[perko90]

I know we can't have 1 CC that satisfies everybody. Nonetheless, I find that some form of Drury (usually a "reverse" variant) is almost universally played. I was shocked when I learned GIB doesn't support it. I'd like to make a case for adding this to GIB's repertoire. Please add your 2 cents w/ a vote or msg.

[EricK]

How light does GIB open in 3rd seat?

[Bbradley62]

EricK, on 2012-June-08, 01:03, said:

How light does GIB open in 3rd seat?

Or: how light would GIB open in third seat if he played Drury?

[mgoetze]

Your poll does not seem to have an option which expresses my wishes well: I would like GIB to play Drury, but there are a lot of other system changes which I would much rather see and should, IMHO, have higher priority, including but not limited to GIB's NT defense and getting rid of those horrible "Soloway Jumpshifts".

[blackshoe]

What is your objection to Soloway Jumpshifts? What would you play instead? Why is whatever you play so much better?

Not trying to be stroppy here, I'm genuinely curious.

[perko90]

mgoetze, on 2012-June-08, 07:11, said:

Your poll does not seem to have an option which expresses my wishes well: I would like GIB to play Drury, but there are a lot of other system changes which I would much rather see and should, IMHO, have higher priority, including but not limited to GIB's NT defense and getting rid of those horrible "Soloway Jumpshifts".

Funny you should mention defense to 1NT. It's a topic near and dear to my heart. And Capp / Hamilton (as GIB plays) is probably one of my least favorite choices. Stevenson's excellent site captures well how wide the choices are:
http://www.blakjak.d...k/def_1nt01.htm
Meckwell and Pagan are 2 of my favorite choices, but I'd guess few players would agree with me.
I'll save the defense of 1NT discussion for another time because I doubt there's even a large minority (much less a majority) that could agree on what the alternative should be.

I focused on Drury because I'm guessing there would be a super-majority of interest in having it added. And it seemed like the "low hanging fruit."

[barmar]

GIB doesn't make light third-seat openings.

I also disagree that Drury is "universally played". My guess is it's about 75% of advanced/expert players, but less than 20% of the vast majority of players who are below that level.

I'm personally not a huge fan of Drury. I'll play it if my partner really wants to, but my preference is to not open garbage even in third seat.

[mgoetze]

blackshoe, on 2012-June-08, 07:28, said:

What is your objection to Soloway Jumpshifts? What would you play instead? Why is whatever you play so much better?

Not trying to be stroppy here, I'm genuinely curious.

My main objection is that I don't know the system and I seriously doubt most of the people playing with GIB know it. I have had some real surprises come up in such auctions.

What I personally would play is different from what I would recommend for GIB. Personally I play Invitational Jump Shifts. As a package with my 14-16 1NT openers, they allow for a completely nonforcing 1NT response which I quite like.

I think for GIB many people would be happy with Bergen over majors and weak jumps or reverse flannery over minors. Personally I am not that fond of Bergen but moreso than I am of any sort of Strong Jump Shift.

[mgoetze]

mgoetze, on 2012-June-08, 08:58, said:

My main objection is that I don't know the system and I seriously doubt most of the people playing with GIB know it. I have had some real surprises come up in such auctions.

An example that just came up:

---

Shouldn't GIB's 4♠ deny a club or diamond cue? If not, what is the point of bidding this way rather than starting with 1♠? I totally fail to see the value of strong jump shifts if GIB is going to treat them like this. But probably I just don't understand them... I have never in my life played "Soloway Jump Shifts" except when playing with GIB.

[Vampyr]

Perhaps the future really is to have GIB programmable.

[aguahombre]

Perk: could you fix the link to David's great summary? Been looking for it.

[Stephen Tu]

My opinions:
Drury:

- I think it's a fairly good, useful convention even when one *doesn't* open particularly light 3rd/4th seat. An invitational raise is one of the most common "good" hands responder can have. It's very nice to be able to:
1. Have fairly uninformative p-1s-2c-4s auctions without revealing much of either hand to the opponents
2. If opener is not accepting an invite, to be able to get out at the 2 level. Even when you have 8 cd fit and invitational values, 3M doesn't always make! Things can split bad, both hooks fail, etc.

It's much more common than hands where a natural 2c really helps you, and I'd want these benefits even if never opening light.

As for the commonness of Drury, I'd also argue with barmar that it's more like 90% of the players that also play most of GIB's other bag of tricks. Sure, it's less common among beginners, but beginners don't play Lebensohl either, and GIB plays that (poorly) and other fancy stuff like RKC.

