The 2C bid? Useless? What do you think?

[PrecisionL]

I forgot Churchill as a System without a forcing opening:

 

http://www.northshorebridge.com/church2.pdf

 

Back from the Chattonooga, TN Regional and the slam bidding in the top bracket was horrible. Twice slams bid missing two aces!

 

Slams appear about 6% of the time (simulations) and at pairs, you can win without finding the hard to bid slams.

 

Larry

[whereagles]

A forcing opening is necessary, mostly because it allows OTHER openers to have a celing. What I do agree with is 2♣ is not the best forcing opening. Personally, I prefer

 

1♣ = natural with clubs OR any 21+ hand.

 

It's easy to build up a response and rebid scheme on this.

 

The main advantage of this style is to free up the 2♣ to something more interesting, like weak 45 majors, weak 2, a two-way bid, a 3 suiter, etc. You name it.

[whereagles]

Tell me exactly why! Or better, come up with 5 or 10 hands where you lose out (and keep in mind with the bidding I only play with and against fellow youthies).

We've been there before. The 2♣ appeared AFTER people tried doing without it. That shows it's useful ;)

[glen]

It seems to me that you are spending too much energy on the opponents' system...

asking one question is "spending too much energy"?

[jdonn]

Surely one needs a forcing opening or it will be impossible to handle the strong hands reasonably.

I agree (and as I noted the cc implies 1♣ is forcing), but the first question I would ask this pair if I sat down against them would be: "is 1♣ 100% forcing - never/ever passed?", just to ensure we could employ the right defense against their opening.

I wouldn't ask, and if it came up that the pair claimed it's not 100% forcing, I would call them liars.

[MFA]

It seems to me that you are spending too much energy on the opponents' system...

asking one question is "spending too much energy"?

You can do whatever you want. ;)

 

QUOTE (MFA @ Nov 3 2008, 10:42 AM)

Surely one needs a forcing opening or it will be impossible to handle the strong hands reasonably.

 

I agree (and as I noted the cc implies 1♣ is forcing), but the first question I would ask this pair if I sat down against them would be: "is 1♣ 100% forcing - never/ever passed?", just to ensure we could employ the right defense against their opening.

 

It seemed to me that you were about to devise some ingenious defense based on whatever words that happen to come out of the opponent's mouth at the time.

 

My point is that I find this a waste of energy and a wrong approach, since you will be playing their ballgame with unfamiliar sequences and agreements, should you decide to play fancy and not just natural.

 

Also I find the question somewhat silly since you can't oblige your opponents not to pass 1♣ in the future anyway. No matter what they answer you. So why ask like this?

[glen]

You can do whatever you want. ;)

You have described this as "silly" and "waste of energy", not exactly "do whatever you want" is it for you?

It seemed to me that you were about to devise some ingenious defense based on whatever words that happen to come out of the opponent's mouth at the time.

 

My point is that I find this a waste of energy and a wrong approach, since you will be playing their ballgame with unfamiliar sequences and agreements, should you decide to play fancy and not just natural.

 

Also I find the question somewhat silly since you can't oblige your opponents not to pass 1♣ in the future anyway. No matter what they answer you. So why ask like this?

To answer the single question, so you know what you are doing, and can pass smoothly. Certainly if you are playing in the world championships with no pre-prepared defenses, you should go natural here and not "devise some ingenious defense based on whatever words that happen to come out of the opponent's mouth at the time" (that is some mouthful you wrote). However if you do have pre-prepared defenses, select the best one from your inventory, and make them play your ballgame with your familiar sequences and agreements, while they are left with their unfamiliar sequences.

[MFA]

You can do whatever you want. :D

You have described this as "silly" and "waste of energy", not exactly "do whatever you want" is it for you?

It was a one-line answer to your one-line rethorical question post.

 

...

However if you do have pre-prepared defenses, select the best one from your inventory, and make them play your ballgame with your familiar sequences and agreements, while they are left with their unfamiliar sequences.

 

Now we are talking.

The subject of how to handle unfamiliar methods is quite interesting. Having a set of pre-prepaired well-oiled defenses makes good sense. If not I'm very big on keeping it simple. I play a system with some unusual bidding myself (transfer-responses at 2-level after a 1M-opening for instance) and sometimes opponents tackle that horribly by making all sorts of strange agreements that I just cannot wait to let them launch in practice. Typically this happens after a series of questions where they suddenly start to see ghosts allover, where there really are none.

