[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

My partner is currently thinking to switch to a 4 point range NT opening,
switching from 12-14 ro 12-15. (*)
I mentioned to him, that I have seen a couple of discussion (on BBF),
which to my knowledge were critical regarding the merits.
Now being the lazy the guy I am, and also no very well versed with
regards to the search function on BBF, I would just ask you to to give
me some arguments, either pro or contra.

Thanks for any comments.

If you think, that there add. systemic interferences like (not) playing Walsh,
it would be great, if you could mentioned those as well.

With kind regards
Marlowe

(*) The reason we want to modify the NT range is, that we want to make
the 2NT rebid forcing, we already play a wide ranging 1NT rebid 15-18,
and my feeling is, that a NT rebid of 15-19 is easier to handle than a
12-15 1 NT opening bid.

[mikeh]

In one partnership, to humour my (very good) partner, I play 11-14. I hate it.

Why?

Because responder has to invite opposite 11-14 on hands on which he would happily pass opposite 11-13, and has to invite on hands on which he would happily force opposite 12-14.

In the former situation, we will sometimes play 2N when we should be in 1N. Not a big deal, you say? Those not infrequent 4-5 imp losses add up.

In the latter, we will occasionally miss a game, if I am opener, because I will reject with a mediocre 12. My partner, otoh, is somewhat more aggressive and then the problem is that we will often reach a game when it turns out I had one of the former hands...now we are 2 tricks higher than we need to be!

As with any method, the more hands you cram into a particular bid, the less accurate your bidding will be.

My partner feels the cost is worth the gains he believes flow from the method. I and the others with whom I play various weak notrump ranges, disagree.

[gwnn]

I'll see what I can do re older topics.

I played 12-15 sometimes. I hated hated 10 and 11 counts. My partner didn't seem to care too much and just passed on 10 and invited on 11. It is a method that really doesn't work.

[Fluffy]

4 point range works poorly since invitationals are hard to messure.

Worst or all is when you get overcalled and have to decide if you force to game inmediatelly

[1eyedjack]

P_Marlowe, on Jan 10 2010, 06:11 PM, said:

my  feeling  is, that a NT rebid of 15-19 is easier to handle than a 12-15 1 NT opening bid.

I disagree with this statement. I see the argument. You have each got a suit in on the way to 1N rebid, so as you have defined your shape more narrowly you can afford to relax the precision on strength. I think the argument is flawed. A 15-19 rebid is effectively forcing (19 + any response being enough for a shot at game).

For years I have played 1N opener 12-14, 1N rebid 15-17, jump 2N rebid 18-20 and forcing. Yes you can get into a tight spot with 18 opposite a minimum response. Nothing is perfect. But probably better to maintain higher level of precision with the more frequent (weaker) ranges.

I have partners who insist on 11-14 1N non-vul. I have reservations, for the same theoretical reasons that Mikeh has mentioned, but for some reason the reality does not crop up as often as I fear.

[awm]

It seems curious to me that a lot of the arguments against a four-point range also seem to imply that a two-point range would be better than a three-point range. Yet no one seems to be trying a two-point range and it got bad reviews from the forums too when it was brought up in a thread at some point.

[Siegmund]

In principle it should be possible; we don't seem to have any trouble coping with the 4-point range for the 1NT rebid in an auction like 1♣-1♠-1NT. Two thoughts come to mind:

Over the 3-point range 1NT opening, the invitational sequences are nearly idle bids (opposite 15-17, passing all 8s and bidding 3 with all 9s works pretty well. You almost always lose more going down one in 2NT than you gain from finding thin games when you invite.) Over a 4-point range you will actually use them a lot. The previous posters regard this more as a flaw than a feature.

If your point count is wider then the distributional range needs to be narrower. We cope fine with non-notrump opening bids with 6 to 9 point ranges, after all. I think where you run into trouble with a 4-point NT range is if you still want to put every balanced and semibalanced hand under the sun into it. Thinking back to 1♣-1♠-1NT, here opener's distribution is 1-3 spades 2-4 hearts 2-4 diamonds 2-5 clubs (the 4 spade and 6 club hands, along with all the 5-card major hands, have been removed, and only the 1345ish hands have been added.) If you DO play a 4- or even 5-point NT, I think you have to do that by constraining the distribution quite tightly, perhaps tighter even than a 1950s NT opening. (That may defeat your purpose, if you're trying to take all the balanced hands in a certain range out of another sequence.)

