[straube]

 awm, on 2011-March-23, 23:24, said:

My experience with the 3-card raise vs. 4-card raise is very different from Mike and Noble's.

There are a few reasons for this. Perhaps the main one is that the direct raise in my style is very often a 3-card raise (when it's a 4-card raise it's a pretty pitiful hand, almost always 4522 and very minimum)... and the 2♦ bid is almost always a 4-card raise (could be a very maximum 3-carder that might make game opposite Mike's 10-count). So in this sense it does not matter all that much. The issue is that hands like Mike's example are much less common than balanced 11-12 counts, which have an easy pass over my "bad raise" and bid on over my "good raise." Knowing your total trump length doesn't necessarily help you here since you still have to try for game with 11-12 opposite a full 10-15 even if you know that you only have a seven-card spade fit. I get out in 2♠ a lot on these hands, and also collect the occasional number when opponents make an ill advised balancing call, and I think this is a much bigger win than getting to your 5-2 heart fit instead of your 4-3 spade fit at the two-level.

I've found this true for our 1D-1S, 2S and 1D-1S, 2H auctions...which we use as bad and good raises, same as you. It's generally more important to know the strength first and then figure out if we need to find a better strain next.

How do you continue after 1H-1S, 2S for your limited hands? Is 2N asking or nf invitational?

Also, if 1H-1S, 2D shows a good raise, why not use a 2H rebid as a further inquiry instead of to play?

[bluecalm]

If this is for strong club system, do you want to open 15-16 count balanced hands with 5M-3-3-2 with 1M ? Because if you open those 1NT then I really can't see what there is to gain from this treatment.
I see a lot of losses though:
a)not being able to play in 1NT is bad. With 4-2-4-3 I really don't want to go anywhere else, especially if the hand is nt'ish
b)being forced to raise with 3 spades (4-2-(4-3)) is just bad in my opinion as 1NT is the better contract most of the time.
c)4-1-4-4 hands are going to play 2m on 7trumps instead of 1NT (disaster at MP's)
d)6m-4M hands below GF are now playing in 2♠ instead of 2m opposite 3spades which I don't like. At imps I also prefer to be able to play 2m with 4M-5m.

Quick simul shows that 1NT makes 52% of the time and 2♠ 37% of the time with 3-5-(2-3) 11-14hcp opposite 4-2-(4-3) 7-10hcp. So we are losing about an imp every time this comes up. At MP we are throwing away tons of points.

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How do you continue after 1H-1S, 2S for your limited hands? Is 2N asking or nf invitational?

Also this. If 2NT is asking then we are going to play 3S on 7 trumps 4-3 which is even worse than this 1NT vs 2S. If it's natural invitational with 4trumps then slam/game bidding will suffer.

[Free]

 MickyB, on 2011-March-23, 11:24, said:

I think Free was asking why you rebid 1NT instead of 2C on a 2533.

Yes, that's explaining it in a simple way

[MickyB]

 bluecalm, on 2011-March-24, 01:17, said:

Quick simul shows that 1NT makes 52% of the time and 2♠ 37% of the time with 3-5-(2-3) 11-14hcp opposite 4-2-(4-3) 7-10hcp. So we are losing about an imp every time this comes up. At MP we are throwing away tons of points.

Why constrain responder to 4-2-(4-3)? Other hands would pass both 1NT and 2S.

I'd be interested to see how 2H in the 5-2 fares compared with 1NT and 2S, if you are running any more sims

[awm]

A few comments on this double-dummy stuff:

(1) This result seems different from prior results I've seen, which suggest that a 7-card major fit is very often superior to 1NT (these kinds of sims are often used to justify playing forcing 1NT, although I suppose it's possible that 5-2 fit >> 1NT >> 4-3 fit, although the data I've seen doesn't support that at all). Perhaps the difference is inclusion of some other shapes like 42(25) and 4144?

(2) You seem to be forgetting that 2♠ outscores 1NT when both contracts make exactly. This fact could easily make 2♠ a fairly substantial matchpoint winner (even if 1NT does make more often) and also makes the IMP scoring result a lot closer.

[bluecalm]

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(these kinds of sims are often used to justify playing forcing 1NT

That is very weak argument for forcing 1NT. Main reason to play it to not miss 5-3, 6-3, 6-2 or 7-1/7-2 fits not only that 5-2 might be better than 1NT.
As to your point about 4-2-2-5 and 4-1-4-4, yeah that makes sense. Unfortunately calculations takes a lot of time if I want to calculate exact amount of tricks and to answer this question I would have to do at least 3 or 4 of them.
Just before I decide to devote more time to this question, do you believe playing 2♠ over 1NT on those (ie the ones which would pass natural 1NT) is a winner at MP's or do you think it's more or less a wash ?

