How effective is this convention?

[kgr]

What is the best way to verify if a convention is good or not.

 

I was thinking to take hands from BBO my hands from somebody who plays the natural thing and verify what would have happened with my convention. If there is a difference then try to guess what the final contract would be with both systems and number of tricks and then compare the result.

 

It would help if I could load a number of deals with bidding and result in Jack. Then I could easier get the par score and see what system come closest to it.

Is it possible to download a range of hands from the my hands site and convert them to PBN?

Or is there a better way to do this?

 

I want to verify:

I play 2-suited overcals:

(1m)-1NT=H&m

(1m)-2m=majors

(1D/H/S)-2C=C&highest

(1H/S)-2D=D&highest

...

[kenrexford]

Verification of a convention is complicated if you want to be complete.

 

You need to track its own effectiveness in auctions where it comes up, but you also need to assess:

 

1. Does it gain over other methods in these circumstances?

2. Does it cost any disclosure problems on play/defense?

3. Does it replace something more useful, or is there a similar method better developed?

4. Does it replace something more useful, and how are the auctions with those hands now handled?

5. Does it have a positive or negative impact on any alternative auctions, such as by lightening the load on another call or making some alternative sequence easier to unwind?

6. If added memory load causing forgets here or in other sequences, or losing focus generally?

 

Stuff like that.

[hotShot]

How can you make 1-suited overcalls?

What suit length do you require? 5-5 ... 4-4

What strength do you promise?

 

Without these informations an answer has no foundation.

[kgr]

Verification of a convention is complicated if you want to be complete.

 

You need to track its own effectiveness in auctions where it comes up, but you also need to assess:

 

1. Does it gain over other methods in these circumstances?

2. Does it cost any disclosure problems on play/defense?

3. Does it replace something more useful, or is there a similar method better developed?

4. Does it replace something more useful, and how are the auctions with those hands now handled?

5. Does it have a positive or negative impact on any alternative auctions, such as by lightening the load on another call or making some alternative sequence easier to unwind?

6. If added memory load causing forgets here or in other sequences, or losing focus generally?

 

Stuff like that.

Yes, therefor I would need to manually verify hands. It would help, to verify eg par score, if I could load them in Jack.

Your point about giving away info that can be useful for opps in bidding or play is correct. That could make the verification very difficult.

[kgr]

How can you make 1-suited overcalls?

What suit length do you require? 5-5 ... 4-4

What strength do you promise?

 

Without these informations an answer has no foundation.

I wasn't really looking for an opinion if this system is effective or not, but rather a way to verify it myself.

 

...

- 1-suited overcalls we make with jump. e.g (1M)-3C: Intermediate

- Required suit length 4-4 and around an opening. Can be weaker with extra length.

...

[rbforster]

What is the best way to verify if a convention is good or not.

 

I was thinking to take hands from BBO my hands from somebody who plays the natural thing and verify what would have happened with my convention. If there is a difference then try to guess what the final contract would be with both systems and number of tricks and then compare the result.

You're on the right track. In addition to looking at how your bid works when it comes up, you should also look at how your convention does when it doesn't come up. If you're playing (1♦♥♠)-2♣ as clubs and major, you can't naturally overcall 2♣. So you should also look at how the natural club overcallers do when they have a normal overcall, vs how you do with whatever your alternative bid is (pass?).

 

If you have a very simple test where you just switch 2 bids, then it's easy to look at all the hands where they both come up in "standard" and see how you do. For example, in Overcall Structure

 

(1 of a suit) - 1NT is like a takeout double of their suit (3-suited)

(1 of a suit) - X is either a strong NT, or any hand that would have doubled based on strength in standard

 

Now you can just check all the auctions starting with (1Y)-1N or (1Y)-X in standard and see how you do. But when you start permuting things around as part of a system (2♣ overcall is 2-suited, 1-suited club overcalls bid 3♣ intermediate, weak jump overcalls in clubs pass), then you start having to check a lot more auctions to really see what's going on.

[nigel_k]

You need to generate a bunch of hands and bid them, either working out the IMPs against par, or bidding them a second time using the alternative and calculate IMPs against that.

 

I don't know if there is any software that does all of this. I wrote my own but it isn't really distributable as you need to code in the conditions each time.

[TylerE]

Can I play against this for money? Pretty please?