[1eyedjack]

awm, on Jan 10 2010, 08:34 PM, said:

It seems curious to me that a lot of the arguments against a four-point range also seem to imply that a two-point range would be better than a three-point range. Yet no one seems to be trying a two-point range and it got bad reviews from the forums too when it was brought up in a thread at some point.

There are just too many point-possibilities to fit into too few bids to justify the luxury of a 2 point range, perhaps? If you have a 2 point range somewhere then that would require a 4 or 5 point range somewhere else.

[nigel_k]

The arguments for each side are pretty obvious - but it's the weights you attach to them that are hard to work out. I prefer a three point range for both the opening and rebid but don't feel really strongly about it. I do agree with 1eyedjack that the rebid doesn't really cope with a wider range any better than the opening does.

[P_Marlowe]

Siegmund, on Jan 10 2010, 02:39 PM, said:

In principle it should be possible; we don't seem to have any trouble coping with the 4-point range for the 1NT rebid in an auction like 1♣-1♠-1NT. Two thoughts come to mind:

Over the 3-point range 1NT opening, the invitational sequences are nearly idle bids (opposite 15-17, passing all 8s and bidding 3 with all 9s works pretty well. You almost always lose more going down one in 2NT than you gain from finding thin games when you invite.) Over a 4-point range you will actually use them a lot. The previous posters regard this more as a flaw than a feature.

If your point count is wider then the distributional range needs to be narrower. We cope fine with non-notrump opening bids with 6 to 9 point ranges, after all. I think where you run into trouble with a 4-point NT range is if you still want to put every balanced and semibalanced hand under the sun into it. Thinking back to 1♣-1♠-1NT, here opener's distribution is 1-3 spades 2-4 hearts 2-4 diamonds 2-5 clubs (the 4 spade and 6 club hands, along with all the 5-card major hands, have been removed, and only the 1345ish hands have been added.) If you DO play a 4- or even 5-point NT, I think you have to do that by constraining the distribution quite tightly, perhaps tighter even than a 1950s NT opening. (That may defeat your purpose, if you're trying to take all the balanced hands in a certain range out of another sequence.)

I would like to add or comment, that after a 1NT rebid, the complexity needed to
locate your possible 8 card major suit fit is reduced.
This is even more true, if you happen to play some sort of Walsh.

At least your comment + my addition is the reason, why I think the NT rebid can
more easily handle a wider point range.
Another factor is, that in a weak NT system (12-14), the number of hands interested
in staying low after a NT rebid (15-17) is a lot smaller than in a strong NT system.

[awm]

Well it seems easy enough in a strong club system to play something like:

1♦...1NT = 12-13
1NT = 14-15
1♣...1NT = 16-18
1♣...1♥...1NT = 19-21

or even

1♣...1NT = 16-17
1♣...1♥...1NT = 18-19
2NT open = 20-21

In a more standard system but with transfers over 1♣ you could play:

1♦...1NT or 1♣...accept transfer = 12-13
1NT = 14-15
1♣...1NT = 16-17
1♣/1♦... jump to 2NT = 18-19 (or mexican 2♦ = 18-19)
2NT = 20-21

Obviously you lose a little bit by doing this in some sequences, but you get a whole collection of two point ranges. If a two point range is indeed a lot better than a three-point range, this might be at least worth a try? Yet apparently no one is doing this, and the one time it was previously proposed on BBF it got a lot of bad reviews. So it seems people think that 4-point range is much worse than 3-point range, but 3-point range is not much worse than 2-point range. I'm curious as to what the difference is here.

[jdonn]

A 4 point range gets you too high on invite - pass or just bidding game sometimes, and/or misses game on 1NT - pass. I can say from experience it happens a fair amount of the time and is a big loss. A 3 point range gives you good accuracy for game bidding whether you invite or not so there is no reason to reduce it and lose the tactical advantages of opening 1NT as often as possible, as well as having to go to ridiculous lengths to squeeze all balanced ranges into your system.

I don't get your question about how it could possibly be that 3 > 4 and 3 > 2. There's no inherent reason it should be any particular way, it just happens to be that way due to the system of scoring, level of game contracts, and other peculiarities of bridge that are human inventions rather than inherent to the game.