Soloway jump shifts:
GIB's lack of intelligent cue bidding after the first couple bids is a separate issue than the merits of SJS themselves. Would you rather have a 2s ... 3s forcing sequence available, or be stuck after 1h-1s-?-? where 3s is not forcing and you have to bid a nebulous 3c or something, no guarantee of being able to bid 3s next, and partner having no idea if 3s is solid suit and you have merely a GF or something close to a slam invite?

[mgoetze]

Stephen Tu, on 2012-June-09, 10:13, said:

Soloway jump shifts:
GIB's lack of intelligent cue bidding after the first couple bids is a separate issue than the merits of SJS themselves. Would you rather have a 2s ... 3s forcing sequence available, or be stuck after 1h-1s-?-? where 3s is not forcing and you have to bid a nebulous 3c or something, no guarantee of being able to bid 3s next, and partner having no idea if 3s is solid suit and you have merely a GF or something close to a slam invite?

Let's look more closely at those question marks. If the first one is 2♣ we can now establish a game force cheaply with 2♦, which I think is wonderful. If it's 2♦ or 2♥, well then if 1♥-2♠ would have been weak, then 2♠ now is forcing, and 3♠ can still show this hand, so I think we still have a net gain.

[Stephen Tu]

mgoetze, on 2012-June-09, 10:24, said:

Let's look more closely at those question marks. If the first one is 2♣ we can now establish a game force cheaply with 2♦, which I think is wonderful. If it's 2♦ or 2♥, well then if 1♥-2♠ would have been weak, then 2♠ now is forcing, and 3♠ can still show this hand, so I think we still have a net gain.

- You are assuming European style weak jump shifts (= roughly weaker end weak 2 bid) rather than American style, where 1s ... 2s is forward going, whereas with American wjs direct 2s is ~0-5 and 1s ... 2s is still 6-9 NF. Fine, I've always thought the European style makes more sense.
- Even so, why would bidding 1s ... 2s be forcing? Wouldn't it just be inv, non-forcing? Isn't one of the supposed gains to be able to inv with 2s and stay low when opener is min/mis-fit?
- So then 3s has to handle both GF hands with 6 cd spade suits and these slam-invite solid/semi-solid hands, which is somewhat less accurate.

- Even though on the one auction 1h-1s-2c-2d, you have established low level gf, in my view it often doesn't help you all that much. Because 2d has to encompass so many different hand types, the info partner gives you on his next bid won't really help you when you have a self-sufficient one-suiter; his bid is shape rather than controls. Only after you clarify by bidding 3s will he cue-bid, and you are pretty much in the same position.

Now on the whole, perhaps playing weak jump shifts is better. But when you actually have the hand for a Soloway jump shift (3 hand types: solid 1-suiter, semi-bal 17/18-19, 2-suiter with big fit for partner's opening), they often do improve the auctions in my experience on the 1m-2M hands, especially the ones with a big minor fit where it's often hard to reach 6m otherwise. And since GIB is playing "Standard American with gadgets", it's very weird for it to suddenly start bidding in a more European fashion with regards to wjs and bidding 1s ... 2s as inv, 1s ... 3s as forcing. You'd be confusing a ton of Americans on BBO. Better that it play sjs, just improve the cue-bidding logic.

Now as for 1M-3Y, that's a different matter since GIB is playing 2/1; I think it would be best for GIB to play these as invitational, as it presently doesn't handle inv hands very well, bidding 1nt ... 3m on a very wide range.

[mgoetze]

Stephen Tu, on 2012-June-09, 13:07, said:

You'd be confusing a ton of Americans on BBO.

But will that net more or less confused people than Soloway Jump Shifts?

[steve2005]

mgoetze, on 2012-June-08, 07:11, said:

Your poll does not seem to have an option which expresses my wishes well: I would like GIB to play Drury, but there are a lot of other system changes which I would much rather see and should, IMHO, have higher priority, including but not limited to GIB's NT defense and getting rid of those horrible "Soloway Jumpshifts".

Cappelletti OK, has advantage that a lot of people know it. Also works vs weak or str nt

[mgoetze]

steve2005, on 2012-June-10, 09:49, said:

Cappelletti OK, has advantage that a lot of people know it. Also works vs weak or str nt

I disagree strongly - especially the way GIB plays it (2M as 5-4 either way etc.).

[Siegmund]

Quote

Shouldn't GIB's 4♠ deny a club or diamond cue?

I think it should, yes. (But remember GIB shows first-round controls first, so it wouldn't have bid 4C for you anyway... though it didnt say 0-7 8421 points in C and D, either.) The way I play Soloway, even 4H should unambiguously be a heart cue over 3S.

Returning to the main thread, not all that eager to see Drury added, think there are many other more important refinements to make.