitational 2NT hand" or the "3-card limit raise in competition" hand that tend to get us too high in standard methods when we open on garbage in third chair).

[Apollo81]

Same to lighter NV since partner cant hang you and going down is only 50 a trick.

 

Same to sounder Vul. Opening light red opposite a passed hand = high risk of -X00.

[Cascade]

Last year I had a couple of games with a partner who I have never played with before. He wanted to play symmetric.

 

Eventually we settled on a slightly aggressive first/second seat style 10-15 limited openings and 16+ 1♣ with a weak NT. In third fourth seat we switched to 18+ 1♣ with a strong 1NT.

 

There were a couple of problems that we never ironed out but overall I liked the feel of this sort of structure.

[joshs]

Adam, of course knows my opinion.

 

Let us start with the 1C opening after P-P

 

Claim 1: The Conditional Probablity of having a 15+ hand after 2 passes, is much larger than it was in first seat. I would guess P(15+ Given PP) is about 4* P(15+)

 

Claim 2: The Probability of Partner having a Positive Response to your 15+ 1C 3rd seat opener is much less than it was after a first seat 1C (In fact its only a subset of the 9 counts). I would guess that P(Positive over 3rd seat 15+ 1C) is about 1/10 P(Positive over 1st seat 1C)

 

So what happens is you have frequent 1C-P-1D auctions, and very few 1C-P-Positive auctions. this is terrible inefficient. Anyway who claims that they can do better in there 1C-P-1D (negative) auctions than in there 1C-P-Positive auctions, please let me know, so I can give a basic lesson on information theory....

 

The result of this is thats its terribly ineffiecent to play 1C as 15+ in this situation. In fact if 1C is 17+ you still have

P(17+ Given PP) > P(15+)

But the difference is not huge, and the positives to 17+ 3rd seat opener turn out to be reasonably common. (I need to measure that probability at some point and compare it with the positives to the 1st seat 15+ openers)

 

So now, to make the 1C auctions efficient, you are playing a 17+ or an 18+ 1C in 3'rd seat.

 

Now if 1H is 10-16 or 10-17 you do face the problem that:

a. an 8 or 9 count might want to invite game, which is especially problematic in competition

or

b. the maximum 1M openers have to bid past 2M all by themselves opposite a potentially weak hand

or

c. you need to give up bidding accuracy in exchange to the competative benefits of opening light (al least with good suits)

 

OK, so maybe you decide that in fact playing a 10-16 range is in fact best here, because the advantages of getting in the opps face outweight the problems caused by the wider range.

 

Well then why exactly didn't you play a 8-14 range in 1/2 instead of the 10-14 range?? When you open in 3 seat, 4'th seat know something about his partner, that partner did not have an opening hand. So with a weak NT they are not terribly worried about missing a game. You have no such luxury over a 1'st seat opening. In fact its the light first seat openings, coupled with a light response, that are best at stealing from the opponents, assuming that is one of your major goals. The light 3'rd seat openers are not nearly as effective at that goal...

[helene_t]

Josh's argument sounds good and is also in agreement with what Wayne describes, I think. But it begs the question if one should generalize and play increasing requirements for the 1♣ opening, say 15-16-17-18 in the 4 seats.

 

You can still open quite light in 3rd seat, though, since the option of passing an otherwise forcing, natural bid makes it easier to handle a wider range.

 

I voted "lighter" but actually there are hands I would open in 1st/2nd but not 3rd/4th, and vice versa. I open light in 3rd seat if I have a suit I want p to lead and have a a convenient pass after any response (preferably no doubleton above the opening suit).

[Cascade]

Josh's argument sounds good and is also in agreement with what Wayne describes, I think. But it begs the question if one should generalize and play increasing requirements for the 1♣ opening, say 15-16-17-18 in the 4 seats.

More to the point the light openings in 2nd seat are likely to be less effective than first seat since the opponent's have already exchanged information so perhaps the light openings should prgressively become stronger say 8-14; 10-15; 10-16; 12-17 or something.

 

This accords to some degree with the normal theory of pre-empts being aggressive first seat; sound second seat; undisciplined third seat; strong fourth seat.

 

And light openings are essentially pre-empts - getting in before the opponents.

[awm]

Having a stronger 1♣ opening seems pretty clear.

