a semiforcing pass system

[rbforster]

I've discussed passing some "opening" hands in the context of a strong club + light openers system before (with either 10-15 precision 2♣/2♦ hands, and/or with 13-15 balanced). In a more dramatic move along these lines, I present:

 

The Semi-Forcing Pass System

motto - "You don't have to open your 15 counts if partner will opens his 8's"

 

Pass 0-7 or 13-15. You pass with all 13-15 hands!

1♣ 16+ strong

1♦ 8-12 0+, including diamonds, minors, 8-9 balanced, or short diamond 3 suiters

1M 8-12 5+

1N 10-12 balanced

2♣ 8-12 5+ precision style (6+ or 5♣/4M)

higher are preempts, ~5-10, pts (including 2N for the minors 5/5+)

 

You can play all your favorite methods here, 2/1 GF etc, it's basically precision except with 8-12 ranges instead of 11-15. If you were used to playing a light-opening precision with 9-15, you'll find the tighter ranges here to be even more precise.

 

After opener passes, they are about 2:1 to be weak. The strong hand is still a reasonable possibility. Responses without competition are similar in 3rd/4th seat where again all 8+ hands are opened.

 

P-? (remember the 1st/2nd seat pass shows 0-7 or 13-15)

 

P 0-7

1♣ 12+ "strong club" (normal precision systems on, 1♦ 0-7 negative, higher show 13-15 GFs)

1♦ 8-11 0+, including diamonds, minors, balanced 8-9 or 3-suited

1M 8-11 5+

1N 10-11 bal

2♣ 8-11 5+ precision style

preempts

 

Over P-1♣-positive response(13-15), the strong club hand will have a very good idea of responders strength.

Over P-1♦, 1M is forcing one round, 1N is 13-15 balanced. 2/1's are natural 5+ and strong.

Over P-1M, 1N is semiforcing (including 13-15 balanced, which will rebid 2N often). 2/1's are strong with 5+ suits.

Both hands are quite tightly defined in terms of values which should make reaching the right level fairly manageable.

 

In competition, a useful rule is that a weak passed hand (0-7) should not act unforced at it's first opportunity. This is to help clarify when a passed hand is showing a sound hand (remember most of your marginal hands opened already!).

 

Why use a semi-forcing pass?

 

- keep the bidding low to gain bidding space for later (similar to strong forcing pass systems)

- open all the very common hands in the 8-12 range. These hands may only be worth one bid, so you better make it first before the opponents shut you out!

- have very narrowly defined ranges for your opening bids

- give useful and constructive meanings to passed hand bidding sequences

- use precision 1♣ tools like relays on a wider range of hands (13-15 opposite 12+ would otherwise bid via "standard" since the 13-15 would normally open naturally).

- strange but not banned like forcing pass systems (at least in the ACBL)

 

Drawbacks?

 

- the 1♦ bid opener is a little nebulous. This could be improved by using 2♦ or 2M for some of these hands instead of preempts (although 8-12 is still weak by many's standards). For example, 2m could be 8-12 6+ and then 1♦ would be 2 suited minors, balanced, or a 3-suiter.

- you have to open all your 8-12 balanced hands. This could be risky.

- you might pass with a good hand and then get "preempted" out of the auction when the opponents bid to a level where it's hard to compete or show all your suits

- you will no doubt encounter new passed hand competitive auctions and develop agreements for them

 

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this idea. I haven't thought through whether it might be possible to put some of the 2 level bids to better use than the "normal" preempts since there's a pretty big overlap between the 8-12 range I want and the normal preemptive range (ala Magic Diamond or the like).

[OleBerg]

"In competition, a useful rule is that a weak passed hand (0-7) should not act unforced at it's first opportunity. This is to help clarify when a passed hand is showing a sound hand (remember most of your marginal hands opened already!)."

 

Usefull for avoiding sily disasters, but troublesome, especially when partner has 12+, as you might be to easily preempted, even by a 1♦ bid. And if advancer raises to 2♦ you are in dire trouble.

