Relay Systems In Precision

[pbleighton]

As I am still struggling a bit learning a basic form of Precsion, these are question for the future, but...

 

1) I have seen a lot of references to Symmetric relays, and have read a bit about them. Would you recommend them, if I was to play a relay system?

2) Playing relays starting with the opener's first rebid after a 1 club opening seems to be GCC legal. However, 1NT by the responder in response to a natural bid as a game forcing response is not GCC legal, nor, I believe, is any relay started by the responder's first bid. If this is true (tell me if it's not), is there any practical way to play relay systems after, say, a 1 spade opening that is GCC legal.

3) Would you recommend relay systems, based on your experience? If you would, is there a minimum number of average hands per week played and/or practice bid which would be required to give enough practice to make them practical.

4) Does Barry Rigal's book address this. If not, what other book would you recommend? I have seen reference to Jannerstein in other posts, but I haven't been able to find it.

[hrothgar]

Interesting topic to which I will make a few comments:

 

First, your comments regarding the the GCC are correct.

 

Relays structures are permissable over strong club openings.

However, relays may not be used after most limited openings.

[Many bidding systems use relays after natural NT openings and after natural 2C openings. Relays can also be used after opener's rebid, so hypothetically you could play a relay structure such as

 

1H - 2C

2D - Relay

 

Second: I think that symmetric relay is the best introduction to relay methods. The relay structure is probably the easiest to learn. It is also very efficient.

 

Third: If you are going to learn symmetric relay, I strongly recommend that you not use Precision in the 90s as a base. While the rest of that book is quite good, I find the section on symmetric relay incomprehensible. [Personally, I think that the best material to learn symmetric relay is my set of system notes which are freely available on my web site.

 

http://web.mit.edu/~rwilley/www/moscito.doc

 

I am in the middle of a major re-editing however, the old notes are still pretty good for leaning the basics. [The most significant changes are relted to advanced system variants]

 

As to practicing Symmetric Relay, I think that Bridge2Symmetric is still available commercially, however, it doesn't seem to be supported much any more.

 

Finally, should you bother:

 

I think that symmetric relays over strong club openings have a few major advantages compared to more traditional methods:

 

1. The memory load for a complete relay system is relatively low. All you need to do is learn a few simply modules and how to apply them.

 

2. If you are using a relative strong 1C opening and thus prefer not to use the new response structure that zooms with semi-positive hands, you eliminate the need for an impossible negative structure.

 

3. You no longr need to use 2NT as a "natural" bid.

[LukeG]

I agree with Richard's suggestion that symmetric relay is the best way to get started because it's the easiest to remember. I also agree that you should not use Rigal's book as the basis of a symmetric relay system.

[mishovnbg]

I played several systems with relays at tournaments and cant say without sucsess. But playing with relays have several disadvantages:

1. Counting steps ( sometimes with fingers under the table - be fair :) ) answers is so tiresome, it result to some bad play or defence. Solution in my opinion is to keep answers natural or by transfers. It is less efficient but much more easy to play by human 8).

2. Distribution and hcp isnt enough to make right decision. Askings can help, but is accessible only for slam bidding normally. For games is better to bid natural way - it is more flexibility to choose game.

3. Regular bids in non-natural suits allow to OPP frequent to dbl it for lead/sacrifice.

 

Misho

[inquiry]

I have been "toying" with ultimate club, a system with a lot of relays as well. I agree with what Misho said.

 

To that I add it takes away your creativity to open with an odd bid with certain "shapes". It limits your ability to make an intellegent mistatement of stregth in a suit, it describes your distribution so well, that if you end up being declearer, the defense is playing double dummy.

 

Having said that, it makes bidding close slams and avoiding bad ones easier. Relay systems, it seems, are thus better for IMP games where slams (bidding and avoiding) are more imporant.

 

Ben

[hrothgar]

I play relay systems fairly frequently. I think that this experience might provide me with a different perspective than Ben or Misho.

 

First of all, I believe that well designed relay systems are much easier to learn than natural systems. There is obviously a certain minimum investment in time and effort that must be expended to learn the "basics" of a relay structure - making it up as you go along really isn't an option. However, once this investment has been made, you are sitting pretty. I think that most players "difficulty" with relay methods comes about because relay systems are very different from the methods that players traditionally learn. As a result, while the total memory load for a relay sysem might be substantially lower than for a more standard system, the marginal cost of learning the system is often higher.