[MickyB]

Soon after I started playing, I started playing a system with no strong bid - 2C and 2D both showed that minor and a major.

 

My thoughts on it now are -

 

The preempts don't gain as much as you think they do

When you have a GF hand, you are definitely disadvantaged

When you have a "normal" strong hand, you are slightly disadvantaged

Once you are better than most of your opposition, you don't want to randomise

[Quantumcat]

In another post (something about jump shifts) someone said that it is better to have m-2M be a SJS because you get many more sequences out of it, because those hands come up much more often than splinters, and if you used it as weak there would be no continuation after the bid. So you get more auctions by having that agreement.

 

If you use the 2C bid wisely, and only when you have a not-completely-balanced 21+ count, and only when you can plan how the auction will go (if your hand is too complicated to bid after say a 2S response, you might open at the 1-level, or lie a little about balancedness and open 2N or 3N) It will come up so infrequently (how often do you get a non-shapely, non-balanced 21+ count that will be not difficult to bid after a 2C start?) surely you will get so few auctions, that even if it seems sensible to use it, (will make the aforementioned hands easier) it will come up so infrequently that the slightly-worse use of being pre-emptive (or something else) will come up a thousand times more often that the little bit of good it does (as compared to the large amount of good the strong 2C bid would have) would make the pre-emptive 2C end up as the winner.

 

Exactly like the above with the SJS. It will make those hands easier to bid, and come up much more often, than the more sensible splinter or other use, so the smaller amount of good builds up and ends up way overpowering any other use.

[Codo]

99,8 % of all experts do have at least one forcing opening in their bidding system.

I think, I will belive their judgement. Whether 1 ♣ or 2 ♣ is the better approach is still open to discussion, people win tournements with both approaches.

I prefer the polish club, but that is a matter of taste, not of real superiority.

[Mbodell]

Playing without a forcing opening bid in MP is clearly fine if you leave all your sequences alone. Because the strong forcing hands are infrequent enough anyways the effects will be small, because even on hands where it comes up you don't automatically get a bottom, you will find the same result much of the time and a better result occasionally. You will only be very slightly disadvantaged in other words. At least as long as you don't overcompensate by changing everything else to cater to these situations (inventing responses and invites "just in case" and ending up too high).

 

I also agree that many player's 2♣ strong auctions are so poor that they might be ahead if they just agreed never to bid 2♣ at all. Of course, in reality, the better fix might be to learn better agreements or judgment or what not as opposed to not having 2♣ strong.

 

And I also agree that using 2♣ as your forcing opening is not as good as using something cheaper like 1♣ IMHO (or maybe even pass). As with strong hands you want to go slowly and with weaker hands you want to preempt the opponents.

 

So 2♣ as a weak 2 in clubs, or preemptive with both majors, or intermediate with both majors, or intermediate with clubs, or whatever would work. The question becomes do you gain enough with these bids to make up for the cost of what they are replacing?

 

Standard bidding has 3 below game strong bids (1nt, 2♣, and 2nt). Freeing up some of them for more frequent, or more annoying in competition, bids might well be a win. But usually you have to look at the whole system to tell.

[P_Marlowe]

<snip>

If you use the 2C bid wisely, and only when you have a not-completely-balanced 21+ count, and only when you can plan how the auction will go ... <snip>

#1 A 2C openings does not deny a bal. hand, sometimes

you have a hand too strong to open 2NT, but you are

still bal.

 

#2 You also do refer to avoid opening 2C, if you can not handle

a 2S response:

This is just a matter of the system / response structure you

are playing, there are several out there, which will help you

a lot, if you think it is worth the time and the effort.

 

In short: you say, a special opening / sitiuation does not come up

often enough, to make it worth while to cater for it, because

 

#1 you dont play often enough enough

 

professional players, play sometimes 500-1000 boards a month,

compare this to less ambitious club players, who may play in a

club once a week 20-25 boards, which makes it 100-125 boards

a month

 

#2 you have a life besides bridge, some do

#3 you are more interested in play / defence

#4 your opponents will nearly always interfere

 

Than this is a valid point, but the point is not only valid for the 2C

opening, it is also valid for certain special defences / agreements,

...

