Precision and CC Wei

[Bermy]

When the China national team lead by CC Wei finished runner up in the 1969 Bermuda Bowl the system now known as the Precision Club was recognized. Wei then went on to captain the Precision team to many more wonderful achievements.

 

Since then many strong club systems have come to call themselves Precision. Most of them excellent improvements on the original. But let us not ignore what he gave us and how clever it was. It simplified what was previously the more complicated Italian Blue Club and started thousands, including myself playing Precision all over the world.

 

Now few people play precision online anymore, and that is mainly because there is no longer a standard as to exactly what Precision is. Don’t forget what the Precision team achieved playing it exactly the Wei way.

 

However in contradiction I have offered an enhancement with the multi 2 diamonds, an idea that has been around for years and used a lot. I also promote bringing in some modern enhancements like transfers to 1 club openings, Delta and Omega bids to bring it up to date. With these enhancements I call it Control Precision (see feed) and try to set standards that any 2 players can abide by.

 

Well done Mr. Wei I will always love your system, the only one we can truly call “Precision” and 1 club will always be 16+.

[nullve]

Well done Mr. Wei I will always love your system, the only one we can truly call “Precision” and 1 club will always be 16+.

Or maybe Precision is like the ship of Theseus.

[The_Badger]

Or maybe Precision is like the ship of Theseus.

 

Or maybe Precision is just a redrawn dynamic of the Vanderbilt Club system (c.1930s) that, surprise, surprise, also has a 1♣ opener as 16+

 

p.s. Vanderbilt also 'invented' weak major two bids too :)

[PrecisionL]

Actually Precision was preceded by the Nottingham Club, 1954, 1959, 1969 publications, Margery Burns. I have been to that club in England and played the system with a local player.

 

However, the opening bid of 2♦ was the strong Game Forcing bid in the system. Weak two bids in the majors were added in 1969. Before then, 2♥ & 2♠ were intermediate, less than16 hcp, but not long enough for a four bid, and two strong for a one bid.

 

1♦ was the "loose" or prepared diamond opening bid.

 

1♣ was 16-22 hcp, 1NT was 13-15 and 2NT was 21-22.

[steve2005]

del

[nige1]

Nottingham Club is older than Precision:

• 1♣ = ART 16+ with 1♦ negative. 5+ card suit positives with 8+.
• 1♦ = ART 10-15 "Loose Diamond" 2+ ♦s.
• 1M = NAT 10-15. 5+ cards.
• 1N = BAL 13-15
• 2B = NAT 12-15

Similar to Precision except for the 2-bids. We also used asking bids (but simpler than Super-Precision).

 

Systems evolve with time. e.g. compare modern 2/1 with older versions.

[Bermy]

I don't think the reason people don't play Precision is there is no standard. People see it as artificial and requiring a lot of memory work. While this is true the basic Goren Precision is pretty natural and really only the 2♦ is really bad and can be done without. Also, because not many people play it, you have a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can't find a partner so you don't play it.

One could play Precision as in the ancient Goren book. Bidding is crude by modern standards but would be an improvement on many people's methods.

Meck lite is a reasonable standard if you want something up-to-date and standard.

 

CC Wei was a bidding theorist, he never actually even played.

He didn’t conceive the strong club, he merely simplified it so it could be played by both world champions and club players. He explained the importance if being exact with your HCP and shape and how to count their values separately. He called it Precision because he wanted it to be precise. He then got his team to learn it and play it properly, until unknown team started knocking everybody out of the Bermuda Bowl. Strong Club was not new back then, Belladonna and Gorrozo had been winning for years, does anybody play the Blue Club anymore? Goren and Reese other great theorists showed us how to play Precision simply, with simple approach methods without having to learn those complicated asking bids.

Now club players could learn and play the strong club quickly, and if they wanted to explore the complicated avenues of asking bids, they could. Partnerships evolved all around the world, all adding to the original creation, but really what they were doing by making too many changes was breaking down what was essentially a carefully planned and structured universal language, capable of fitting every conceivable hand to its bid. Their results itself proved it worked.

Bidding theory today is as complicated now as it was back then, however has everybody forgotten that bidding must work for club players as well as champions if one wants to develop a system properly. Unlike established partnership, club players need a system where 2 players can quickly agree on a basic system and which conventions are on and off and get on with playing. Standards need to be set. Goren, Reese, Culbertson and Wei set these standards.