 

I would recommend that the 0-7 hand can make some bids under its own steam.

 

For ½ a year I played a system that looked somewhat like it:

 

Pass was 0-8 or 16+, and as replies, partners 1♣ was 0-8 or 16+.

Our rule was, that in competitive sequences we simply bid our hand, any two-way hand simply assumed partner could tell whether it was weak or strong.

 

We didn't have any misunderstanding for that ½ year. (Or rather we had one, where my partner didn't bid his 0-8 enough, for fear of showing 16+. that broke the partnership.)

 

It seems obvious, that this agreement will have a better chance of working in our system, than in yours. Still, if you want to play the system, I recommend that you try it out.

 

To me it would seem silly, not to be able to support partner, when he opens one of a major in third seat.

[awm]

I think there is a common fallacy that:

 

"Hand type X is more common than hand type Y, therefore I should open hand type X with some highly descriptive call and relegate hand type Y to a much more nebulous call."

 

The system described here is similar in some ways to magic diamond, except moving the 1♣ openings to pass. Both seem to suffer from the same issue.

 

The main issue is that you have to consider the pluses and minuses. In competitive auctions where both sides have a reasonable contract available, it is a huge advantage to get the first bid in. On hands where neither side has much shape or a big fit, making the first bid doesn't help you all that much and may in fact expose you to penalties if the other side has the majority of the strength. This suggests that the hands where you really want to open with a descriptive bid are the distributional hands -- any time I have a six card suit or five-five in two suits I really want to open the bidding with a descriptive call and expect a relatively poor result if I have to make some nebulous bid (including pass). This suggests that divying things up by points (regardless of whether your descriptive openings are the 12+ point hands or the 8-12 point hands) will be less effective than divying things up by shape.

 

You also have to consider the potential payoffs. It is helpful to make a descriptive call early on when my side has a slam available, so that we can get a head start on judging fit and combined values. Say RHO passes in first chair; if I pass on a hand where we have a slam available it gives LHO (with a passed partner and presumably fairly weak hand) free reign to preempt the auction. So the potential payoff for me to start describing my hand in second chair rather than passing is much higher if I have 13-15 rather than (say) 8-10.

 

Finally you have to consider the potential penalties. The chances of going for a number if I open 1NT on 10-12 balanced are simply a lot higher than the chances of going for a number if I open 1NT on 13-15 balanced.

 

I'd suggest that it would be more effective to design a system where:

 

(1) Virtually all hands with 6-card suits or 5-5 in two suits can open in a way that accurately describes both strength and shape. I suggest leveraging a combination of one-level openings and two-level openings for this purpose.

 

(2) Many balanced hands without substantial strength (i.e. the 0-11 range, possibly even a bit stronger) pass in 1st/2nd chair.

[ASkolnick]

We just wanted to play this system once, not because it is a good system, but because you can play a semi-forcing pass system, and it is GCC legal.

[rbforster]

Thanks for the comments so far! A few responses and suggestions -

 

Regarding weak PH bidding, I'm not saying you shouldn't bid your hand as a weak PH, but that it seems like a good rule that you don't make the first bid for your side in a competitive auction. Certainly you should raise partner's overcall or opening bid! I'm talking about auctions like P-(1m)-P-(1♥) and now the 1st seat PH bids 1♠ on KQJxx and out. Of course if you play the system for a while, you can develop your own rules for which initial actions suggest a good hand and which might not be. Broadly, it seems like you can play standard methods just don't make changes for the fact that partner is a PH in 1st/2nd. Fit jumps or natural good suits are probably better uses for jumps in competition than preemptive however.