 

And for other players, the above reasons are not relevant, which allowes

them to deal with the more infrequent issues.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

[benlessard]

Agree with Mbodell.

 

You can play strong namyats and make the 2NT a bit stronger (21-22) and 3Nt is to play. (GF with a long minor or monster balanced). The frequency of bad boards will be quite low.

[Gerben42]

99,8 % of all experts do have at least one forcing opening in their bidding system.

I think, I will belive their judgement. Whether 1 ♣ or 2 ♣ is the better approach is still open to discussion, people win tournements with both approaches.

I prefer the polish club, but that is a matter of taste, not of real superiority.

 

That few? But I agree with "almost all". If the post was "I don't need TWO forcing opening bids" I would agree with you (this seems to be the French & German standard).

 

I think having a way to bid these very strong hands will be a positive effect, but it's not a huge difference. With one partner I play a mini-Fantunes without a forcing opening, and it's good enough for us. But for a league season, I would want to play something that can handle the big hands, after all I don't want to explain my teammates why we had 1♠+5, lose 16.

[hotShot]

Lets look at the facts:

 

The chances that a deal contains a hand with 22+ HCP is about 0.33%, about 1 in 300 boards. Only half of those will be on your side (1 in 600 boards).

If you hold 22 HCP, the other 3 player share 18 HCP averaging to 6 HCP each.

 

So if your partnership is not having a SAYC 2♣ opening, this will only matter on 1 in 600 boards, and most of the time partner will have 6 HCP to answer over a 1.level opening.

So the chance to be damaged by the lack of the strong forcing 2♣ opening is less than 1: 1200.

 

Having e.g. a weak 2 ♣ opening will occur once every 30 boards.

 

So there is a chance that your benefit from 40 weak ♣ openings is bigger than the loss of 1 missed big board.

[jdonn]

Lets look at the facts:

 

The chances that a deal contains a hand with 22+ HCP is about 0.33%, about 1 in 300 boards. Only half of those will be on your side (1 in 600 boards).

If you hold 22 HCP, the other 3 player share 18 HCP averaging to 6 HCP each.

 

So if your partnership is not having a SAYC 2♣ opening, this will only matter on 1 in 600 boards, and most of the time partner will have 6 HCP to answer over a 1.level opening.

So the chance to be damaged by the lack of the strong forcing 2♣ opening is less than 1: 1200.

 

Having e.g. a weak 2 ♣ opening will occur once every 30 boards.

 

So there is a chance that your benefit from 40 weak ♣ openings is bigger than the loss of 1 missed big board.

- There are plenty of 2♣ opening bids that have less than 22 hcp.

- If partner has to worry you have 22+ when you open a 1 bid, this has a huge impact on how you respond to opening bids, making jump shifts, and many other areas of system. To put it another way, even if partner DOES respond to your opening bid, you may never be able to show a hand as good as you hold anyway. Your philosphy seems to be 'partner has responded so I am back to even with someone who opened 2♣' which is far from true.

- What do you open on strong balanced hands?

- Having a weak 2♣ opening is not the same as getting to open 2♣. Someone is likely to open in front of you. And where do you get once in 30 boards anyway? It seems like a lot less to me. Are you suggesting each side opens a weak two bid in each suit once in 30 boards, so 8/30 = over a fourth of boards are begun with specifically a weak two bid? No way.

[awm]

I think the frequencies are more like 2:1 or 3:1.

 

My calculation was that if you require a six card suit for weak two bids and are fairly conservative with the 2♣ openings, the odds of having a weak 2♣ in first seat are about 1/60 and of having a strong 2♣ in first seat about 1/150 (I required 22+ balanced or 20+ unbalanced).

 

Obviously the weak two becomes more frequent if you include some five-card suits. But you also need to consider other seats; if you hold a weak 2♣ in third seat you will not often get to open it (usually someone opens in front of you) whereas if you hold a strong 2♣ in third seat your chances are lot better (yes sometimes someone preempts in front of you).

 

I agree that if you open at the one-level with a "strong 2♣ hand" and get partner to reply you are not always back to par. But you will sometimes do better than par too, for example you might have an auction like 1♦(NAT) - 2♦(weak raise) and find a 4-4 diamond fit slam when opener has a balanced 22, when after a 2♣ opening you might see 2♣-2♦-2NT-4NT-Pass. In general most people's auctions after 2♣ strong are pretty poor, so if you don't get passed out your chances of getting to par or better are actually pretty decent.