There is nothing crude in the old methods. They work and they are solid and are easy to learn for newer players. You sound like a budding musician who ignores the masters. Modern theorists are too result driven, and one has too much choice. It makes strong club impossible to play.

Today on BBO all we are left with is 2/1 only, even then many prefer basic SAYC. From what I have seen on Gib after 20 years of trying, it is going absolutely nowhere. Gib bidding is not programed by any bidding theorists whatsoever; none of it makes any sense to the average bridge player. Some of the bidding logic is at the point where the program is making total fool of itself all over the world, you have read some of my other feeds on that. Must I say most would leave the table if anyone bid with them the way Gib does.

We do not need or want another standard thank you. I am setting my standard and it is high. I’m trying to promote a return to Precision from all those players out there who want to try something different. Perhaps you should go read Goren Reese and Wei too and go see who the masters learned from.

[PrecisionL]

"CC Wei was a bidding theorist, he never actually even played." - Bermy (see above)

 

As a matter of fact, C.C. Wei played Precision with Ron Anderson as described in his book, Match Point Precision, 1975. He details an 83% game they had at a New York Winter Regional in 1974 before he published his book mentioned above.

 

C.C. also won the Puerto Rico Open pairs 1970, Swiss Teams 1972, Mid-Atlantic Summer Swiss 1972, Metropolitan Open Pairs 1974.

[Bermy]

U know, the hardest thing about Precision is that the bidding sequences and asking bids are so hard to learn, but so useful. I call them steps, to simplify them as that is exactly what they are, and then you have to learn little numbers, like 012123. Easy really if you know how, but who has got the time for all that these days. Really, we are all playing with laptops. When I played with the witch she had her notes with her (play and learn) but at the club she was on her own. I tell you what, once she saw that she could read my cards, 2/1 was out the window.

I really think more should try Precision these days, yes it maybe a little old fashioned, however it is so universal, and in China almost everyone plays it. And it is so different. You will see, at the bridge tournaments, suddenly your results improve. I know. I do play a lot with them and they stick to CC Wei standards too. I think it’s the universal language that we need to play strong club.

 

Learning those sequences does give you an advantage, but if one starts deviating away from Wei one has to find a permanent partner, losing an important ingredient in the social structure of bridge, that any two players can get together and play. That is what I mean by standards. Wei sets them for us in Precision.

[Bermy]

cute quiz

 

012123? Can any Precision player out there tell what sequence that represents?

[mikestar13]

I don't know if C.C. Wei knew about Nottingham Club or not. I have understood that he derived it from Neapolitan club by substantial simplification including dropping Canape and using five card majors. But my understanding is from the Goren precision book. I have not read any of Wei's writings apart from Profit From Preempts, which is not relevant to the question.

 

I would interpret the unqualified term "Precision" as meaning 1♣ SAF as the only unlimited opening, combined with five card major openings. A system which scraps Wei's 2♦ and opens 1♥ with exactly 4=4=1=4 is still "Precision": the deviation from five card majors is so infrequent partner can disregard it. OTOH, I would not regard the System Sabine Auken plays (frequent four card major openings) as "Precision", though she has a different take on it and does call her system "Precision". [sabine's system is an excellent system, I am only discussing terminology.] I would not describe Vanderbilt, Schenken, Blue Team, or Nottingham Club as "Precision" though there are undeniable similarities, especially in the last case.

 

I would call a precision system essentially the same as Wei wrote about "Wei Precision."

[Bermy]

I don't know if C.C. Wei knew about Nottingham Club or not. I have understood that he derived it from Neapolitan club by substantial simplification including dropping Canape and using five card majors. But my understanding is from the Goren precision book. I have not read any of Wei's writings apart from Profit From Preempts, which is not relevant to the question.

 

I would interpret the unqualified term "Precision" as meaning 1♣ SAF as the only unlimited opening, combined with five card major openings. A system which scraps Wei's 2♦ and opens 1♥ with exactly 4=4=1=4 is still "Precision": the deviation from five card majors is so infrequent partner can disregard it. OTOH, I would not regard the System Sabine Auken plays (frequent four card major openings) as "Precision", though she has a different take on it and does call her system "Precision". [sabine's system is an excellent system, I am only discussing terminology.] I would not describe Vanderbilt, Schenken, Blue Team, or Nottingham Club as "Precision" though there are undeniable similarities, especially in the last case.

