Possible limitations of 2/1

[smerriman]

I didn't say it wasn't forcing.

 

Well, you actually did, but I'm guessing now it was more of a typo and you meant to say 'non-game-forcing', which changes things a little :)

 

Going back to your example, suppose you hold AQJxx-x-Kxx-Jxxx, and the auction goes 1♦ - 1♠ - 1NT.

 

You now need to know two things - whether partner is minimum (want to play a partscore, not game), and whether partner has three spades (want to play spades, not no trumps). 2♣, new minor forcing, gives you precisely the answers to these two questions. You will know immediately what the final contract should be.

 

Give yourself an extra spade:

 

AQJxxx-x-Kxx-Jxx

 

Now you know you want to play in spades, and need to know whether it should be in game or not. Bid 3♠, telling partner to pass with a minimum or bid game otherwise.

 

Make your original hand a little stronger:

 

AQJxx-x-Kxx-Axxx

 

Opposite a 1NT rebid, you know you want to play game and not slam, but don't know whether it should be spades or no trumps. Again, after new minor forcing, you will know exactly the right contract.

 

With these hands, perhaps opener will bid something other than 1NT. Now you can use other sequences to continue in different ways.

 

If you decide to jump shift instead, you'll quickly find yourself stuck - you don't know whether opener has a minimum, medium, or maximum hand; opener doesn't know whether you have 13 points or something much stronger; and neither of you know what suit you want to play it. You can communicate some of this information, but not all of it in time.

 

That's why Soloway jump shifts are restricted to certain hand types (and have nothing to do with points - that's just GIBberish - there are plenty of 20 point hands you shouldn't jump shift with, and some weaker ones you should) - ones where the information you need to know can be communicated in time.

 

The main point is that standard bidding covers most sequences pretty well - not every single one, but again, each time you come up with a hand you think the system doesn't handle well, send it through and you may find there is actually a good solution. (Not necessarily one that works with GIB though :()

 

In fact, I don't recall the last time I made a strong jump shift. If you're getting started with 2/1, I'd suggest not using them at all - once you're more familiar with how all of the alternate options works, you'll start to learn if/when they're needed. (Most people on BBO would assume a jump shift is weak too.)

[smerriman]

PS - if you hadn't seen this already, GIB also only jump shifts on very specific hand types, not all 17 point hands - see the description here:

 

https://www.bridgebase.com/doc/gib_system_notes.php#soloway_jump_shift

[fromageGB]

My biggest issues are the total dominance of NT contracts when often a superior minor contract is there ...

There are two things to blame here, the most important being the scoring method. If NT and majors mainly score better then you need to investigate them as possible contracts, rather than minors, and sometimes there is insufficient space to do everything, given a limited hand.

 

The second is system. Driven by the first factor, many people use bids of a minor completely artificially in an effort to resolve strength, or major fits. Both have been espoused in this thread, eg 1M 2♣ (strength) and 1m 1M, 1NT 2m as checkback or new minor forcing (majors), or "XYZ" similarly. You CAN do something about this second if you wish, and have natural minor rebids, but only at the cost of playing something currently non-standard and not appropriate to this forum. Improving your minor bidding can come later, and anyway that is not a problem with 2/1 per se.

[Left2Right]

Hiya, Possum: You are beginning to sense the priorities designed into the 2/1 system. Let's clarify them.

 

We want to locate, in this order,

1) Slam complement whether minor or major (backing into notrump when available)

2) Game complement in a major

3) Game in NT

4) Game in a minor

5) Bailing into a partscore.

 

You will find many players who confuse priorities 3&4 with #1. They don't understand the rule of minors: Minors DO NOT become second class citizens unless and until one partner or the other can cogently dismiss the possibility of a minor suit slam (Priority 1 above).

 

Also the Notrump rule: We strain to end up in notrump rather than a minor unless notrump is an obvious death wish (Priority 3/4 above).

 

All of these priorities are driven by the score sheet.

[miamijd]

A few observations here.

 

1. At the very top level of bridge, there are two basic structures that are played: 2/1 and strong club (in its many variants). That's just about it. Yes, there are a very few exceptions, but 95% of top, world-class players use one of these two structures. That ought to tell you something.