[awm]

I believe that in general playing a style where we routinely play 4-3 major fits instead of 1NT when opener's hand is balanced (but never 4333) is a matchpoint winner. It seems obvious that the approach will do better when responder's hand is less balanced, although this is probably less important than suit quality in the 4-card holding.

At IMPs I'd expect 1NT to be slightly better, but I believe that "an imp a board where this comes up" is a big overstatement of the effect.

Basically my expectation is that 2M will make one more trick than 1NT most of the time, the same number of tricks a smaller fraction of the time, and a wildly different number of tricks quite rarely; something like 60-30-10 seems about right to me. At MP this makes 2M better (win 60-70% of the time); at IMPs of course the issue is that most of the wins for 2M are +1 IMP whereas some fraction of the losses (but clearly not all of them) are seven tricks in each contract which is lose 4 or 5.

[bluecalm]

I did quick simul: 4-2-(4-3), 4-1-4-4, 4-2-(5-2) shapes for responder, 3-5-(2-3) for opener.
2♠ makes 0.6 tricks more on average (while still making 10% less often). To calculate EV of one vs the other I would have to through all the frequencies and see. I am not going to work anymore on this. I think there might be something to what you are saying at matchpoints. It's interesting and increase variance which is also good.

[fromageGB]

 mike gill, on 2011-March-23, 22:06, said:

1♥ 1♠
1n = 2533 or 4+♦
2♣ = clubs
2♦ = 3-card spade support

I like this. Adam's is too complex for me, and I think it important not to raise spades on 3, for the reasons Mike said. This still gives responder the 2♣ 4SF over the 1NT.

[bluecalm]

On side note, Italians pairs solved this with Gazilli and top precision pairs solved this with opening 1NT on 15-16hcp and 5M-3-3-2.
I much prefer both of those. What is the reason you want different solution to this problem ?
I can understand the desire to play in 4-3♠ at matchpoints but even if it's better than 1NT it won't make up for 4-3 minor fits instead of 1NT (plus if you really want to you can raise to 2♠ with 3♠ - 5♥ - (3-2) and 11-14hcp anyway).

[MickyB]

 bluecalm, on 2011-March-26, 10:47, said:

On side note, Italians pairs solved this with Gazilli and top precision pairs solved this with opening 1NT on 15-16hcp and 5M-3-3-2.
I much prefer both of those. What is the reason you want different solution to this problem ?
I can understand the desire to play in 4-3♠ at matchpoints but even if it's better than 1NT it won't make up for 4-3 minor fits instead of 1NT (plus if you really want to you can raise to 2♠ with 3♠ - 5♥ - (3-2) and 11-14hcp anyway).

This structure is massively better than Gazilli. You have more room on your strong hands, you can stop in 2C, you have more flexibility when you have diamonds and you have two ways of raising spades. All this for losing the option to rebid a natural 1NT the one time in twenty-five that you are dealt a 2533 weak NT.

[awm]

 bluecalm, on 2011-March-26, 10:47, said:

On side note, Italians pairs solved this with Gazilli and top precision pairs solved this with opening 1NT on 15-16hcp and 5M-3-3-2.
I much prefer both of those. What is the reason you want different solution to this problem ?
I can understand the desire to play in 4-3♠ at matchpoints but even if it's better than 1NT it won't make up for 4-3 minor fits instead of 1NT (plus if you really want to you can raise to 2♠ with 3♠ - 5♥ - (3-2) and 11-14hcp anyway).

You seem to be referring to different problems.

The main issue I'm concerned about is the specific natural auction 1♥-1♠-2♦, where it is very difficult for responder to force game in an informative way. This is the incentive behind having diamond hands rebid 1NT, which allows a cheap 4th suit bid to distinguish GF from invite hands. Yes, this causes slight problems when opener is 5332 (you don't have 1NT natural anymore) but 2/1 players seem to have given up on playing 1NT exactly after a 1M opening in a lot of other sequences (and it doesn't seem to lose them huge amounts of IMPs or MPs).

The secondary issue is the one solved by Gazilli. But the observation is that if I am going to play opener's 1NT rebid as artificial and forcing anyway (to deal with the problem of the natural 2♦ rebid), then perhaps it is better to use this 1NT bid as the Gazilli two-way bid rather than using the 2♣ rebid. This has the advantage of letting me play in two of either minor when it's minimum opposite minimum (i.e. getting rid of the main downside of Gazilli -- that you can't play in 2♣ any more).

[bluecalm]

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All this for losing the option to rebid a natural 1NT the one time in twenty-five that you are dealt a 2533 weak NT.

it depends on the system. In precision 1♥ opener is 5-3-3-2, 11-14pc once every 3.8 or 26%.
In "standard" it's once in 4.47 or 22%. Nowhere close to what you are saying.
If we remove 5H-4S shapes (and 5-3-3-2, 15-16pc) it will be even higher (because with those it doesn't matter what's our agreement).

