baltic club?

[vang]

i want your oppinion about this system:

1C = polish club style but including 2C hands (19+ any or 11-14 balanced or 11-18 with clubs)

1d/h/s = natural 11-18

1NT=15-17

2x = misc preempts

 

after 1C, answer and developments are very polish club like (1C - 1x - 2D relay etc), except 1C - 1M - 2C shows clubs with 11-17 (i guess...).

 

apparently, the system is playable: http://www.ecatsbridge.com/documents/files...rek-smirnov.pdf

[MickyB]

Not as good as Polish Club - the whole point is that the 1♣ opening should "show" a weak no-trump.

[Codo]

It does, because the 1 NT OPENING is 15-17, as stated from vang.

 

I am not sure why they changed it. I had belived that 1 Club 1 any 2 club as 11-17 creates more problems then it solves, but surely the two know what they are doing and they do it very successful.

[rbforster]

It's not quite as bad as opening a precision 2♣ with such a wide range (11-17), since at least responder has had a chance to show a 4cM. Their 1♣-1♦ shows 0-6 or 7-10 unbalanced minor(s), so maybe the continuations aren't too bad. If you're on the low end, you pass 2♣ and still don't miss anything game-wise (if not fit-wise). Otherwise, maybe you can raise to 3♣ or bid a natural(?) 2♦ with a constructive hand.

[marcD]

I kind of like it : the 1♦ opening can be stronger than in the original polish and that address one of the major flaws of the system according to my experience : showing Diamonds after a 1♣ can be difficult.

They probably (hopefully) have good agreements in place after interference over their 1♣ opening : the default hand is no longer a weak no trump as unbalanced weak club opening are frequent too (easy to loose club fit if you always assume weat no trump type)

[awm]

The problem that comes up is, say you have some fairly simple competitive auction like:

 

1♣ - (1♠)

 

Partner is supposed to bid on most shapely hands which would make game opposite a (minimum) strong option. So partner needs to find a call with something like 7 hcp and a diamond suit. If partner passes this hand, the opposing spade raise can really bury opener's strong hand.

 

This is a problem (to some degree) with Polish Club in general; Strong Club actually does much better than Polish given a similar degree of competition.

 

Polish Club players deal with this by playing negative free bids. This strategy works because a weak notrump is always prepared to pass the negative free bid -- basically these bids say "this is where I want to play if you have a weak NT, but I have enough for game opposite the big hand."

 

The issue with adding in large numbers of other non-strong hands (i.e. club one-suiters) is that they are not necessarily well-equipped to pass the negative free bid. For example, say you see:

 

1♣ - (1♠) - 2♦ (NF)

 

You hold a 3307 hand. Do you want to pass? Keep in mind partner could have a five-bagger. My suspicion is that you don't want to pass. But now bidding 3♣ has a very wide range (could be minimum that hates diamonds, could be extras but not the "big hand" of 19+ hcp, etc).

 

Of course, you may consider that this is worth it, but the primary gain from this method is going to be that you free up your 2♣ opening for a preempt. So you have to be getting pretty good results from whatever preempt that is to compensate for the occasional competitive losses when you open 1♣ on an unbalanced hand.

[mycroft]

Well, if I was going to open up the 1C even more by bringing in the 6+clubs hands, I would go Nasz, and make 2C strong, artificial and (almost) game-forcing - the "other" Polish Club. I think that limiting the catchall strong part of 1C to 21, 22 or so would show larger gains than whatever preempt you put into 2C.

 

OTOH, I could very easily be speaking out of my hat, because my non-Precision strong club experience is with a Swedish-style system (16+ or 11-14 bal), not a Polish-style.