[blackshoe]

There's an awful lot of these, many out of print, but two fairly recent ones that I like a lot are Standard Modern Precision (SMP) by Dan Neill and Santa Fe Precision (SFP) by Dennis Dawson. The systems are nearly identical (especially in the 1♣ auctions, but each has its own idiosyncrasies. In particular, Neill spends quite a few pages on opening and responding with 'less than invitational values', but doesn't go into detail about responding to 1NT or 2NT or 1M. Dawson does go into detail on those areas, but doesn't talk much about 'less than invitational'. They both talk about many of the same "bells and whistles" to add on to the basic system, though there may be some differences in how they each handle those things.

Bottom line, I'd start with the first part of SMP as my basis, and then add whichever things look useful from either book.

Dawson tends to provide more "in later rounds of the auction do this" than does Neill, who asks you to fall back on what you already know from 2/1.

[DavidKok]

I presume there was an original question asking for book recommendations. I second Dan Neill's book, it explains the Mecklite system (SMP system) over the strong 1♣ opening very well. I found the rest of the book less impressive - for example, only spending 1.5 pages on dealing with interference to the 1♦ opening - but it is well structured and explains a lot of standard gadgets. There is a lot of overlap between a standard and a Precision system and this book explains all of it, so it is also suitable for players with limited experience with standard.

Another Precision book I liked was Precision today by Berkowitz and Manley. It is a more dated style, closer to C.C. Wei's original Precision, but I found it instructive and thorough as a point of comparison.

I also have a few negative recommendations:

• Precision in the 90s by Barry Rigal. Contains a lot of dated methods, and the book was very dry. In my opinion the main selling point was the explanation of symmetric relay over 1♣, but these days there are better explanations of that available online.
  
• Precision Bridge by Eric Jannersten. A well written book, but it contains extremely dated information. A lot of pages are spent on the Greek letter asking bids, which see almost no play these days and at any rate rarely come up even if you do play them.
  
• Revision Club, 4th edition by John Montgomery. This is a 451-page pdf containing in depth explanations of multiple rounds of the bidding - this really contains a full system, rather than a framework of one. Unfortunately it is non-standard, does not deal with competitive auctions in sufficient detail (though more than most other texts, e.g. 14 pages on competitive notes after the 1♣ opening and 6 pages on interference after the 1♦ opening) and a style that doesn't match what I'm looking for in a Precision system. I really like the foreword, introduction, and thorough explanations but I am not a great supporter of some of the system choices.

There's a few more Precision-adjacent books and notes I've read, such as Kit and Kate Relay, Mark Abraham's website on SCREAM, SCRAPE, T-Rex, TOSR, the Auby Ebenius Club notes and a few more relay systems and a host of individual articles here and there, though honestly I would not recommend most of them. While great as intellectual exercises I think most of these approaches do not score well in actual play.

[PrecisionL]

J.W. Hawthorne has published several books:

Pattern Club System.

Pattern Precision, 2018.

P4- Pattern Precision Bidding Emphasizing Four Card Majors.

Transfer-Oriented Pinpoint Precision (TOP3), 2020.

Strong Club recent books (not to be confused with Precision):

BFUN, Kevin Cadmus, 2020. Bridge For the UNbalanced.

Relay and canape using QP values.

Unbalanced Club (UBC), 2022. Houde & Loh.

A Strong Club System using Symmetric Relays, Canape, and many transfer bids to allow the strong hand to be Declarer.

[foobar]

DavidKok, on 2024-March-10, 01:09, said:

I presume there was an original question asking for book recommendations. I second Dan Neill's book, it explains the Mecklite system (SMP system) over the strong 1♣ opening very well. I found the rest of the book less impressive - for example, only spending 1.5 pages on dealing with interference to the 1♦ opening - but it is well structured and explains a lot of standard gadgets. There is a lot of overlap between a standard and a Precision system and this book explains all of it, so it is also suitable for players with limited experience with standard.

I also have a few negative recommendations:
[list]
[*]Precision in the 90s by Barry Rigal. Contains a lot of dated methods, and the book was very dry. In my opinion the main selling point was the explanation of symmetric relay over 1♣, but these days there are better explanations of that available online.

Completing the hattrtick of recommendations for Dan's book. Also, +1 for the non-recommendation above.

FWIW, I do think that the AEC treatment of 1D/2C/2D is superior to most Precision variants out there, and I would encourage aspiring partnerships to see if can combine it with the rest of SMP.

[blackshoe]

If we're gonna talk about relay systems, Nick Hughes' Symmetric Relay is pretty interesting, covering a lot of possibilities (Moscito anyone?) I particularly liked SCAMp (Strong Club Accenting Majors) and SPAM (Strong Pass Accenting Majors). As I've said elsewhere, I'd like to try SPAM, but Mommy won't let me.

