Scientific versus Natural

[32519]

These forums are crammed with threads/posts ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. The Non-Natural Forum in particular contains a number of truly interesting/unusual systems. That has already been looked at (no need to go there again). Instead, this thread is all about elaborate/scientific continuation structures versus natural bidding. You can start off by reading this.

 

These forums contain plenty of elaborate/scientific continuation bidding structures for many common/popular conventions/methods. Some examples:

1. Multi (both offence and defence)

2. Jacoby 2NT

3. Puppet Stayman

4. Inverted Minor Suit Raises

5. Flannery/Kaplan Inversion

6. Canapé openings and continuations

7. Agreements on bidding on after an artificial strong 2♣ opening

8. Defence to a 1NT opening bid

9. Defence to strong artificial Club Systems

 

The more elaborate/scientific your agreements are, the more you are adding to the memory load. The memory load gets compounded by the number of these elaborate/scientific methods forming part of your agreements.

 

At the end of the day, when you sit examining the traveller (at match points), how many times did you end up in a superior contract versus the rest of the field using scientific methods? The greater the field, the more meaningful the end result. I am not referring to making an additional trick through superior declarer play and/or inferior defensive play. This is solely about landing in a superior contract.

 

Now for the corollary: How many times did you end up in an inferior contract when either one or both partners couldn’t remember all the continuation bids? I will be open an honest enough to admit that it has happened to me more than once (either myself or my partner who forgot the continuation bidding).

 

When we landed in the same spot as everyone else using fancy methods, the red flags went up. Why bother when it costs us when we forget?

 

What about you?

[mike777]

I have no idea what you are saying

 

 

here in the forums it has been said often.....if you play and defend well you will do better..

 

those of us who play less well..score less well......

[EricK]

I think he is asking whether using complicated memory-intensive methods shows an overall gain when you just consider the occasional gain from reaching a better contract vs. the occasional bad result from mis-remembering the methods.

 

It has been repeatedly said that people are better off trying to improve their cardplay than learning new bidding methods. This would be doubly true if the new bidding methods didn't even show an overall gain due to their not being learnt sufficiently well.

[Cthulhu D]

He's asking how often you get a systematic swing in from playing an artificial system vs how often you forget it.

 

As a relative beginner playing a system described as 'hugely complex' by oppo my 2 cents are that it's been a mixed experience, and artificiality is best used in non competitive situations and ideally that occur relatively frequently.

 

The two things that have generated the biggest system swings in for me (transfer responses to 1C and 1M-2NT is a limit raise or better with 3C as any minimum), have been superb and are easy to remember. I love auctions that go 1C-1H-1S-4S and 1S-2NT-3C-4S. They are frequent and amazing. These are strongly net plus for us.

 

Some other stuff such as transfer responses to 1H-1S playing Kaplan inversion and Bart are easy to forget and not that useful. These are net negative, mostly because they are infrequent so one of my two partners struggles with the memory burden.

 

I'd agree that my time is best invested focusing on my cardplay. However, I find that I need to practice cardplay with actual cards so my time to do that is limited, whereas I can work on my system on the bus or in the car.

 

 

 

Footnote: Thanks to all the guys (e.g. UK Phil) who suggested that 2NT limit raise treatment in the thread here. That was brilliant.

[mgoetze]

I think he wasn't happy with the answers he got in http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/50260-non-natural-systems/ and is starting a new attempt to troll us all.

[the hog]

These forums are crammed with threads/posts ranging from the mundane to the bizarre. The Non-Natural Forum in particular contains a number of truly interesting/unusual systems. That has already been looked at (no need to go there again). Instead, this thread is all about elaborate/scientific continuation structures versus natural bidding. You can start off by reading this.

 

These forums contain plenty of elaborate/scientific continuation bidding structures for many common/popular conventions/methods. Some examples:

1. Multi (both offence and defence)

2. Jacoby 2NT

3. Puppet Stayman

4. Inverted Minor Suit Raises

5. Flannery/Kaplan Inversion

6. Canapé openings and continuations

7. Agreements on bidding on after an artificial strong 2♣ opening

8. Defence to a 1NT opening bid

9. Defence to strong artificial Club Systems

 

The more elaborate/scientific your agreements are, the more you are adding to the memory load. The memory load gets compounded by the number of these elaborate/scientific methods forming part of your agreements.