 

To Adam, regarding frequency vs effectiveness, I understand the tradeoffs here and that frequency isn't the final metric of whether a hand is worth bidding. One solution is to open all the sufficiently distributional hands, hopefully in a framework like a strong club where you can help manage the wide range of strengths. Alternatively, you might decide that opening all 5/5 or 6+ 6-15's somehow is too unwieldy, and that you need to narrow your range for practical reasons. In that case, it's not unreasonable to bid the weaker hands in preference to the stronger ones, since the weak hands are more likely to be shut out of the auction otherwise than the stronger ones (assuming they pass in a framework that accommodates the pass). There's a wider range of competitive auctions where strong hands will be able to effectively back in later, both because of their additional values and because the opponent's tend to bid less with less values (and they tend to have less when you're stronger).

 

I agree that it's unclear that opening all the balanced hands in 8-12 will be a good idea. I put this system out there in it's "pure form", and leave it to experimenters to decide if you might only want to play this NV, maybe only open 10-12 NT's together with an unbalanced diamond (no 8-9 NT range), etc.

 

On the subject of getting preempted with a strong PH, I think the situation is somewhat analogous to a Polish vs Precision club. They'll preempt less often but it will be more effective when it comes up. In particular, the semiforcing pass seems pretty safe in first seat, where a potential preemptor in 2nd seat will have higher standards and preempt much less aggressively, while the semiforcing pass might work less well in second seat, since now the 3rd seat potential preemptor is more likely to bid aggressively. In addition, in the case of a 3rd seat preempt, our points may be divided (when there's been a strong pass) which might make it harder to untangle our values.

[rbforster]

Here's a slight variation on the opening bids that tries to use the 2 level more effectively to cater more towards the distributional hand types.

 

P 0-7(8 bal), or 13-15

1♣ 16+ strong

1♦ 8-12 4+ unbalanced. 2-3 suited with diamonds (no 5cM unless longer diamonds; not ♦ one suited)

1M 8-12 5+ unbalanced or 6+

1N 9-12 bal (includes all 5332's, and 4414)

2♣ 8-12 5+ precision style (if only 5, then 4cM)

2♦ 6-12 6+ no 4cM

2♥ 6-12 both majors, 5+♥/4+♠ "Flannery"

2♠ 5-10 5+♠, 5+ minor

2N 5-10 5/5+ minors

 

The point ranges are only approximate. Higher openings are intended to be more preemptive and hence weaker and/or wider ranging. Where the shapes in question can be bid naturally starting at the one level, the higher end of the range 8-12 range will take that route (i.e. the 5/5 shape in 2♠ could also be bid 1♠...2m...3m to show a better hand, or just 2♠ directly to show a worse one). Likewise both minors, 5/5 majors hands, etc.

 

You could do weirder stuff if you really want, like

 

1♦ 8-12 5+ clubs, 2-3 suited.

2♣ 6-12 6+ in either minor, no side suit

2♦ 6-12 5+♦, 4+major

[awm]

There really is a serious problem with passing on some good hands. Take the following auction:

 

Pass - 2♠ - ???

 

In third chair, there are quite a few hands where one would typically act opposite an unpassed partner in standard methods but here would pass. A common example is something like a 2344 12-count. Knowing that partner is a passed hand means that you are highly unlikely to miss a game, whereas the odds of finding partner with a lousy balanced hand (and potentially being doubled by LHO) go up.

 

But playing this semi-forcing pass style, you need to protect in case partner has something like 13-15 balanced (i.e. the same hand you need to protect against if partner is an unpassed hand). But the many hand types where doubling is basically a wash (i.e. partner has 8-10, or 5-8 with a long suit) have now been eliminated. So basically if you double and partner has 0-7 fairly balanced you probably go for a number, and if you don't double and partner has 13-15 fairly balanced you just missed a game -- and these are essentially the only two hands that it is possible for partner to hold!

 

Note that there is not really a corresponding "win" because of bidding the 8-10 point hands. If the auction goes Pass-2♠-??? and you have 17 hcp or whatver, you still have to make your normal call even though partner can't have 8-10, because again you don't want to miss a game opposite 13-15.

 

Anyway, I would also note that the openings you suggest have a lot of overlap between the one-level calls and the two-level calls. It might be better to use the two-level openings to handle shapely 13-15 hands (i.e. intermediate twos)!