[jdonn]

I agree that if you open at the one-level with a "strong 2♣ hand" and get partner to reply you are not always back to par. But you will sometimes do better than par too, for example you might have an auction like 1♦(NAT) - 2♦(weak raise) and find a 4-4 diamond fit slam when opener has a balanced 22, when after a 2♣ opening you might see 2♣-2♦-2NT-4NT-Pass. In general most people's auctions after 2♣ strong are pretty poor, so if you don't get passed out your chances of getting to par or better are actually pretty decent.

You will end up worse FAR more often than you will end up better. For example when you have that balanced 22 and partner responds anything but 2♦ or some amount of notrump, what do you rebid? And that's once you have gotten past the hurdle of him responding at all.

 

And of course you know most of us don't play the single raise in a minor that way to begin with. If it goes 1♦ P 3♦ I have no idea how you should investigate.

[hotShot]

- There are plenty of 2♣ opening bids that have less than 22 hcp.

I think the standard definition of the SAYC 2♣ bid is 22+ HCP. You want to extend the meaning of this bid fine, because my point was that a bid with this simple definition is dispensable.

 

- If partner has to worry you have 22+ when you open a 1 bid, this has a huge impact on how you respond to opening bids, making jump shifts, and many other areas of system. To put it another way, even if partner DOES respond to your opening bid, you may never be able to show a hand as good as you hold anyway. Your philosphy seems to be 'partner has responded so I am back to even with someone who opened 2♣' which is far from true.

If your partnership just ignores the existence of 22+HCP hands, a bad score will hit you once in about a 1000 hands you play. My philosophy would be to accept that I get a bad score, and sometimes I get lucky and get to a decent spot on a different route.

 

- What do you open on strong balanced hands?

I could open 2NT and hope that partner will not pass or I could use a natural 3NT opening.

 

- Having a weak 2♣ opening is not the same as getting to open 2♣. Someone is likely to open in front of you. And where do you get once in 30 boards anyway? It seems like a lot less to me. Are you suggesting each side opens a weak two bid in each suit once in 30 boards, so 8/30 = over a fourth of boards are begun with specifically a weak two bid? No way.

If you reduce the SAYC opening criteria to HCP and suit length close to 41% of the hands you hold in 1rst seat fit one of them.

11.8% of all the hands you get in first seat have a 6 card suit and 5-11 HCP.

Of cause you would not open ♠KD ♥Txxxxx ♦xx ♣xx. I you give me your minimum requirements for a weak 2 I'll give you a better percentage.

[blackshoe]

I think the standard definition of the SAYC 2♣ bid is 22+ HCP.

From the ACBL SAYC booklet:

A 2♣ opening shows at least 22+ points, or the playing equivalent.

[jdonn]

- There are plenty of 2♣ opening bids that have less than 22 hcp.

I think the standard definition of the SAYC 2♣ bid is 22+ HCP. You want to extend the meaning of this bid fine, because my point was that a bid with this simple definition is dispensable.

I don't want to do anything. 22+ is if you are balanced, unbalanced hands I believe SAYC says something like any hand WORTH 22+, which is invariably hands with less as a minimum.

 

- If partner has to worry you have 22+ when you open a 1 bid, this has a huge impact on how you respond to opening bids, making jump shifts, and many other areas of system. To put it another way, even if partner DOES respond to your opening bid, you may never be able to show a hand as good as you hold anyway. Your philosphy seems to be 'partner has responded so I am back to even with someone who opened 2♣' which is far from true.

If your partnership just ignores the existence of 22+HCP hands, a bad score will hit you once in about a 1000 hands you play. My philosophy would be to accept that I get a bad score, and sometimes I get lucky and get to a decent spot on a different route.

You are telling me if I play an NABC, 3 sessions a day for 11 days, my partnership is likely to open 2♣ exactly one time?? Sorry not buying it. In any case, your bad score will be a very bad score.

 

But this is all off point. You essentially implied that if you open 1 of something on a hand worth a 2♣ opener, the only hurdle you need to get past is partner replying to your bid. My response was that even if partner replies your troubles are far from over. It was only a response to what you were saying, so if you now want to reply "but this is a very rare situation", well that's not what I was responding to.