 

At the end of the day, when you sit examining the traveller (at match points), how many times did you end up in a superior contract versus the rest of the field using scientific methods? The greater the field, the more meaningful the end result. I am not referring to making an additional trick through superior declarer play and/or inferior defensive play. This is solely about landing in a superior contract.

 

Now for the corollary: How many times did you end up in an inferior contract when either one or both partners couldn't remember all the continuation bids? I will be open an honest enough to admit that it has happened to me more than once (either myself or my partner who forgot the continuation bidding).

 

When we landed in the same spot as everyone else using fancy methods, the red flags went up. Why bother when it costs us when we forget?

 

What about you?

 

 

I disagree with your premise. Those who play a more complicated structure and play seriously will, (generally), spend a lot of time discussing system. Memory problems rarely eventuate except in casual partnerships or those who believe their system is so simple that little or no discussion is needed.

[32519]

I think he wasn't happy with the answers he got in http://www.bridgebase.com/forums/topic/50260-non-natural-systems/ and is starting a new attempt to troll us all.

 

Mike, no. Forget about that other thread. We’ve been there and there is no need to dig it up again. This is about scientific continuation bidding agreements. I have seen a couple that really get lengthy. Some of the Jacoby 2NT continuations is a good example.

 

My former partner (he was forced to leave the club due to medical problems) was actually a fairly decent player but the laziest learner I have ever known. We actually did have a set of typed notes on our system agreements but this guy was just too lazy to ever read them. Instead he tried to remember everything through “botching the bidding” at our local club and then trying not to repeat the mistake again. Certain agreements (which I regarded as simple to remember) had to eventually be dropped because this guy NEVER got them right. An example here is 2-Way Reverse Drury.

 

When the partnership is getting elementary agreements wrong, how many of the more elaborate/scientific agreements are you getting wrong?

[mgoetze]

When the partnership is getting elementary agreements wrong, how many of the more elaborate/scientific agreements are you getting wrong?

I am absolutely incapable of commenting on this and so, I'm sure, are a vast majority of forum readers.

[Zelandakh]

I think you tailor your system to the types of players in the partnership. I have a very complex system which I sometimes post here. Since I wrote it I understand the fundamental rules underpinning it quite well and forgetting is not an issue. With my current partner I play, by forum standards, a very simple system based on Acol. This fits better to our style which is more direct and aggressive than scientific. On the other hand the simple system has many more system failures than the complex one. This is simply because more bids are defined in the complex methods so the room for misunderstandings is less.

 

As for a judgement on how important one thing is against the other, I will give you the same statistic as the other thread - the complex system was worth around 0.5 IMP per board over a reasonably detailed natural system. Some of that will be down to unfamiliarity of the methods, the rest is primarily due to reaching a better game or slam with a small plus for blind leads from the relay auction and being able to stop lower in the odd part-score.

 

Despite the last paragraph, I believe strongly that it is better to play a poor system well than a good system poorly. The main benefit of a complex system is in making the decisions easier for the players involved. For other players, with a different mindset, these decisions may actually be more difficult. Therefore the costs and benefits change from pair to pair. And therefore I come back to my first sentence: you tailor the system to the players. If your judgement and cardplay are good enough then you will almost certainly be near the top regardless of which system you are playing.

[manudude03]

If the real issue is how often a pair forgets the system, that's not the system's fault, just the players involved. The real losses from playing highly artificial systems comes from the disclosure. Even playing symmetric relay and other such systems, there is an awful lot of information given out on mundane hands, not to mention that the relayer could easily end up being dummy. If anyone suggests the relayer doesn't give information about the hand, I find it's simply not true, the mere fact that they are asking is giving information. I won't give specific auctions since I don't really know any of those systems well enough, but say there was a relay and partner showed 0 or 2 top honors in diamonds and the relayer signed off after, it suggests that he was disappointed in the answer and suggests weakness in that suit etc.