Quote

The main issue I'm concerned about is the specific natural auction 1♥-1♠-2♦, where it is very difficult for responder to force game in an informative way

Oh, I see. I forgot that it's a problem at all because in Poland everybody plays that 2NT is GF here which solves a lot of those problems. Also I like playing that 2♠ here is GF and natural 5+spades (Meckwell treatment) but it's probably only good in precision. So I usually have 3 games forcing bids here: 2♠, 2NT and 3♣. It was easy for me to forget that not being able to force to game comfortably could be a problem here

Quote

e secondary issue is the one solved by Gazilli. But the observation is that if I am going to play opener's 1NT rebid as artificial and forcing anyway (to deal with the problem of the natural 2♦ rebid), then perhaps it is better to use this 1NT bid as the Gazilli two-way bid

With this I agree. I wouldn't want to give up natural 1NT ever in this sequence but if I am to do it for some reason then some kind of structure as you present seems to be very good.

[straube]

What do Meckwell rebid with 3-5-4-1 or 3-5-1-4? I've assumed the minor and not sure if that's right. We use 1H-1S, 2m/2H-2S as a GF asking bid (which also promises 5 spades) which is similar to what they do I think.

This idea of 1H-1S, 1N as diamonds seems to me to be a big win for standard, but less of a win for limited (10-15) openings. I'm thinking Adam will disagree with this because he applied something similar to his strong club system, but his 1H ranges 8-15 or so and that may be enough of a difference for it to matter a lot.

For the 10-15 range, I seemed to have a sudden abundance of room after 1H-1S, 1N and 1H-1S, 2C when I gave up 2C and 2D respectively for artificial bids of some kind. When I have too much room, I'm always wary that I've given up too much elsewhere to get it. What is 1H-1S, 2C-2D for Meckwell? I'm guessing it's to play (I remember their very old notes said 1S-1N, 2C-2D was to play and not BART) because their 2S bid is GF and how much need do they have for a second artificial bid? To show 6 spades GI at the 2-level I suppose or to differentiate light club raises from heavy club raises.

We frequently rebid 1N with 2-5-(42) as well as 5332s.

One side benefit to 1H-1S, 1N is that responder can now describe his shape. Let's say he has 5-1-4-3. He has room enough to show this and see if opener likes the mesh. If responder has raised spades with a 35(32) there isn't room to do this.

[MickyB]

 bluecalm, on 2011-March-26, 11:46, said:

it depends on the system. In precision 1♥ opener is 5-3-3-2, 11-14pc once every 3.8 or 26%.
In "standard" it's once in 4.47 or 22%. Nowhere close to what you are saying.
If we remove 5H-4S shapes (and 5-3-3-2, 15-16pc) it will be even higher (because with those it doesn't matter what's our agreement).

4% was referring to 2-5-3-3 precisely [as you seemed to be arguing that it was reasonable to play a natural 1NT rebid even if you chose to raise on 3-5-(32)]. Also, many 14s will get upgraded, and some 11s won't get opened.

Even so, your figures look too high to me, I get 11-14 5H(332) at 1.1% of total hands and 11-13 2533 as 0.3% of total hands. A conservative [11+] definition for a 1H opening gives 11-14 bal as one time in six, while rule-of-19 makes it less than one time in seven.

[straube]

 MickyB, on 2011-March-26, 12:27, said:

4% was referring to 2-5-3-3 precisely [as you seemed to be arguing that it was reasonable to play a natural 1NT rebid even if you chose to raise on 3-5-(32)]. Even so, your figures look too high to me, I get 11-14 5H(332) at 1.1% of total hands and 11-13 2533 as 0.3% of total hands.

I think his figures were percentages of heart openers, not total hands.

[bluecalm]

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What do Meckwell rebid with 3-5-4-1 or 3-5-1-4?

Always a minor.

Quote

What is 1H-1S, 2C-2D for Meckwell? I'm guessing it's to play (I remember their very old notes said 1S-1N, 2C-2D was to play and not BART)

I guess you are referring to 1H - 1NT - 2C - 2D ? Then I am pretty sure it's natural.

We play that 2NT is forcing if there is not 3rd or 4th suit below 2NT, so:

1H - 1S
2C - 2NT = invite

1D - 1S
2C - 2NT = invite

1H - 1S
2D - 2NT = forcing

1H - 1S
2H - 2NT = forcing

1D - 1S
2D - 2NT = invite

etc.

[wclass___]

Flannery <3

[straube]

Meckwell plays (I think) 1H-2S is six spades and less than GI so they always have a prepared 2S bid which is GF

I was wondering if then 1H-1S, 2C-2D was to play.

[olien]

So, if 5143 is such a problem after 1♥ - 1♠ // 2♣ (assuming that 2♠ is the game force), why not play 2♦ there shows exactly 5♠ and an invitational hand. Then the auction can proceed smoothly and can stop in 2M.

Just an idea