Third seat openings

[awm]

Here's another way to look at things.

 

There's a pretty overwhelming consensus that if you play sound openings in 1st chair, you should open light in 3rd. Let's assume that this consensus is correct.

 

Now suppose you're opening light in 1st chair. So if your partner passes in 1st, they would pass playing sound openings too. However, there are some hands where partner passes playing sound openings but bids playing light openings (say 10-11 points). Consider what happens when we open light opposite such a hand. If this generated mostly bad results then we'd be strictly better opening light when partner can't have this hand. At the same time, when we have a "sound opening bid" the knowledge that partner can't have 10-11 lets us improve our follow-up methods. So we'd get even more benefit opening light in a light-opening system.

 

Thus it seems like any argument that we should not open light in 3rd chair in a light opening system should stem from reasoning that opening light does best when partner has 10-11 points and not so well when partner passed on a weaker hand.

 

Curiously, my experience has been mostly the opposite of this. Despite playing drury, it seems like a lot of times when I open on 10 high and partner has 10-11, we end up getting too high. Partner often has a non-fitting invite, or has to make his three-card raise in competition. The best results I've gotten by opening lousy hands in 3rd chair come when it helps partner on lead against the opponents' contract, or when partner's raise pushes their partscore up a level, or when the opponents have trouble finding their game or slam because they had to bid over my 1♠ call and/or partner's raise. All of these work out a lot better when partner has something like 5-6 points rather than 10-11.

[cherdano]

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.

Sorry I thought of a different question, which seems the more relevant one to me. Say you have 7 hcp in 1st seat. Then obviously your side's hcp expectation value is 18 hcp. Now if you have 7hcp in 3rd seat and it went p-p and partner opens light, then obviously your expected number of hcp is a lot lower.

That's why there is a lot more reason to open destructively in 3rd seat, and what your a-priori expected number of hcps is seems rather irrelevant to me.

[jdonn]

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.

Sorry I thought of a different question, which seems the more relevant one to me. Say you have 7 hcp in 1st seat. Then obviously your side's hcp expectation value is 18 hcp. Now if you have 7hcp in 3rd seat and it went p-p and partner opens light, then obviously your expected number of hcp is a lot lower.

That's why there is a lot more reason to open destructively in 3rd seat, and what your a-priori expected number of hcps is seems rather irrelevant to me.

typ

[hrothgar]

Here's another way to look at things.

 

There's a pretty overwhelming consensus that if you play sound openings in 1st chair, you should open light in 3rd. Let's assume that this consensus is correct.

 

Now suppose you're opening light in 1st chair. So if your partner passes in 1st, they would pass playing sound openings too. However, there are some hands where partner passes playing sound openings but bids playing light openings (say 10-11 points). Consider what happens when we open light opposite such a hand. If this generated mostly bad results then we'd be strictly better opening light when partner can't have this hand. At the same time, when we have a "sound opening bid" the knowledge that partner can't have 10-11 lets us improve our follow-up methods. So we'd get even more benefit opening light in a light-opening system.

 

Thus it seems like any argument that we should not open light in 3rd chair in a light opening system should stem from reasoning that opening light does best when partner has 10-11 points and not so well when partner passed on a weaker hand.

I don't think that the logical inferences from sound opening systems carry over to this case.

 

The reason that sound need to open light in 3rd/4th opposite Al Roth is that Roth might have passed a 14 count. If you bid the same you're going to miss an awful lot of games, not to mention all sorts of nice attractive part scores.

 

The reason that you open sound in 3rd/4th opposite a light opening system has to do with constructive allocation of bidding space.

 

Lets assume that you're playing an agressive strong club system in first and second and you're opening unabalcned 10 counts and most juicy 8-9 counts with a constructive opening. Moreover, your preemptive structure is going to be covering most unbalanced 6-9 counts.

 

Your passes are probably going to show either

 

a balanced 7-11 count

a three suited 7 - 11 counts

absolute crap

 

If you open very light in 3rd and fourth as well you're probaby going to go overboard on way too many hands...

[jtfanclub]

Why not go the other direction?

 

Take the 1 club opener show 15+, and have there be no positive responses.

 

1 diamond, 1 heart, 1NT, and 2 clubs are all transfers to the next suit, 1 spade is a transfer to NT. Opener accepts with 15-20, jump accepts or bids NT with 21+, and shows his own suit with a misfit.

 

Nothing shocking or new, except to do it on third seat only.

[han]

The reason that you open sound in 3rd/4th opposite a light opening system has to do with constructive allocation of bidding space.