 

In other strong club systems, the problem is often twice as bad as there is a lot of information given out on pretty much every GF hand. This doesn't even go into interference where it can get the opponents to contracts they would never otherwise get to on rare occasions, but on a more common basis, partners can get a lot of possible bids to double for the lead etc. This can be disastrous at MPs and can on rare occasions have big consequences at IMPs. The artificial system players hope that these are overcome by those times that they get to the superior game or slam contracts.

 

The comparison alluded to in the OP isn't really about artificial systems vs natural systems though. It's more about disclosure vs non-disclosure. It is perfectly possible to have very elaborate auctions even in an ACOL or 2/1 system that gets to the same remote slams that strong clubbers reach, however such auctions in natural systems are torture and will usually involve a little guesswork. I certainly prefer natural systems, mainly due to less memory load (something which shouldn't really be a problem) and easier competitive systems.

 

As a sidenote, if that list is really what you think "artificial" is, then you are sadly mistaken. Yes, they are not natural bids, but all of those are basically plugins you can easily add to a natural system without affecting its integrity too much. I have all the items on the list except for canapé and still consider the system I play as natural.

[hrothgar]

 

The more elaborate/scientific your agreements are, the more you are adding to the memory load. The memory load gets compounded by the number of these elaborate/scientific methods forming part of your agreements.

 

 

I disagree with this assertion completely. Well designed "artificial" systems are often much more efficient than their natural counter parts.

The big difference is that we excuse folks when they screw up a natural sequence and crucify them if they forget an artificial one.

[sfi]

I won't give specific auctions since I don't really know any of those systems well enough, but say there was a relay and partner showed 0 or 2 top honors in diamonds and the relayer signed off after, it suggests that he was disappointed in the answer and suggests weakness in that suit etc.

 

That's only sometimes true. Quite often it's safe to ask another question just to throw the defence off the right track (although not that many people actually pay attention to where you stop relaying anyway). And this is also offset by the auctions where the asker is declaring a perfectly normal 3nt and they have no idea what suit to attack for much of the hand. In those situations it's much more difficult for the defence to falsecard, which is a small bonus for the relay concept.

[kenrexford]

This is a tough person-specific problem. Some of us have no problem whatsoever remembering complicated schemes and systems. In fact, the idea of "memory load" seems strange, as volumes of system notes and agreements are easily mastered and remembered,

 

But, with some I have noticed that this skill is not present, or is feeble. I have experienced many times a partnership with a player who is enabled to exceed their normal expectations by employing complicated and unique methods, only to crash later under pressure of high-level and excruciatingly lengthy competition. As a made-up example that parallels real life memories, imagine playing with a partner who could never be expected to compete in, say, a top bracket KO. However, with a developed arsenal of complicated agreements, the person gains an edge that allows them to stand on the same level or even exceed more experienced and "better" opponents, to win the event, in part because of their contributions. Then, they enter the Vanderbilt tourney and fade quickly, starting to break down after a few days, where memory fails to the point of silliness.

 

I would venture that many partnerships break down because of an imbalance in the level of comfort with system complexity, coupled with the uncomfortable partner starting to collapse mentally on a more and more frequent basis.

[Gerben42]

Let me comment on this. I play the Fantunes system with two strong but radically different players.

 

Player 1: The scientist. He prefers to get out my exact distribution when I open 2♣/2♦ (9 to 12 with 5+card), has optimized the third round of bidding in almost every sequence (as a minimum) etc. System notes are not finished unless they have more than 100 pages.

 

Player 2: The naturalist. He has learned the standard system in the club and although he loves the Fantunes style, feeding him much system stuff leads to forgets and mental lapses. Any more notes than 10 pages is detrimental to his playing strength. Compared to Player 1, we probably play "no-conventions-Fantunes"...