 

I would call a precision system essentially the same as Wei wrote about "Wei Precision."

When I wake up on a Sunday morning, I read the bridge first, then the football of course, then the politics or science, never the business section, mind you.

 

Today it was politics first, hmmmmmm

 

Peeeee.....Bang. Do we ever need friends in China right now. Bridge can play its role. I often wonder why they called our game "bridge"

 

Precision is a standard and now has been set by Wei because it has become the international language of strong club systems. Wei Precision is the starting point from which you make all your variations. It is the first language, the source. That is how they play it in China, and if you can communicate with the Chinese with such an international language, we will can then find partnerships and variations to our language to all of our mutual benefit. Thank you Mr Wei

[PrecisionL]

Sabine Auken née Zenkel (born 4 January 1965), a German bridge player and the American professional player Ron Anderson traveled the world as a partnership during 1991–1992, based in Chicago.^[5] They also wrote a book, Preempts from A to Z (1993; 2nd, 1996).

 

Sabine and Daniela von Arnim and their partners, Pony Nehmert and Andrea Rauscheid (Reim) won the 2001 (1995 also) Venice Cup playing their version of a Strong Club with canapé.

I have played Sabine's System and modified it and called it C3 - Copious Canapé Club. I played against her and Roy in the Memphis NABC in 2019 and she autographed my copy of I Love This Game. I also played against Zia in the same pair game.

[helene_t]

I have encountered pairs playing "Precision" that have all kind of heterodox treatments such as 4-card majors, strong diamond instead of clubs, a two-way 1♣ including minimum openers with clubs so that 2♣ becomes some kind of artificial preempt, etc.

 

But among pairs who are literate on bidding theory, I think "Precision" is defined as

1♣ = strong artificial, contains most or all strong hands

1M = 11-15 or thereabouts, probably 5-card majors although some might bid a 4-card major on occasion. Certainly not canape. Auken/Arnim didn't call their system "Precision"

1NT = natural, whatever range

2♣ = natural 11-15 or thereabouts, may or may not promise 6

 

I don't think you can make any assumptions about the response structures. People who play a Moscito-like GF 1♦ response to the 1♣ opening, for example, probably still call their system "Precision".

[mycroft]

To give them "credit", Helene, most of them call what they play "Modified Precision". And of course it is - nobody plays 1970's Wei Precision, or Goren's, or Reese's. The term is about as useful as "modified Cappelletti" (I know of three variations that the players all swear is "MC") or "Reverse Bergen" (because they play it the other way to the way they were taught, or the way that's common in their area. Of course, in my area, that's regular Bergen, "reverse" Bergen is the other way around).

[foobar]

 

 

I don't think you can make any assumptions about the response structures. People who play a Moscito-like GF 1♦ response to the 1♣ opening, for example, probably still call their system "Precision".

Think that might offend some Moscito players :D. We always labelled the various (non-Moscito) variants as a strong ♣ system given that they were sufficiently different from the 1♦ = 2+, etc Precision.

[sfi]

People who play a Moscito-like GF 1♦ response to the 1♣ opening, for example, probably still call their system "Precision".

Certainly my opponents in a weekly team game do, and they regularly play internationally.

 

I even called it Precision when we shoved the 4414 hands into 1H in another partnership, although we did start discussing the need for other names about that point.

[Cyberyeti]

cute quiz

 

012123? Can any Precision player out there tell what sequence that represents?

 

Isn't this the responses to one of the asking bids, first step no top honour, 2nd 5 card suit with one, 5 and 2, 6 and 1, 6 and 2, 3 tops.

[PrecisionL]

Isn't this the responses to one of the asking bids, first step no top honour, 2nd 5 card suit with one, 5 and 2, 6 and 1, 6 and 2, 3 tops.

Yes, TAB responses - Trump Asking Bid for top honors and length.

[mycroft]

I think if you're playing 1♦ positive responses in a strong club framework with 5 card majors, no relays (save over 1♣), and forcing 1NT, you're playing Precision with 1♦ positive. MOSCITO is an acronym, and it's Majors-Oriented Strong Club... so if you're not playing the major-first orientation, it's not Moscito.

 

But I'll let the actual players who have or want to play it have the final word on where the border is.