 

2. The 2/1 structure isn't THAT different from the SAYC structure. The only major difference is that you bump the requirement for bidding 2x over 1M up by 2-3 points, and with the 10-bad 12 hands you used to bid 2x on, you instead bid 1NT forcing (or 3x, if you have 10-11 with a six-bagger and you have agreed to bid 3x invitational with that hand) . Yes, people generally add lots of bells and whistles, but most of those can be played with a SAYC structure, too.

 

Note that 1D-2C auctions aren't necessarily GF in a 2/1 structure, as there are many treatments (this auction is the bete noire of natural bidding systems). GIB SAYS it plays them as GF, but it doesn't!

 

3. 2/1 doesn't handle part-score auctions quite as well as SAYC does. It handles slam auctions 100% better. It also handles game auctions better (you can explore the right strain better). In MPs, I'm not sure it has a pronounced edge over SAYC. In IMPs, it's miles better.

 

4. GIB is a different animal altogether. Bidding, playing against, and defending with GIB are all quite complex; whole books could be written about all three topics.

 

Cheers,

Mike

[hrothgar]

One point that was alluded to earlier but might deserve to be made more explicit...

 

In order to understand bidding, it is useful to understand the notion of "captaincy". (Captaincy describes a situation in which one member of the partnership is best positioned to evaluate what contracts the partnership should be exploring)

 

Soloway type jump shifts are explicitly designed to make opener the captain of the auction. Responder is going to make a bid that will consume a lot of bidding space. But in doing so, they also will provide very specific information about their hand and position opener to explore for the best game / slam contract.

 

Responder still has the option of bidding 1♠ with a wide range of game forcing hand that don't fit the requirements for a jump shift.

[mikeh]

 

4. GIB is a different animal altogether. Bidding, playing against, and defending with GIB are all quite complex; whole books could be written about all three topics.

 

Cheers,

Mike

 

Those books might be entertaining but they would not be bridge books

[mikeh]

Oldpossum:

 

My take, fwiw, is that you are reading too much into the notion that GIB plays '2/1'. I've watched my wife play a lot of robot bridge, and whatever GIB is playing is an incoherent set of poorly chosen rules. I don't claim I could do better, in terms of programming (a subject where I am profoundly ignorant) but it is a very bad idea to try to learn how to bid by emulating GIB.

 

Indeed, we had a long thread here some years ago about whether there is even such a thing as a '2/1 system'. My view is that there probably is, in the very loose sense that there are many players who would expect a large number of common sub-agreements if you sat down opposite them and said 'let's play 2/1'. However, I also think that one would be extremely lucky, in that situation, to find out that one was in fact playing exactly the same 'system' as one's partner.

 

2/1 is more properly, described, imo, as a concept...as a philosophy about bidding methods. It provides a few basic ideas that will be (almost) universally used, and upon which players can build their own methods. Most do so by adding popular, broadly understood gadgets, and so one sees players with profiles listing some of their preferred gadgets, such as Bergen, Inverted Minors, 1430 RKCB, Flannery (ok, not so much Flannery these days, lol)

 

But even the basic elements are not universal.

 

1S 2C 2S 3C....is 3C forcing? Most would say yes, but some say no....that a simple rebid by responder of his suit is only invitational. That was a very common treatment in the early days of 2/1, but is less so these days.

 

How about 1S 1N?

 

Most assume that this has to be a force by an unpassed hand, but a growing number of players, particularly strong players, use it as semi-forcing. They do this by taking the 3 card limit raise (which traditionally was shown by 1N then 3M) and placing into the 2C response, which becomes either game-force or a 3 card limit raise.

 

So don't look at '2/1' as a 'system'. It's not. It is an idea that carries with it a few basic concepts, the most important of which is that, usually, one is able, as responder, to establish a gf very early and at a relatively low level. On balance this facilitates decisions as to strain and level, by the preservation of the vital but often overlooked concept of bidding space.

 

There is no free lunch, and this same advantage can create problems. 2/1 generally does a poor job when both opener and responder have 'extras' but neither is strong enough to look for slam opposite a minimum. As one gains more experience, and skill, one learns how to minimize this issue, but it is a basic flaw and one of the reasons why some very good players prefer a strong club method. Those of us who persist with a '2/1' based method feel that the benefits from the method offset this cost.