 

Okay as a bridge professional or college student with lots of free time, playing with Player 1 may be more fun as you get to reel out your favourite stuff, but now as someone with a full-time job and a relationship, I'm glad to play with Player 2 a lot :)

 

Now about conventional wisdom:

 

Good conventions solve bidding decisions. For example Jacoby transfers:

 

Without transfers, you would play 1NT - 2♥/♠ as non-forcing (most common use is "to play") and 3♥ as forcing. With transfers, you can now play 2♦/♥ as either weak OR invitational OR forcing. The gains are:

 

* You save one level of bidding room for forcing hands (try finding a minor suit slam after 1NT - 3♠ forcing - 3NT)

* You can now invite with 2NT (still not great but better than having no invitation available)

* You can use 2♠ and 3♥/♠ for something else (a common choice is minor-oriented hands)

 

The losses are:

 

* You lose the 2♦ response.

* Opponents have one extra chance to act when we have a weak hand.

* Responder is left in the dark about a ♥ fit when he makes his second bid.

 

Playing a strong NT, the gains outweigh the losses. Still especially for inexperienced players, the memory load should be observed, therefore this convention is only advanced+ IMHO.

 

I think a similar balance should be made before adopting any convention, and this step is often left out.

 

Over the years I have changed from "wants to play unusual systems with many conventions" to "wants to play unusual systems with not so many conventions". I guess in 30 years I will be at "wants to play unusual systems with few conventions".

 

Still it is my firm belief that an aggressive opening bid structure is harder for the opponents to deal with than for us.

[awm]

It really depends on the partnership. Some people are much better at remembering methods than others. A regular partnership also has a lot more time to practice/discuss than an occasional one. Certainly some players make the mistake of trying to play too much system, in a partnership that cannot really handle it, and in this case it's easy to lose more than you gain. It can also be important to think about frequency -- something that comes up really rarely and is hard to remember may not be worthwhile, even if it's good when it comes up.

 

With that as a given, I wouldn't worry about remembering any of the things you listed above. Among reasonably good players, most people don't have any issues remembering their opening bids or their first-round responses. All the accidents I've had involve later rounds of bidding.

 

It's also worth considering how often you land on your feet despite a misunderstanding. I think this is where natural systems have an edge over artificial methods. Playing a relay system (for example) you are going to have a lot of artificial sequences. This gives you a lot of opportunities to mess something up even on hands that are "routine" for every other table in the room... and if you do mess it up, it's often unrecoverable (i.e. you have shown a completely different shape than you actually have). Natural systems have misunderstandings too... maybe more often than the relayers because they don't get to use their gadgets as much (and certainly on a higher percentage of "gadget" auctions, of which there are much fewer in the natural base)... but these problems are more often recoverable.

[barmar]

After he and JLall won the Platinum Pairs last month, Bob Hamman commented that system was irrelevant on nearly all 156 boards.

[mgoetze]

After he and JLall won the Platinum Pairs last month, Bob Hamman commented that system was irrelevant on nearly all 156 boards.

Meaning that any of the 3 systems he would have considered playing would have worked equally well?

 

I mean I'm sure he didn't mean to say that it never mattered whether they were playing (1x)-DBL as takeout (scientific) or as penalty (natural).

[kenrexford]

I also think that the analysis of a question like this is often unfairly biased to a particular point of view.

 

Consider the conclusion that a more complicated set of agreements risks memory loss and that this somehow argues for less complexity. That sounds very plausible and accurate. However, a loss of complexity means that some sequences are not as prone to memory failings but may be prone to either lacking tools to handle the situation (and hence guesses) or subject to "uninformed judgment," which might also be a cost.

 

A pure example might help to explain this. You have a possible method for handling weak-two slam tries where you san find out (1) partner's general strength, (2) whether and where he has shortness, and then (3) if a side honor exists what it is and where. However, the methods are complicated.

 

Suppose that your partnership messes up the sequence 10% of the time, but that the sequence improves the result 20% of the time. You end up with the same result 70% of the time, a better result 20% of the time, but a worse result 10% of the time.