 

On the other hand, there are a number of advantages to having a tightly limited opening range with a fairly robust minimum. These seem to be:

 

(1) Let partner GF on most of the hands that need to reach game and all hands that need to reach slam. With a wide opening range, there will be hands that are too weak to GF opposite the potential minimum but yet offer play for slam opposite the potential maximum, which can be quite awkward.

 

(2) Allow partner to sign off with a wide range of values, without worrying about missing something when opener is maximum (this applies to both signing off in partial or in game).

 

(3) Make sure there is only one "invitational" range; with a wide opening range you need both the "invite that partner should accept only with a max" and the "invite that partner should reject only with a min."

 

The disadvantage of a tightly limited opening range is basically that more hands have to open with a bid that just shows/denies points (i.e. Pass or 1♣ artificial). This means you're not getting a leg up in a competitive auction, and you're not helping partner on lead.

 

It seems like partner's initial pass tends to reduce the advantage of limited openings -- partner won't have a GF regardless or even a "good invite" and there's not much risk to miss anything by signing off provided that the vast majority of hands that can make game opposite a passed hand without a fit are opening with 1♣ strong in any case.

[dake50]

Two big inferences for 3-seat.

1. we are seldom in a game auction unless 3-seat has 17 --only superfits.

2. 4-seat has a big hand.

 

These both scream obstruct to me. Open 4cM down to 9hcp. 1NT is minor suited --suggesting 3 minor quickly.

 

Only 1C is constructive for 3-seat. Others allow surprise big fit.

[blackshoe]

I prefer the same style in 3rd as in 1st/2nd. If I'm playing mini-NT, I'd up it to 12-14 in third.

 

I play 1C as 17+ in all seats.

[helene_t]

16-18 in 3rd seat please. Should be constructive. A 1NT opening that is purely aimed at annoying opps is not my cup of tea.

[jdonn]

I would argue that it's far more important to make life hard on the opponents when light in third seat than to have a system after your strong club that is most efficient. Far, far more.

[benlessard]

Make much more sense to have sound 1-2 seat and light 3 then having agressive 1-2 and sound in 3rd. From a constructive point of view an unpassed hand is 0 to unlimited but a passed hand is 0-11, so you can afford more slack for your bids facing a passed hand because partner bids are going to be more precise.

 

From a preemptive point of view a 1 seat light opening take space from 2 opps but also from partner, a 2nd seat take steal space from 1 opps and your partner and a 3rd seat however take space only vs the 4th player.

 

Light opening at 1C & 1D have no purpose imho unless they a 5 card suit. A 1H light opening wont give much profits vs strong pairs but do pretty well in a weak field. The real value of LOB is in 1S/1Nt but red a weak nt is slightly inferior to a strong nt IMO so for Nt range you should based them on vulnerability and not on seats.

 

Playing regular strong clubs i think 15+ in all seat is better.

Of course Polish or special 1C are complete different stories and i have no strong experience playing those.

[joshs]

I would argue that it's far more important to make life hard on the opponents when light in third seat than to have a system after your strong club that is most efficient. Far, far more.

1. More efficient can mean 0.1 imps/bd or it can mean 8 imps/bd. My guess is playing a 15+ 1C opener in 3rd seat under the stated conditions (partner can't have a 10 count) is something like a 3 imps/bd loser, and a pretty common bid.

 

2. People keep making claims about opening light in 3rd seat is important. Ok, just why is it more important (more effective) than opening light in say 1st seat? yes in 1'st seat your side's expected total HCPs are 20, while in 3rd seat while opening slightly lighter than the opps do, its only about 19.7 (my guess), but how much does that change the odds of whose hand it is? Does this outweigh the fact that the opps have had some exchange of information already via the second seat pass?

[cherdano]

I would argue that it's far more important to make life hard on the opponents when light in third seat than to have a system after your strong club that is most efficient. Far, far more.

1. More efficient can mean 0.1 imps/bd or it can mean 8 imps/bd. My guess is playing a 15+ 1C opener in 3rd seat under the stated conditions (partner can't have a 10 count) is something like a 3 imps/bd loser, and a pretty common bid.