Great, does this have anything to do with winning?

[pclayton]

The light 3'rd seat openers are not nearly as effective at that goal...

If you open very light in 3rd and fourth as well you're probaby going to go overboard on way too many hands...

 

Other than system symmetry, explain why this is true. My experience is that it's not, if partner makes the appropriate allowances.

 

If pard doesn't have at most an 8 or a balanced 10, then opening light in 3rd seat looks even better, especially NV. Holding an 8 count, we simply *know* the opponents have game and we should jam them, or get our lead director in.

 

I suppose what Josh might be implying is that if we are playing our 1♣ opening in 3/4 as, say 18+, we need to keep the bidding open for pard with say a 2344 6 count after 1♠ JIC pard has the 17. This runs counter to traditional precision philosophy that says you pass 1 major with up to an 8 count and tolerance.

 

However, I haven't seen any real good strong club pairs bid this way in quite some time. Look at Meckwell. When was the last time they passed with a 7 count opposite 1 major?

[mycroft]

One interesting thing I see from Josh's simulation is that the expected value of partner's hand, having passed in first, is almost 7 HCP. Now, that will go down a bit given an additional criterion - third hand has a 1C opener. But that still means that the number of positives opposite (okay, a 16+, 17+bal, or the like; I play Precision rather than MOSCITO) is not the "very small" that was originally said. Sure, it's significantly less than half, but it isn't "we're always going to have p-1C-1D auctions", either.

 

If your goal is to get to the games, then perhaps stiffening third hand, stiffening strongly 1C is the right thing to do; it opens up a lot of sequences for game tries and other invites. If, however, you are of the "make 'em guess" school, you're going to be using those same sequences to show different kinds of "drop dead" bids, at the cost of some subtle game probes. At that point, it is likely best to play the same light openings and feel comfortable that "Pass opposite non 1C hand = no game, we're starting the partscore battle with the opener", setting the system so that as much as possible, responder's calls are NF, and as many of them are "to play" as possible, as well.

 

I think, that provided the system gets you to safe "pre-balance" places, that's a workable goal. So is "play sound, use the space to improve game bidding".

 

Michael.

[Echognome]

A bunch of comments:

 

1. If allowed in the competition in which you are playing, I'd much rather play a natural system in 3rd/4th opposite those conditions. You get back a natural, potentially lead-directing 1♣ response. If you're 1♦ is nebulous, it will no longer be nebulous. I'm indifferent on the 2♣ opening because it's also somewhat preemptive, however constructive auctions by a PH seem limited.

 

2. If not allowed a different system in 3rd/4th, then I would definitely beef up the 1♣ openings. (We don't but we already play 16+ and pass all bad balanced 12 counts.) I don't really understand the concern about the wide-ranging 1-bids. What do you think the range of 1-bids in a natural system where people make light openings in 3rd? Something like 8-22 I would guess. It's also unclear to me when I am playing a different system in 3rd/4th, but I guess just messing with the hcp ranges is ok.

 

3. I would make preempts slightly wider-ranging. (Beware the Gnome 3rd seat preempts.)

 

4. I would make my NT range at least 14-16 minimum. Weak NTs should either bid a lead-directing suit (4cM ok) or be content to pass.

 

5.

[han]

My thoughts exactly Matt.

[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.

Sorry I thought of a different question, which seems the more relevant one to me. Say you have 7 hcp in 1st seat. Then obviously your side's hcp expectation value is 18 hcp. Now if you have 7hcp in 3rd seat and it went p-p and partner opens light, then obviously your expected number of hcp is a lot lower.

That's why there is a lot more reason to open destructively in 3rd seat, and what your a-priori expected number of hcps is seems rather irrelevant to me.

Yeah that is of course if I have a 7 count in 3rd seat the opps expectation is much higher than if I have a 7 count in 1st seat (26 vs 22). I thought we were talking about

opening 1 or 2 points lighter and am not talking about outright psychs. The question here was what should the nominal opening bid range be for a 3rd 4'th suit opener in this light opening bid system and I was arguing for 12-16ish, and the debate was if it should include the 10-11 counts that normally get opened opposite sound openers.

 

Now...

 

If I held a 3 count with 5 spades in first seat favorable I probably will get my best results by opening the hand 1S. Of course, if partner has to cater to this my results on other, more common hands will be worse. But the results with that hand will be better.