 

You then ditch the methods because of the 10% memory loss fault. Now, however, you might guess wrong 20% of the time and might have poor judgment 10% of the time. The end result would then be the right result 70% of the time but the wrong result 30% of the time.

 

Comparing these two, you end up the same 70% of the time. But, in the former the remaining 30% of the time is a gain twice as often as a loss, whereas in the latter the 30% is always loss. So, an occasional memory loss is more than made up with the gains from system when remembered.

 

The numbers are different for each situation. The key is knowing when the occasional losses from memory are outweighed by the gains against the losses that would come from poor judgment and/or pure guessing. When you focus the question just on the memory losses, however, you miss the gains and end up with a titled analysis.

 

I would be willing to conclude from this that an ideal system will have a calculated number of mistakes from memory loss. If you never miss something or make a memory loss mistake, then your approach is probably too basic and hence losing too much to guesswork and judgment. What number of memory loss mistakes is ideal is unclear, though.

 

 

 

 

 

[barmar]

Meaning that any of the 3 systems he would have considered playing would have worked equally well?

 

I mean I'm sure he didn't mean to say that it never mattered whether they were playing (1x)-DBL as takeout (scientific) or as penalty (natural).

I assume it's the former. Bridge champions frequently say that judgement is more important than the precise details of the system.

 

Meckwell is well known for having hundreds of pages of system notes for their system. But they also often play with other partners, with whom they don't have such detailed agreements, and they still do well.

[Siegmund]

It just so happens that I played a Swiss last Sunday with a sweet old lady who was playing for the first time in several months, with Stayman, Blackwood, and weak two-bids on our card.

 

In the course of 49 boards, we.....

Went down in 6NT instead of making 6H because a 5-3 fit never came to light (NMF/FSF would have found it, so too would abusing a natural system with a phony jump shift or something. And, in all fairness, 6NT was a 75% contract, just not a 90+% contract.)

Went -110 instead of -50 once because we didn't have a second-round takeout double available

 

and had accidents even with 'simple standard':

 

Played 2D when 1NT was making, when partner responded 2D to 1NT with 11 points and a diamond suit. Playing transfers she would have gotten a second chance to bid and recover, even if she had mangled the transfer auction.

Played 5D instead of 3NT on the sequence 2C-2N-4N-5C-5D when she thought 2NT was the negative response to a 2C opening, and thought 4NT was blackwood rather than quantitative, and didn't know how to sign off in 5NT after using 4NT. (Luckily her 2-count included Txxxx diamonds.)

 

There were several other hands where there was blasting instead of careful exploration, but only the 6N-vs-6H hand above resulted in a loss from doing so.

 

It's a small sample size, but on this particular set of boards, playing 1950s standard american badly cost us 2 boards and 11 imps vs. playing 1950s standard american straight by the book, and another 2 boards and 15 imps vs. playing 1980s Bill Root bridge straight by the book. None, that I am aware of, from failing to play any high-powered exotic systems, though its possible there was something I didn't see.

 

The life novice's declarer play cost more than her bidding did, with no less than 3 makable games going down on misplay. Remarkably her defense was actually quite good. So even as bad as the bidding was, I would still have suggested serious study of declarer play, and just a little polishing of her fuzzy bidding memory, if I were giving advice how to improve.

[barmar]

What that example shows is that there's a middle ground. With too few conventions, you run into problems on many common hands, and this is a problem. It's like trying to have a conversation with only the vocabulary of a 3-year-old.

 

So there's a good reason why the conventions that have become extremely popular have done so. Transfers solve a real problem due to the preemptive nature of opening 1NT -- there isn't enough room to show all the combinations of weak/invitational/forcing hands and 5/6-card suits with natural responses. New Minor Forcing is also a simple solution to a common problem.

 

But as you continue to add conventions, there may be diminishing returns. I play Mexican 2♦ with my regular partner, but it sometimes seems like we go weeks without it ever coming up. And when it does come up, we don't always remember some of the uncommon followup bids correctly.