 

2. People keep making claims about opening light in 3rd seat is important. Ok, just why is it more important (more effective) than opening light in say 1st seat? yes in 1'st seat your side's expected total HCPs are 20, while in 3rd seat while opening slightly lighter than the opps do, its only about 19.7 (my guess), but how much does that change the odds of whose hand it is? Does this outweigh the fact that the opps have had some exchange of information already via the second seat pass?

3 IMPs per board? Only 19.7 instead of 20?

I think I agree with most of what you say but your numbers are ridiculous, to put it nicely B)

[Gerben42]

Suppose you're playing a strong (15+) 1♣ opening. Your style is to open almost all ten-counts in first or second seat, along with the occasional nice nine-count (with extra shape or whatever). What would you recommend with regard to 3rd seat openings?

 

In 3rd and 4th seat I would change to 15 - 17 NT and a 17+ strong ♣ (otherwise you'll never have a positive response to 1♣). In 3rd seat the minimum can be "whatever you feel like", in 4th seat constructive I guess.

 

I have made good experiences with the "3rd and 4th seat +2 HCP" in light opening systems (my version of Magic ♦ even uses 3 HCP differences)

[joshs]

I would argue that it's far more important to make life hard on the opponents when light in third seat than to have a system after your strong club that is most efficient. Far, far more.

1. More efficient can mean 0.1 imps/bd or it can mean 8 imps/bd. My guess is playing a 15+ 1C opener in 3rd seat under the stated conditions (partner can't have a 10 count) is something like a 3 imps/bd loser, and a pretty common bid.

 

2. People keep making claims about opening light in 3rd seat is important. Ok, just why is it more important (more effective) than opening light in say 1st seat? yes in 1'st seat your side's expected total HCPs are 20, while in 3rd seat while opening slightly lighter than the opps do, its only about 19.7 (my guess), but how much does that change the odds of whose hand it is? Does this outweigh the fact that the opps have had some exchange of information already via the second seat pass?

3 IMPs per board? Only 19.7 instead of 20?

I think I agree with most of what you say but your numbers are ridiculous, to put it nicely ;)

OK you play a strong club system where the only bid you are allowed to make over your strong club opener is 1D. You think you will lose by less than 3 imps/bd on the strong club hands?

 

I was guessing at the 19.7. 3rd hand and 4'th hand have the same expected value (given 2 passes). 1'st hands strength distribution is 0-9

2nd hands strength distribution is 0- bad 11 (lets say half the 11's are opened)

 

Compute A=E(HCP) in hand 1, and B=E(HCP) in hand2.

 

3rd Hand sides Expectation=A+(40-A-B )/2

4'th Hand Side Expectation=B+(40-A-B )/2

 

I was guessing that B-A was about 0.6. Do the calculation, how far off was I?

[joshs]

OK I did the expectations calculation, under the following assumptions:

A. in 1'st seat we open all 10+ hands and no weaker hands

B. In Second Seat they open all 12+ hands, and half the 11's

Here I am basically ignoring prempts. I don't think including them is going to change the conclusion much, but feel free.

 

From a table of HCP probabilities, I computed

E(HCP for A Given A passed)=6.47

E(HCP for B Given B passed)=7.35

Average for A+B=13.82

3'rd and 4'th seat have the same expectation=(40-13.82)/2=13.09

 

So 3'rd hand sides expectation=6.47+13.09=19.56 (I actually think this will go up slightly if you include premepts, assuming the prempting styles are similar since you are including some common hands, plus some hands that A opened 1 which B would pre-empt with)

 

OK So I guessed 19.7. Seems like a rediculously bad guess to me.

[awm]

I don't understand the relevance of our expected total high card strength.

 

Surely we should evaluate light openings on the basis of how many imps/mps we win by opening light, versus how much we lose on the sound opening bids by playing a wider opening range? Just because I have "on average" 13 hcp doesn't mean I shouldn't open with 8 and a suit -- in fact when I have 8 hcp it's probably a great time to open because opponents usually have game?

[benlessard]

People keep making claims about opening light in 3rd seat is important. Ok, just why is it more important (more effective) than opening light in say 1st seat?

There is no comparaison between the effectiveness of LOB of a 3rd seat opening and in 1st seat. Im not a strong believer in lob but light in 3rd is at least 2 or 3 time more effective then light first seat.

