Comparing Polish and Precision for 15-18 1m hands

[cwiggins]

Since the Polish Club is not played in my part of the world, I am uncertain what responses to use to 1D. Should I use what is in WJ05 or can you point me to something else? Secondly, do you have any thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses of the Polish Club for strongish (15-18 HCP) hands with a 5+ minor as the longest suit (or 5+/5+ in the minors) or 4441?

 

I've been doing some simulation runs about the Polish Club approach versus Precision (16+ HCP). I use Dealmaster to generate 100 hand runs (multiple times) with Deep Finesse analysis and then review the results.

 

For strongish, 1M hands, the results are clear. If you use a semi-forcing NT, 2/1 GF per Fred Gitelman's "Improving 2/1" style, and Gazilli with 2NT and up reserved to show strong shapely hands, the Polish approach beats the forcing club approach opposite weak hands (0-5 or 6; i.e. those that would pass a 1M opening) and matches it for stronger hands even assuming that no interference occurs over the big club opening. Since no competition over a big club is unrealistic, my assessment is that the Polish Club approach wins across the board.

 

My next step is to compare Polish and Precision for one-of-a-minor hands in the strongish (15-18) category, which is why I want to know what system of responses to use to a Polish 1D and 1C.

 

I like "natural" openings, but combining (a) trying to stay GCC legal--which means saving 2D for multi or something else is not important--and (;) my preference to open many 11 HCP balanced hands, a big club approach fits better:

* 1C = (1) 16-18 unbalanced with some minor longest or both minors or 17-18 balanced but no 5CM or (2) 19+ any

* 1D = 11-13 balanced or 11-15 with 5m431 or 5+/5+ in the minors. See AWM's description of this.

* 1M = 11-18, 5+

* 1N = 14-16

* 2m = 6+ long, 11-15

 

A Polish variation of the above would be to move the 11-13 HCP balanced hands into 1C.

 

Another variation would be to move the 11-13 HCP balanced hands into 1C and make the 1D opening 11-18 so that 1C becomes: 11-13 balanced or 16-18 1-suited in either minor or 17-18 balanced without a 5CM or 19+ any.

 

Thanks for any insights you might provide.

[PrecisionL]

Chris,

 

Maybe you should add Millennium Club to your comparisons as it takes the 5M hands out of the 1♣ module unless 4 losers or less. In addition the responses to 1♣ are transfers to the above major. I have played this for 3 years now in pairs and prefer it over simple Precision. When I play a simple Precision with several partners, I make 1♦ opening promise a 4-card major and 2♦ is the long diamond hand. However, a complicated Precision, like Ultra or Jannersten, is still my first choice. I will be interested in your simulation results.

 

Larry

[Rossoneri]

I would be interested to see how Polish and Precision theoretically performs at MPs.

 

From practice, I am not really keen on playing Polish at MPs, since it doesn't really seem to perform that well for me. But then again, I haven't had much chance to get a partner to play it, and locally I know only of one other pair which plays Polish and they usually only appear on BBO...

 

I do know of a few pairs playing Precision at MPs at my local club.

 

Have you considered interference over Polish Club as well? Also, I've heard some views that interference over a strong club is "not that significant" (I am personally skeptical.) , maybe this could be investigated further?

[effervesce]

For strongish, 1M hands, the results are clear. If you use a semi-forcing NT, 2/1 GF per Fred Gitelman's "Improving 2/1" style, and Gazilli with 2NT and up reserved to show strong shapely hands, the Polish approach beats the forcing club approach

How can a less-well defined 11-18 1M opening possibly be better than the forcing club 11-15 1M opening? An opening bid, that is more defined, cannot theoretically be worse in constructive bidding than another opening bid that is less well defined, of which that opening bid is a subset.

 

 

For example, a 1NT opening, defined as exactly 15 HCP, cannot perform worse (when actually opened) for bidding purposes than a 1NT opening defined as 15-17 HCP.