[awm]

It can often be hard to determine whether system caused a success. To give a few examples:

 

1. I opened 2c showing 6+c, 10-15 hcp. LHO overcalled 2d. With four clubs and a diamond void, partner immediately went slamming and we found an excellent 6c. If I had opened a standard 1c, partner would surely bid 1s rather than raise clubs opposite what is often a balanced hand. Opponents would preemptively raise to three or four diamonds. Do we get to 6c? Maybe... but its tougher. Most of the field didn't, but we are a better pair than most of the field so maybe not a good comparison.

 

2. I opened 1s on 9 hcp (systemic). LHO bid 1nt (a weak NT in their methods). Partner bid 4s on a flat 13 with four spades, which was cold. If I had passed on first seat (as I would in standard) LHO opens weak notrump. Do we get to game? Well it is possible I balance despite having a crummy spade suit (and it may depend on methods there too) and its possible we reach game... but there are some judgment calls so who knows.

 

3. RHO opens 1c strong and I bid 1d showing diamonds or majors. LHO doubles showing any 5-7 hcp. Partner bids 2d pass or correct. RHO has a 4414 but their agreement is that double here is penalty. So he bids 2s and they play there, partner having a 2533 six count with 6h making. Bad bidding by opponents obviously. Do they reach game or slam if I bid 1d (natural)? Maybe... but I will never know.

[CSGibson]

This is something that's individual, and not a community decision. I know a player who plays a complex relay big club canape system, who never messes up his system despite 700 pages of system notes. He obviously is not suffering from memory burden, and if he were to find a partner with a similar ability to remember, than memory burden would not be a factor (or would be a very low factor, possibly with fitness in terms of potential mental fatigue).

 

I play a complex and highly artificial 2/1 system with a partner which has about 130 pages of notes - and we could probably add another 30 pages if we were so inclined. I don't have a problem remembering the system with minimal effort. My partner sometimes does (he's 40 years older), but not frequently enough to outweigh the system gains. We also play at least twice a week, have been partners for more than 2 years, and regularly discuss system, follow-ups, and the like outside of our playing session. I suspect that he also studies the system notes daily as part of his gym regiment (he's said something similar to that).

 

Your memory-burden vs artificiality "argument" is really a question of how much effort you need to remember stuff and how much effort you are willing to put in. If the answer is a lot, and not a lot, then go with non-memory intensive stuff. If you are willing to put in the time necessary to learn it, then memory intensive is not an issue, and you can look strictly at the bridge losses & gains of a convention in order to decide whether to play it.

[glen]

I think the "natural" is misleading here. For example, Stayman is not natural, but playing a natural approach does not work as well.

[chasetb]

I agree with all 4 posts above. The complexity of the system does depend on the person - I know with the right partner and a few hours a week to practice the system, I can handle the system Chris mentioned above (can you give me his contact info?). I also know that except my Precision partner who I won Flight C NAP with, no one else I play with can handle more than 20 pages; age and desire being the key factors. No one else even has a write-up.

 

There are a few bids/conventions, that while aren't 'Natural', are so commonplace and well-known they have to be used. You're nuts if you don't play Stayman, Jacoby transfers over a Strong NT (Keri if you have the fortitude), Negative Doubles, and Blackwood. A few others may be artificial and a tad complex, but the gains from them are too great to ignore. A Larry Cohen link a friend gave me covers everything in a nutshell. http://www.larryco.com/BridgeArticles/ArticleDetails.aspx?articleID=54

 

I think one of awm's examples isn't quite ideal, though his post is truthful. #1 is a clear system success. I love the 2♣ bid, and while I'm a dinosaur because I like to open it on a GREAT 5♣ - 4M rather than requiring 6+, my experiences are that it is a huge winner, and it's because of knowing distribution and how to bid after it. Partner and I found 4♥, 4♠ in competition, 5♣ when 3NT doesn't make, and +800 because of the bid (at Memphis).

 

EDIT - Larry also has a post where he supports Precision. I just found it while looking through his stuff. WOOHOO! http://www.larryco.com/BridgeArticles/ArticleDetails.aspx?articleID=82