 

You gave as one concern issues you see with Soloway Jumpshifts, but it would be a mistake to argue that this is a systemic weakness in 2/1, if only because there is nothing about announcing 'I play 2/1' that means that you play Soloway Jumpshifts. You certainly can...they do make slam bidding easier when they arise, but I don't play them. It's not that I haven't played them...I have....it's merely that in my serious partnerships we play elaborate methods grafted onto the basic philosophy of 2/1.

 

I list some of our jumpshifts only to show you that announcing that one plays '2/1' says very little about the methods one actually plays....our CC does in fact describe our general approach as 2/1....but....

 

 

1C 2D shows a weak hand with 5 spades and 4+ hearts (meckwell)

2H shows a balanced invitational hand

2S shows a mixed raise in clubs

 

 

 

1D 2H is balanced invite

2S is mixed

 

 

1H 2S is a game force raise, akin to (modified) Jacoby 2N

3C is a 4 card constructive raise

3D is a 4 card limit raise

 

1S 3C is a 4 card constructive raise

3D is an invitational hand with 6+ hearts and spades no better than Jx

3H is a 4 card limit raise

 

 

 

And all of these have different meanings in competition or by a passed hand.

 

Not a strong jump shift amongst them.

 

Don't look at 2/1 as a straitjacket. Look at it as an attitude towards creating a coherent bidding structure.

 

Finally, my advice is that you really need to broaden your horizons in terms of learning. No string of posts here is going to be as useful as finding a good book by a good writer and reading, and re-reading, it. I suggest Mike Lawrence....while I have not read his book on 2/1, I have read and enjoyed other books and articles by him and have great respect for his bridge knowledge.

 

Not only is the Forum ill-suited to teaching broad concepts, but there is, to be polite, some variation in the knowledge and experience of the posters, and a beginning player will likely struggle to discern who is giving good advice and who...not so much. And playing in BBO isn't likely to help either. As a beginner/intermediate, you're going to be playing with and against players who have no clue, but that won't usually stop them chiming in with their opinions.

[nullve]

You may also think of 2/1 as a dialect continuum.

 

Some features of most 2/1 dialects spoken in Norway that are not found in Hardy-style 2/1:

 

* Acol-light 1-of-a-suit openings

* 1x-1y; 1N = 11(decent)-14

* 1M-1N is not even semi-forcing, and denies 3c support

* 1M-1N; 2m on a 3c suit (or, God forbid, doubleton) is almost unheard of

* 2-over-1 responses are "GF except rebid"

* 1M-2N is INV+ only (and called 'Invitt-Stenberg' (lit. 'Invitational Stenberg))

* 1♥-2♠ and 1M-3x(x<M) are mini-splinters

* 1N-2♣; 2♦-2♥ is Crawling Stayman

* 2N-3♣ is Puppet Stayman

 

Common agreements include

 

* 5542

* the (Dutch) version of T-Walsh where accept shows 3c support

* one of a) Multi + Muiderberg b) Multi + 5c Weak 2M c) Garbage Multi + Constructive Weak 2M

* 1M-3M as a preemptive raise

* one of d) 1M-2M as a "good" ("8-11") 3c raise" and 1M-[2M-1] as "NAT or bad ("4-7") 3c raise" e) 1M-2♣ as "NAT or INV 3c raise"

[pescetom]

You may also think of 2/1 as a dialect continuum.

I like this a lot. But as the article notes, nation-states (and I would add, internet even more) are steadily eliminating the nonstandard dialects within each zone, creating some pretty steep 'isoglosses' between south and north mainland Europe for instance.

 

2/1 dialects spoken in Italy are now remarkably uniform compared to just a few years ago:

* short 1♣ openings

* all 2/1 responses are unconditionally game forcing, including 1♦-2♣ and 1♣-2♣ (a new suit)

* 1x-1y; 1N = 11(decent)-14

* 1M-1N is semi-forcing, and denies 3c support

* 1M-2N is INV+ (and remains ON after interference, where it guarantees 4-card - a cue-bid would be 3-card)

* all jump responses are weak

* fast arrivals

* mixed first and second level control-bid sequences (more refined in Naples area)

* 1N-2♣ is 4-card Stayman with 3 replies, 2♣-2♦-2♥ is Crawling Stayman

* 2N-3♣ is Puppet Stayman.

One significant emerging variation is use of a 5-card Stayman over 1N, beginners are now taught this.