 

1- from a preemptive point of view you are preempting 1 opps and no partner. in 1 seat you are preempting 2 opps and 1 partner. Whatever psych or garbage preempt or crappy opening can backfire in 1st seat in 3rd they rarely do. Of course 1st bid are affecting 2 opps but the risk make it no comparaison between the effectivness on 3rd seat light.

 

2- from a constructive point of view already having pass is a big advantage for constructive bidding.

P---(p)----1H-----(p)

???

 

whatever 1st seat bid and whatever the continuation hes in much better position then if not a passed hand, this extra precision can allow for some slack in the requirement for the third set openings.

 

You think you will lose by less than 3 imps/bd on the strong club hands?

Ill drink half a bottle of Johnny Walker and i still wont lose 3 imps per boards against nobody.

 

Remove my 1C bid from my bidding box and i dont think ill lose 1 imps per board.

[pclayton]

I think Josh (Sher's) reasoning makes a lot of sense. Boost the minimum requirement for 1♣ and lower the requirement for a positive (or semi-positive). 1♣ - 1♦ sequences should not be the norm, and you shouldn't have a one or two point spectrum for a positive response.

 

I think this has only a small effect on your one bids. Like Han, I think opening lite in 3rd seat is still a big winner.

 

However, because you'll have a class of 15-16 / 15-17 hands in 3rd and 4th seat that you don't have after a 1/2 seat opener, I would recommend adding Gazzilli, or making the opening 2 bids beefier or something.

 

Josh - you might want to tighten up the IMP predictions however. ;)

[joshs]

I don't understand the relevance of our expected total high card strength.

 

Surely we should evaluate light openings on the basis of how many imps/mps we win by opening light, versus how much we lose on the sound opening bids by playing a wider opening range? Just because I have "on average" 13 hcp doesn't mean I shouldn't open with 8 and a suit -- in fact when I have 8 hcp it's probably a great time to open because opponents usually have game?

Some Definitions:

 

"Par" - The best possible double dummy score you can recieve on the hand if the opps pass through out.

 

Note Par>=0

 

"Absolute Par" - A contract where neither side can improve their (double dummy) score by bidding higher.

 

Note: Absolute Par is usually unique, but on rare occasion both sides can make say 1N or 3N double dummy, played from a particular side, and here its not very well defined, so you would assign the side in 1'st seat the unique ability to get to said contract, to make it unique. There still are rare cases where Passout is Absolute Par.

 

Owner of the Hand: The side that went postive (double dummy) in the Absolute Par Contract

 

Claim: Given a Fixed Distribution of the HCP (A against B=40-A) and ranging over all possible hands with said distribution of the points that if A>B, then P(A Owns the Hand)> P(B Owns the Hand)

 

Three more definitions:

Constructive - making a bid with the aim of reaching my sides par contract

 

Destructive - makign a bid with the aim of preventing the opponents from reaching their par contract.

 

Lead Oriented - making a bid with the aim of improving the effectivesness of your sides opening leads

 

(Note this can be a bid that improves your partner's opening leads, or it can be a bid by you where the subsequent auction helps you figure out what to lead yourself)

 

Let me combine Descructive with Lead Oriented and call these Defensive Goals.

 

Ok that was preliminary, now my claim is:

The More likely it is for your side to own the hand, the more important Constuctive Goals are to Defensive Goals. And Visa versa.

 

Hence has your expected HCP decreases, there is some increase in the relative importance of Defensive bidding relative to constructive bidding.

 

I just think:

a. After PP, the probability that its your hand has only decreased a little bit from first seat, hence the importance of defensive bidding has only increased a little bit.

b. Hence the more important consideration is effectiveness, not importance. Is defensive bidding more effective in this situation (because partner is a passed hand) than it is in first seat (where the opps have exchanged no information, but partner is unlimited)?

 

I think most of the claims for the value of 3rd seat light opening bids is that they are much more effective than in 1'st seat since "partner can't hang you".

 

I have been questioning this claim. I feel partner can't hang you only by giving up on constructive bidding, which really is not much less important here than it was in 1/2 seat. If you want to be able to retain some constructive bidding, partner will have to hang you sometimes. (Seriously, after P-P-1S-3H(Intermediate) and you hold Qxx x xxxx AQTxx I think you need to force to game) So the question is, what are the "costs and benefits" assocaited with opening 1-2 points "lighter than expected" on certain hand types in different seats. Also what are the costs and benefits of more outragous psychs.