Precision minimum opening bid

[Gerben42]

The basic idea of Precision is that if your 1-bids are limited in strength then you can achieve more "precison". Nowadays in the days of weak opening bids, how do people see the balance between precision and frequency?

 

Assuming 1♥ and 1♠ show 5 cards and at most a decent 15 HCP, how weak would you want to put the minimum number of HCP that you regularly open? 10 HCP? 9? 8?

Assume that you are not hindered by your local regulations for this.

[hrothgar]

I think that you are putting the cart before the horse...

 

You don't start by specifying the minimum strength for a strong club opening and then deciding on range...

 

You start by defining a maximum range fro your limited openings and then structure the rest of the system

[awm]

I play precision regularly with a couple of partners. In one partnership, our openings are basically "rule of 18." However, we tend to be rather conservative on balanced (5332) distributions and not open with less than a good eleven on those. This gives our openings a relatively wide range of 8-15 or so (okay it's 8 only with 10 cards in two suits, and 7 is possible with a 6-5 hand and so forth). In response to these, we play a fairly "standard" style, 2/1s show a good 12 or more points and are forcing but not necessarily to game.

 

In the other precision partnership, we play somewhat more sound (and limited) openings. Our range is normally good 10-15 points. The main reason for this is that we play a 2/1 game forcing structure (with some various gadgets thrown in, relays in a few auctions, etc). This is mostly my partner's preference, since he's played a lot of 2/1 game force. We don't believe that game forcing 2/1s work well with super-light openings (you end up responding 1NT on too wide a range of hands), so we stick to the slightly more conservative opening range.

[luke warm]

in weiss club, it's *usually* rule of 20 (or at least it seems to work out that way a lot)... this is because the one openings are 2 suited hands, not one, not three, two.. also, the 1c opening is a tad stronger than "normal"... 16+ balanced, 17+ with M, 18+ m

[Chamaco]

how weak would you want to put the minimum number of HCP that you regularly open? 10 HCP? 9? 8?

Assume that you are not hindered by your local regulations for this.

Minimum (assumes no wastage)=

- 9 hcp if A+K+Q

- 8 hcp if A+A

- you might prefer to define the above as 10 points counting an Ace as 5.

- minimum openers always guarantee 7- losers. 8 losers hand with 11- hcp are not opened. [bTW: we count Qxx(xx) and Kxx(xx) as 2.5 losers, not 2 losers, unless some J or Ten are there to "help" the unsuported honor]

 

The basic idea is to setup some minimum standards for marginal openers:

- offensive strength of distributional hands (losers)

- defensive strength if opps buy the contract (defensive tricks).

 

Having such agreements restricts a bit the hand types 1st/2nd seat might open, but help better responder to decide in competitive auctions.

 

------------

 

Of course I do not mean the above as absolute statement; it's just my own pship agreement (I assumed that the question was obviously intended as "what's YOUR minimum to open").

[Free]

This depends on the rest of the responses imo. For example, if you want to use slampoints or controls followed by denial cues or spiral scan, you'll need to have a minimum requirement over there first. You also need to know if you can handle extreme light openings or not, and what your preferred style is.

 

In moscito, we use 6+ slampoints when unbalanced, (11)12+HCP when balanced.

 

With my f2f partner, we play 10-14(15) limited openings, but open sometimes with 9 when we have a sure rebid in competition. This is also due to our very frequent 2-level openings where we can show any weak 2-suited hand (44+, except with both minors we need 55+). So we don't feel the need to open much lighter :D

[han]

I don't think that there is a correct answer to this question, any minimum is possible. If you decide to frequently open 8- or 9-counts then you will have to do some serious work to your response structure though, this is not so easy.

 

Of course, if you would like to open such light hands then precision would be a good context for this.

[Guest Jlall]

I have same opening bid style in strong club as in standard systems. This works well for me and I see no reason for the opening bids to necessarily get lighter. One of the main advantages of strong club is not that the range is limited, but that it's narrower. After all 11-21 is a "standard" opener and its technically limited. I don't see the need to lower the bottom range and negate this advantage.

[Gerben42]

I am asking because in Polish club the range is 11 - 18 and that is already much better than in Standard and I was wondering if anyone has experiences with Precision and opening basically any hand that satisfies rule of 18, as 9 - 15 does not sound very wide a range.

[awm]

My experience has been that the narrower opening range is an advantage, but not as big an advantage as some suggest. The problem is that a number of very distributional hands without great high card strength have incredible offensive potential. I've seen people make suggestions like:

 

(1) It's okay to pass with 0-8 points or so opposite an opening.

(2) Opener will never leap to game after a single raise.

(3) Responder can blast 4M with a wide range of balanced hands without missing slam.

 

The fact is, there are a lot of hands like:

 

AKxxxxx

x

KQxx

x

 

where I would certainly open 1♠ playing precision... but in the presence of a fit this hand is worth way more than 15 hcp, and I could make game opposite as little as:

 

xx

xxxx

Axxx

xxx

 

So I don't think the points above really hold... and this reduces the value of the tighter limits on opening bids. On the other hand, I have found a lot of substantial wins in opening hands like:

 

AQxxx

x

xx

Kxxxx

 

...along with compensating losses when partner forces game on a non-fitting 13-count. There are plenty of people on these forums who love opening hands like the one above so much, that they will do so even playing a 2/1 style where partner WILL force game on a non-fitting 13! It seems like you get the best of both by playing light, limited openers, where partner knows to expect distributional junk like the above.