 

Similarly, if I have a 7 count with 5 spades in 3'rd seat favorable I probably will also get my best results by opening the hand 1S, at least if partner never hangs me. But again, if partner has to cater to this, my results on other more common hands will be worse. (You hold a 13 count here about 3 times as often as a 7 count)

 

As usual its just a cost benefit analysis....

 

I know one pair here in LA who are very wild in 3rd seat and consistantly does terrible over there 3rd seat openers because they do not very often get to the correct contract when it is there hand. I think a lot of the success people have with wild 3rd seat actions is that their partner bases there decisions on their table feel of 4th hand (and perhaps via the old black magic, on partner)

[joshs]

Help with a calculation:

 

Suppose I have a 7 count in 3rd seat under conditions described. Does anyone have a good way of calculating each sides expected HCP?

 

Here is my loose calculation:

 

Before looking at my hand the expectations were

A:6.47

B:7.35

C:13.09

D:13.09

 

Now I see my 7 count and now I am 6.09 HCP short of my expected values. I think that these 6.09 points should be distributed proportionally to my aprior estimates for A B and D,

Hence my new estimates:

A: 6.47 +6.09*6.47/26.91=7.93

B: 7.35 +6.09*7.35/26.91=9.01

C: 7

D: 13.09+6.09*13.09/26.91=16.05

 

(I lost 0.01 do to round off)

 

In any case this give our side an expectation of about 14.93.

I am not sure this proportionality distribution method is exactly right, does anyone

have an easy way to do this calculation exactly?

[han]

I think a lot of the success people have with wild 3rd seat actions is that their partner bases there decisions on their table feel of 4th hand (and perhaps via the old black magic, on partner)

Yes, those two things (unfortunately also the second), but also:

 

-That third seat opens light on the right hands.

 

-That first seater does not hang partner for these openings.

[awm]

It does seem like one could do a bridge browser study on this. It helps that it's a style thing more than a system thing, and most people on BBO are playing a fairly standard system (often in pickup partnerships).

 

The relevant points are something like:

 

(1) If you open in 3rd chair after two passes on particular hand types, what is your expected IMP score? How awful do the openings have to be before you start losing IMPs (when compared to passing)? Obviously in Josh's example (the pair in LA that opens super-light) they do well on the light openings and much worse when they have a sound opening due to their unusual agreements, but in a pickup or short-term partnership (as most BBO pairs are) we're unlikely to see this kind of effect.

 

(2) If you open in 3rd chair after two passes on a particular hand type, how does your score correlate with passed hand partner's high card holding?

 

For example, suppose the auction goes Pass-Pass to me and I hold a 5(332) 8-count. How do I score when I open 1♠ versus pass (maybe also consider 2♠)? If we condition on partner holding 9-11 points for the initial pass in addition to my holding a 5(332) 8-count, how do I score for 1♠ versus pass? How about if we condition on partner holding 0-8?

[Echognome]

For example, suppose the auction goes Pass-Pass to me and I hold a 5(332) 8-count. How do I score when I open 1♠ versus pass (maybe also consider 2♠)? If we condition on partner holding 9-11 points for the initial pass in addition to my holding a 5(332) 8-count, how do I score for 1♠ versus pass? How about if we condition on partner holding 0-8?

The difficulty is that I would be inclined to open 1♠ on AKJTx xx xxx xxx, but not on Qxxxx Kx Qxx Jxx. I think suit quality is a major factor in deciding whether to open light in 3rd.

[rbforster]

The result of this is thats its terribly ineffiecent to play 1C as 15+ in this situation.

I agree that playing a 15+ club and game-forcing positives will be inefficient since the GF responses by a PH are so rare when you open light. However, perhaps the conclusion to draw is not that a 15+ club is a bad idea, but that GF positives are a bad idea in this situation?

 

Why not go the other direction?

 

Take the 1 club opener show 15+, and have there be no positive responses.

 

1 diamond, 1 heart, 1NT, and 2 clubs are all transfers to the next suit, 1 spade is a transfer to NT.  Opener accepts with 15-20, jump accepts or bids NT with 21+, and shows his own suit with a misfit. 

 

Nothing shocking or new, except to do it on third seat only.

I think this might be a more reasonable approach to this problem if you value preemption in 3rd seat. Depending on your strong club methods you might not even need to change the meanings of most first responses, just lower the value ranges (1♦ negative 0-4, 1♥+ 5-9). Of course you'd need to face the issue that instead of having a relay or natural GF auction after a 1♣ positive, now you need to have invitations and ways to stop below game. It would require a little more clarification, but could still be a good approach.