[ynhhyjb]

blackshoe, on 2024-March-17, 02:01, said:

If we're gonna talk about relay systems, Nick Hughes' Symmetric Relay is pretty interesting, covering a lot of possibilities (Moscito anyone?) I particularly liked SCAMp (Strong Club Accenting Majors) and SPAM (Strong Pass Accenting Majors). As I've said elsewhere, I'd like to try SPAM, but Mommy won't let me.

I like Nick Hughes' Symmetric Relay,I want to buy Nick Hughes' Symmetric Relay book.

[Kungsgeten]

In Sweden the Carrot team (Anders Morath, Tjolpe Flodqvist and others) has been a great influence on strong club methods. There's a book on the first version of the system -- Morotsklövern -- but I don't know if it has been translated into English. It also differs quite a lot from the "American Precision" popular today.

However one thing that I find nice in it is the positive responses to 1 club. If you don't want relays I think of it as a good base for mostly natural continuations:

1C--
1H = "Catch-all". No 5M, 6m, nor 5-5 minors.
1S = 5+H
1NT = 5+S
2m = 6 card minor
2H = 5-5 minors
2S = 5-5 majors

To make it even easier I like to make 1H an artificial super-positive, and make the others limited (shifted up one step):

1H = Any 12+
1S = Catch-all
1NT = Hearts
2C = Spades
2D = Clubs
2H = Diamonds
2S = Minors
2NT = Majors

[PrecisionL]

Another scheme:

Responses to 1♣ (16+ Unbalanced, 17+ balanced):

1♦ 0-7
1♥ 12+
1♠ 8-11, 4+♥ (may have longer minor, canape)
1NT 8-11, 4+♠ (may have longer minor, canape)
2♣ 8-11, Minor(s): 6, 5-4, 6-4. 5-5
2♦ 8-13, Balanced, includes 5332 hands
2♥ 14+ Balanced
2♠ 8-11, Any 4441
2NT & up 8-11, Semi-Solid 6-cd suits

After 1♥, 1♠ is the relay with the same design starting at 1NT = 4+♠ & 2♥ = 4+♥ (& balanced hands are 14+)

[steve2005]

PrecisionL, on 2025-October-27, 07:39, said:

Another scheme:
2♥ 14+ Balanced
2♠ 8-11, Any 4441

This comes up in SMP to using 2♠ for 4441 and 2♥ for some sort of balanced hand.
Why not use 2♥ as 4441 and 2♠ as balanced?
2♠ is still low enough you can resolve balanced hand types conveniently.
But if 2♥ is used for 4441 then 2NT can ask for suit below the singleton (or 2NT for singleton club)
Then you can bid the singleton and get the number of controls at a lower level than if you were using 2♠ and asking for the singleton.

[DavidKok]

steve2005, on 2025-October-31, 19:02, said:

Why not use 2♥ as 4441 and 2♠ as balanced?

There are multiple good reasons for why this is a bad idea:

• Despite the HCP difference, the balanced hands are more common. Conditioning on a strong 1♣ opening and no overcall, responder has an 8-11 4441 type hand (any singleton) around 1.1% of the time, and a 14+ balanced (any 4333, 4432 or 5332) hand around 2.9% of the time.¹ It makes sense to assign the lower bids to the more common hand types, to improve exchange of information.
  
• The 4x1 bid only contains 4 distributions (the singleton shares the entire shape), versus 16-28 in the balanced bid depending on which hands you exclude. There is a much greater need to exchange information after responder shows a balanced hand, looking for 4-4 or 5-3 fits. We should therefore allocate even more bidding space to the balanced hands than the raw frequencies suggest.
  
• I am surprised to see you claim that resolving number of controls of the 8-11 HCP 4441-type hand is so critical. With the range and shape already accurately shared I think opener is often not going to want to ask for controls, especially since it's a minimum positive range.
  
• Helene and I used 1♣-2♥ and 1♣-1♥; 1♠-2♥ as the balanced hands (split by range, and there were some rare exceptions). We excluded 5M332 but kept the rest, and had a two-way asking structure over these starts with higher bids instead showing as opener. This structure is based on RM Precision. Despite that, this still felt like one of the weaker areas of our response structure to me, and I'd love to have a better understanding of how we could have improved our balanced hand bidding. To me it is very surprising that you claim to be able to resolve balanced hands conveniently starting at 2♠. I would love to see what your continuations are.

More generally, I think it is a somewhat common failure mode to start designing a response structure centered around 5+ suits and balanced hands, then struggle with 4x1 (and maybe also 5440), then overcompensate by designing a big gadget for it. By frequency the pure three-suiters are very low priority, even more so once we condition on no interference. I think it's interesting to discuss options to show these hand types, but a mistake to allocate an otherwise useful bid or sequence to them.


¹If we change the point ranges the ratio skews even more in favour of the balanced hands, of course. For example, all 8+ 4441 responses make up around 1.6%, whereas all 8+ balanced hands make up around 24.9%, give or take a point or so from my limited (100,000 1♣-opening-followed-by-no-overcall) simulation.