[mikestar]

My experience has been that the narrower opening range is an advantage, but not as big an advantage as some suggest. The problem is that a number of very distributional hands without great high card strength have incredible offensive potential. I've seen people make suggestions like:

 

(1) It's okay to pass with 0-8 points or so opposite an opening.

(2) Opener will never leap to game after a single raise.

(3) Responder can blast 4M with a wide range of balanced hands without missing slam.

 

The fact is, there are a lot of hands like:

 

AKxxxxx

x

KQxx

x

 

where I would certainly open 1♠ playing precision... but in the presence of a fit this hand is worth way more than 15 hcp, and I could make game opposite as little as:

 

xx

xxxx

Axxx

xxx

 

So I don't think the points above really hold... and this reduces the value of the tighter limits on opening bids. On the other hand, I have found a lot of substantial wins in opening hands like:

 

AQxxx

x

xx

Kxxxx

 

...along with compensating losses when partner forces game on a non-fitting 13-count. There are plenty of people on these forums who love opening hands like the one above so much, that they will do so even playing a 2/1 style where partner WILL force game on a non-fitting 13! It seems like you get the best of both by playing light, limited openers, where partner knows to expect distributional junk like the above.

(1) In my Precision experience, its OK to pass a relatively flat 6-7 or very bad 8--with shape, you should always bid with 8+ playing value assuming a fit will be found. These are still more conservative than 2/1 standards. Many modern Precisionistas lower this to a good 6, but 2/1ers now seem to settle for a bad 4 or a good 3.

 

2) This is a perversion of another rule--opener can't have a hand that can guarantee game opposite a minimum response with no fit. Clearly after 1M-2M there is a fit.

 

3) This never was true among good Precison players. Goren's book featured splinters, 3N as a major raise and strong support sequences after a jump shift or 2N--the direct raise to 4M was premptive. It is true that later in the auction reponder can sign off on slightly stonger hands because there is a larger set of game hands where slam is impossible or too unlikely to look for than when opener is less limited.

 

On your example hands, 1 would open 1S with the first and pass 1S with the second. No danger whatever it will be passed out, then opener can jump in spades at his next trun to show his extreme power.

 

I'm fine with 1S or 2S on the third hand depending on your agreements, I'm not OK with pass.

[Gerben42]

This might interest the readers of this thread:

 

 

BridgeMatters: Light openings—is there a certain point where light openings become ineffective?

 

Eric Rodwell: Absolutely. Paul Soloway and Bobby Goldman tried it back in the 80s when there was a real proliferation of extremely aggressive pre-empting and whatnot, before 1-3-5-8 came along [doubled not-vulnerable contracts now go down 100-300-500-800]. They thought they should really be doing some light stuff, so they had a system they called Attack, where, not vulnerable, they were playing that opening one bids were 8 to 14 and the strong club started at 15. One of my students was playing with one of them, so he played this. I found that partner opening 1S with 5-3-3-2 distribution and an 8 count just really made for a lot of problems for us, more than for the opponents. I find it is better to either pass or, if your spades are good enough, to open some sort of weak two bid, rather than open a super-light one bid. The range I prefer is starting at 11, with hand evaluation always being relevant. Plenty of 10 counts, some 9 counts and maybe even some 8 counts . . . would qualify if they have enough playing potential. I don’t think opening a hand like Jx Axxxx Kxxx Qx with 1H is winning bridge.

[Chamaco]

(1) It's okay to pass with 0-8 points or so opposite an opening.

 

I do not think so, for 2 reasons:

 

a. as others pointed out, many limited openers find game opposite a reasonable 6-8 count, as well as opposite weaker hands with the right shape

 

b. even if we have no game, why should we pass with a weak hand ? To let opps find the right strain to compete for the partscore ?

Unless the hand is a total misfit, responding right away with weak hands, even to a limited responder, robs opps from bidding space (they have to start bidding higher, while they do not know yet whether reponder is limited or not.

Of course, cautioun is mandatory in misfit hands and/or if we are vuln.

 

(2) Opener will never leap to game after a single raise.

 

It depends what the single raise mean: if it's a constructive raise (8-10 hcp or so), why not?

 

(3) Responder can blast 4M with a wide range of balanced hands without missing slam.

 

In my expecience this is poor strategy to use the same bid for semibalanced raises and shapely raises, because we lose the forcing pass option.

If responder's leap to 4M can be preemptive or semibalanced, when opps stick their 4S over our 4H, and opener has a spade void and 6H, he does not know whether responder is distributional (in which case he might sacrifice to 5H), or responder has hcp with wastage (when it's better to pass, leaving the chice to pard); in that case (opener has great shape but is not allowe to decide on his own), if opener passes, responder won't have the elements to take the decision.

 

I think a better way to play the leap to 4M is that it ALWAYS shows 4+ support in the major, regardless of hcp, so that a distributional opener can feel free to raise to 5 if opps compete.