 

Similar dialects prevail in most of southern Europe, including Turkey which is well represented on BBO. France plays a slightly more traditional 2/1 (using better minor), but there are more similarities than differences. These are relatively simple and coherent systems, well understood by players from much of the world. But taken as a whole they are a very different kettle of fish from Hardy 2/1.

[helene_t]

Hi Possum,

 

I personally don't like 2/1 too much - I play it for the same reason as why I write this comment using a QWERTY keyboard: it happens to be the industry standard but other than that it is not great.

 

However, I am not sure what your specific issues with it is. The issues you raise don't seem to be 2/1 related as far as I can see.

 

Dominance of notrump contracts: If anything, 2/1 makes it easy to find minor suit slams because if partner opens 1M and you have a game forcing hand with primarily a minor, you can create a game force immediately while showing your minor suit at the same time. And if opener has support for you minor, he can raise it without having to fear that you pass.

 

It is true that if you have less than opening strength, you have to respond 1NT. But that doesn't normally prevent you from finding your minor suit fit. With about 7-9 points and a 6-card suit you can bid your minor next time, and otherwise opener might rebid a minor suit where you have a fit.

 

Soloway Jump Shifts Most 2/1 players don't play these. This is a choice you make that doesn't have much to do with your choice of basic approach.

 

Being left in 1NT when you don't want to play it: 1NT in response to a major suit opening is forcing in most 2/1 variants. If you play it as nonforcing (or semiforcing as some call it), you may consider making some tweeks to the system so that you don't bid 1NT with certains hand types. For example you can play intermediate (9-11 points) jumps shifts.

[pescetom]

Being left in 1NT when you don't want to play it: 1NT in response to a major suit opening is forcing in most 2/1 variants. If you play it as nonforcing (or semiforcing as some call it), you may consider making some tweeks to the system so that you don't bid 1NT with certains hand types.

 

Semiforcing is a strident oxymoron, but it is not just another name for nonforcing - opener can pass only with a minimum strength 5332 shape. As this shape is about 45% of major suit openings and 11-12 HCP is 24% of 11-19 HCP openings, this represents about 11% of traditional 5-card major openings - the other 89% of the time 1NT is 100% forcing. Combine this with the fact that actually playing 1NT with such a hand is rarely a disaster and it doesn't look to me like a good reason to start messing with the system.

[fromageGB]

Semiforcing is a strident oxymoron, but it is not just another name for nonforcing - opener can pass only with a minimum strength 5332 shape. As this shape is about 45% of major suit openings and 11-12 HCP is 24% of 11-19 HCP openings, this represents about 11% of traditional 5-card major openings - the other 89% of the time 1NT is 100% forcing. Combine this with the fact that actually playing 1NT with such a hand is rarely a disaster and it doesn't look to me like a good reason to start messing with the system.

It IS another name for non-forcing. "Forcing" means that systemically partner cannot pass. "Non-forcing" means "not forcing". If you open 1M and your system says that a 1NT reply may be passed, then that is not forcing. We are digressing, however.

[hrothgar]

It IS another name for non-forcing. "Forcing" means that systemically partner cannot pass. "Non-forcing" means "not forcing". If you open 1M and your system says that a 1NT reply may be passed, then that is not forcing. We are digressing, however.

 

Semi forcing is a sub set of non-forcing. As such, it makes sense to have a way to differentiate between them.

 

Folks have settled on such a term. Get over it.

[Vampyr]

Game in NT requires 9 tricks, while minor games need 11 tricks. That's a big disadvantage, so by default you should be aiming for 3NT when you have the minors, unless you have strong evidence to the contrary.

 

The big problem with 2/1 is when responder holds a 10-11 point hand with five hearts. It's hard to find 5-3 fits and get to game when it's right. Some pairs introduce conventions to try and fix this hole, but most people just accept it.

 

Some people play that 1♠-2♥ (and sometimes 1-♦-2♣) as non-GF where other 2/1 responses would be.

[pescetom]

Some people play that 1♠-2♥ (and sometimes 1-♦-2♣) as non-GF where other 2/1 responses would be.

 

IMO that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater, the essence of 2/1 is being able to describe distribution and force to game at the same time.

We even play 1♣-2♣ as a 2/1 GF over short club openings.