 

Oh, I see. You're referring to the 17-18HCP 5+M hands, for which you are saying are better opened as 1M rather than a forcing 1♣. This may be true; however, does the downside in the less-well defined 1M opening more than compensates for this benefit of opening 1M on 17-18HCP hands? Given the top precision players around the world still stick with a 15HCP max cap on the 1M opening, I doubt that this is the case.

[cwiggins]

[D]oes the downside in the less-well defined 1M opening more than compensates for this benefit of opening 1M on 17-18HCP hands? Given the top precision players around the world still stick with a 15HCP max cap on the 1M opening, I doubt that this is the case.

Yes, that's the question.

 

While the top Precision players do continue to use a 15 HCP cap, what started this chain of thought was "Precision Today":

 

"Wei . . . studied records of the world championships, looking for swings and how they occurred. ... Ultimately, he noticed a trend. On a significant number of deals, the Blue Team played minor-suit games or slams, making, while the Americans (or other opponents) were in 3NT going down. . . . Nearly 25 years later when some of Kathie Wei-Sender's Chinese students blitzed a strong team from the U.S. in the 1991 Venice Cup in Yokohama, Japan, the significant swings in that match involved the same sort of bidding superiority--six of a minor making versus 3NT or five of a minor making with an inferior game contract by the Americans failing. " page 7

 

Unfortunately, the 1991 match was in the round robin, so the World Champioinship books don't have a record of all the hands and auctions. So I can't see what Precision and standard openings were involved in the differences.

 

Moreover, 1991 data bothers me. Bidding improves. I am not sure that such a difference exists anymore. In the 2005 World Championships, the Italians beat the Americans. When I reviewed (quickly) the hands in the finals, I found no cases where the forcing club pair is in 5m or 6m while the Italian pair is in 3NT. Eric Kokish's after-the-match summary said: "The Italians deserved to win. ...[T]hey committed fewer unforced errors and gained more from their methods. Most of their losses came from over aggressive bidding, but they won some IMPs that way too." Lauria and Versace were "superb." But Precision did okay also. Rodwell and Meckstroth "[gave] away considerably less than they brought in." page 336

 

With these thoughts in mind, I formed my first hypothesis: a Precision 1M and a Polish 1M reach the right contracts about the same percentage of the time. I ran the simulations that I described and found a slight edge to the Polish 1M. This data fit with my predilection that 1M auctions would not be the source of the difference described in "Preicision Today": 5m and 6m contracts are rare after partner opens 1M, regardless whether 1M's maximum is 15 or 18 HCP.

 

If the difference isn't in the 1M auctions, it must be elsewhere. My intuition is that minor suit slams and games are rare after Precision 1D, 2C, and 2D openers. If so, then the differences described in "Precision Today" exist when Precision starts with 1C and "standard" opens 1m. Since standard 1m auctions have multiple issues, that seems reasonable, but I don't have data that helps me understand why.

[RichMor]

IMO, forcing club systems have an advantage in finding superior minor suit games and slams. The edge comes from establishing a game force at a low level.

 

Consider this Precision-style auction:

1♣ - 1NT

2♠ - 2NT

3♣

 

The opening bid is artificial, the 1NT response is a natural GF, and the rest of the bids are natural. After this start, responder can raise Clubs with the right hand without distorting shape or strength. This might lead to a Club contract that is better than NT.

 

I remember losing a slam swing when my team mates bid

2NT - 3NT. This was a standard 2/1 auction.

 

The opps bid

1♣ - 2♦

.... more bids to a Diamond slam.

 

The opening 1♣ was Precision and the 2♦ response was a natural positive.

[keylime]

I feel that Precision with the more narrow range is better for players to bid to the limit faster than Polish, where with the larger range there's in essence a third interval of ranges introduced:

 

1. The minimum-minimums: 11-bad 13

2. The so-so minimums: an ok 13 to a bad 15

3. The maximum minimums: the ok 15's to 18.

 

With forcing club, just having the two ranges of intervals surely would help responder just due to the upper limit. That, and WJ still has the 0-7 artificial negative -> granted in partscore bidding this would be of likely more benefit than the 1C-1D-rebid structures that many forcing club structures do not adequately address.

 

I definitely would not want to play WJ2005 in a MP setting either - that third interval is a bother.