 

Second: I strongly believe that relay systems allow more room for judgement than natural systems. Simply put, relay methods allow users to assign meanings to far more bidding sequences than natural systems. Accordingly, this provides the practioners many more opportunities to excercise judgement regarding how to bid the hands.

 

Case in point:

 

I was doing some practice bidding with a partner this morning.

 

KQJxxx

xxx

Jx

xx

 

ATx

x

AKQxx

Axxx

 

I opened the South hand with a strong club, partner responded 1NT proming an unbalanced semi-positive hand 5+ Spades. I expercised poor judgement and chose to blast to 4S rather than relaying out the hand. Accordingly, we missed a very nice 6S contract. Such is life.

[inquiry]

KQJxxx

xxx

Jx

xx

 

ATx

x

AKQxx

Axxx

 

Not sure your case proves much. Natural bidders have a very good chance of getting to 6S. Over ID, some will bid 4S with north immediately and wild horses couldn't stop south from getting to 6. Others will bid 1S to hear partner jump 3C/4D. 3C natural and game force or 4D ---really good diamonds and a fit. Over 3C, north will bid 4S again leading to six. Over 4D, north can't take control, after all he has control in none of the suits, but a LTTC 4!Hs would do the trick.

 

Playing ultimate club, I think the auction might be...

 

1C - 1D (0-2 controls, with 2 controls 4-6 pts, Jacks dont count)

2D - 4S (2D= no relay with only 17 points.. 2D=diamonds)

6S - Pass

 

In ultimate, the leap to 4S would show a solid suit consitent with pevious bidding. So here, we are talking something like this. With less solid spades, he can bid 2S (foring to 2NT) followed by 4S. With better spades, he wouldn't have responded 1D. If opener wanted to stretch, and relay, the bidding would have been...

 

1C - 1D

1H - 2D ("balanced", top of the minimums)

2H - 4S (2H relay, 4S=KQJxxx of spades, 3-2-2 in other suits)

6S - finish

[hrothgar]

I was trying to illustrate that even relay systems provide room to exercise judgement.

In this case, I decided to bid 4S immediately following partner's 1NT bid.

 

My though process was that after a 1N semi-positive, game is uncertain. I preferred to blast quickly to what looked to be an acceptable contract. A detailed exploratory sequence might discover a slam, however, it also might pinpoint an unfortunate lead against 4S.

 

I'm still unsure which course of action is better.

 

What I do know is that on this hand, reaching 6S would have been worth 10 in Challenge the Champs. 4S+2 was a lowly 5.

[pbleighton]

Two quite practical matters:

 

1) Assuming I play a relay system only after a strong one club opening, how often, in practice, will the opps interfere high/early enough so that the relay can't be used. 30%, 50%, 70%?

 

2) Full relays get the bidding pretty high. Can they be used effectively after a negative response to 1 club?

 

Bottom line:

 

If you play 1000 hands, in how many of them will you play a full relay after a strong club?

[mishovnbg]

After 1 CL strong opening in Varna club - 100% interference in favorite vul, 75% unfav vul - look Rado&Joro play against Ron&Ross. Most of people just dont know how to play against 1CL/1DI strong.

Misho

[the hog]

I have heard and dismissed many times the argument that relays stifle the development of "plastic evaluation". I would strongly agree that a beginning player should play a natural system for some time before deciding to play relays. Interestingly enough we find ourselves mentally playing the hand as it unfolds. There is a large amount of evaluation in deciding which cards partner may have the crucial cards.

 

The major downside is that we will bid bad games that might be avoided in standard systems. After a strong C and a positive it is nigh on impossible to stay out of game.

 

In response to Inquiry's comments - the number of times declarer's distribution is earmarked is counterbalanced by the number of times the opps now nothing about declarer's hand.

 

One criticism no poster has mentioned is that relayers are frequently chided for being slow. If you know your system, this is a total furphy. "Counting steps on your fingers under the table" doesn't happen that often, Misho - I'm not denying it hasn't happened lol.

 

Ron