 

- What do you open on strong balanced hands?

I could open 2NT and hope that partner will not pass or I could use a natural 3NT opening.

Now you also lose whatever you played a 3NT opening as on top of everything else.

 

- Having a weak 2♣ opening is not the same as getting to open 2♣. Someone is likely to open in front of you. And where do you get once in 30 boards anyway? It seems like a lot less to me. Are you suggesting each side opens a weak two bid in each suit once in 30 boards, so 8/30 = over a fourth of boards are begun with specifically a weak two bid? No way.

If you reduce the SAYC opening criteria to HCP and suit length close to 41% of the hands you hold in 1rst seat fit one of them.

11.8% of all the hands you get in first seat have a 6 card suit and 5-11 HCP.

Of cause you would not open ♠KD ♥Txxxxx ♦xx ♣xx. I you give me your minimum requirements for a weak 2 I'll give you a better percentage.

I would estimate it's more like half the 5-9 hands with a six card suit than all the 5-11 hands. Some have an awful suit, some have wild distribution, and some just aren't preemptive in nature.

 

This idea of having no forcing opening bid has been widely discredited for a long time. If you really want to free up 2♣ for something else, there are plenty of systems that let you do that and won't make you look foolish any time you have a good hand. Things more like precision, polish club, ....

[ArtK78]

If you are playing matchpoints (and the game of matchpoints is all about frequency), then it makes some sense to replace the 2♣ opening with something else; provided that the "something else" gives you an advantage over other pairs and the frequency of its occurrence is higher than the frequency of a normal 2♣ opening bid.

 

If this is true, then it doesn't really matter what you do on the strong hands. Hopefully you can handle them in some other manner which gets you a reasonable result.

 

I do not advocate doing away with the standard strong 2♣ opening bid; however, I can understand why someone would consider doing so.

 

An argument can be made for doing so at IMPs as well, but it is not as strong an argument. Frequency is sometimes overlooked at IMPs. There are times when it makes sense to risk a contract in search of an overtrick even at IMPs, at least on a probability basis. But you never see a "good player" taking such a risk. Besides, even if the chance of an overtrick worth one IMP is more than 12 times as likely as the chance of going down in a cold vulnerable game (risking 12 or 13 IMPs), you have to keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to win the match, not to extract each available IMP. If you lose by one IMP, then you will regret not going for the overtrick. But if you go down trying to gain that 1 IMP and, as a result, lose by somewhere between 2 and 12 IMPs, you will certainly regret that.

 

Pardon my digression.

[fred]

There are times when it makes sense to risk a contract in search of an overtrick even at IMPs, at least on a probability basis.  But you never see a "good player" taking such a risk.

Actually it is far from rare for "really good players" to do this.

 

About being able to live without a strong forcing opening bid...

 

I have noticed that most of the regular Forums posters have a tendency to open (and overcall for that matter) on light distributional hands.

 

In order to survive this style, it helps to drop the standards of what is needed for your 2C openings. That will increase the frequency of 2C openings. That will increase the number of IMPs you will lose by not having a 2C opening.

 

If you are seriously considering playing a system in which there is no forcing opening bid (not smart IMO and extremely not smart IMO unless you are already an excellent player or unless you don't care about ever becoming an excellent player) and if you also like to open light, you might want to think about this.

 

This may well be one of those situations where you can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[xcurt]

Besides, even if the chance of an overtrick worth one IMP is more than 12 times as likely as the chance of going down in a cold vulnerable game (risking 12 or 13 IMPs), you have to keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to win the match, not to extract each available IMP. If you lose by one IMP, then you will regret not going for the overtrick. But if you go down trying to gain that 1 IMP and, as a result, lose by somewhere between 2 and 12 IMPs, you will certainly regret that.

This is backwards. The marginal value (in win expectancy) of the last IMP won in a swing is decreasing with the size of the swing.

 

This is true in general, but might not be true for specific situations where you can predict the state of the match with some confidence.

 

Also, the above statement apples to KOs. Playing VPs the payoff function is a little different, when you're significantly behind you want bigger swings since the additional marginal IMPs are benefitting you in the part of the VP table where VPs/IMP is ~0.3, while the first few marginal IMPs are benefitting you in the part of the VP table where VPs/IMP < 0.2.