[Cyberyeti]

I played 11-16 in 1st/2nd 14-19 3rd/4th for a for a few years with a fair bit of success and you can easily handle this, you just have to play a much more complicated set of responses.

What we did was to play 4 card+ at least invitational values red suit transfers, with 6 step responses (3 ranges without support and 3 with).

2♣ was the bucket bid that contained lots of possibilities including some 5 card major invites.

This was devastating at pairs, and pretty good at teams (dummy decks with an 8 count and are you trying to beat this or prevent the second overtrick).

You also need 2 Lebensohl relay type bids to handle interference so X is one of these.

I'm sure you could find/put together something similar with just 2 ranges to handle the 4 point range, the difficult area for the 3 range system was where you have the middle range opposite the 2red transfers, as you know you're bidding game opposite the top one, not bidding game opposite the bottom one, but not sure opposite the middle one.

Where this theory really paid dividends was the 15-20/11-16 in 4th 1N overcall which proved absolutely golden. If I was to resurrect this with my current partner, I'd play a 5 point range and hold the middle troublesome range to 1 point.

[awm]

Suppose we want to get to 3NT with 25+ hcp, want to play either 1NT or 3NT with 24 hcp, and otherwise want to play 1NT as much as possible. Then if we play ranges of 12-14 and 15-17 our strategy will be something like:

Opposite 12-14, pass with 0-10, invite with 11, bid game with 12+.
Opposite 15-17, pass with 0-7, invite with 8, bid game with 9+.

The bad situations are 12 opposite 11 and 15 opposite 8; in both cases we are playing 2NT instead of 1NT on 23 high.

Now suppose we play ranges of 12-15 and 16-17. Our strategy will be:

Opposite 12-15, pass with 0-10, invite with 11, bid game with 12+.
Opposite 16-17, pass with 0-7, bid game with 8+.

The bad situations are 15 opposite 10 (we play 1NT instead of 3NT) and 11 opposite 12 (we play 2NT instead of 1NT on 23 high). One of these is exactly the same as before, so the question is which is worse, playing in 1NT with 15 opposite 10 or playing in 2NT with 15 opposite 8. I doubt this is a big difference -- the fact that playing 1NT with 25 high sometimes gains (i.e. whenever 3NT fails) whereas playing 2NT never gains will compensate for the more substantial losses in the first case when 3NT makes.

Of course, it's not clear that this is the decision being made here. And there are a number of other effects including potential advantage from opening 1NT more often (preemptive effect) and the advantage from not needing invitational sequences over two-point range (less info to opponents about responder's strength, more sequences to use for slam tries etc). But I'm far from convinced that ranges of 12-15 and 16-17 are a worse combination than the normal ranges.

[akhare]

On the related note, has anyone given a thought to playing 11-14 NV in the third seat *when* playing 10-12 NV in the first two seats?

The idea of course is playing a 10-12 in the third seat makes it too easy for the opps and playing a light opening style, there's virtually no chance of game...

[gnasher]

As Siegmund says, if you have to have a 4-point range, it's better for it to be in the 1NT rebid than in the 1NT opening, because you can compensate for doubt about strength with increased knowledge of the fit.

Also, at IMPS, the way to mitigate the consequences of the 4-point range is for responder to bid as though it were a 3-point range at the upper end of the scale. eg, if your range is 12-15, pretend it's 13-15. That way you reach all the games that are reached in the other room, together with some others which you may have to play well.

I think 4-point ranges are worse at matchpoints than at IMPs.

[Mbodell]

I played 12-15 for a while in a strong club system and I really liked it. I note that many people already play a "nearly" 4 point range when they play 14+-17 or 11+-14 (I.e., they upgrade hands into the range but nearly never downgrade). So a 4 point range isn't really a full point bigger than a 3 point range, depending on frequency of upgrades and downgrades.

It also depends on how much you like your system over 1nt. I was playing keri over 1nt and quite liked it in concert with the 12-15 point range. Amongst other things the ability to get out in 2♦ with a weak shapely hand with long diamonds and the ability to invite game but decline at the 2 level in 2M seemed to be good features.

If you have a larger range the first obvious effect is your bid comes up much more frequently. This is a pretty effective preempt when it isn't your hand, and leads to your comfortable nt system when it might be your hand.

You are anti-field a bit, especially when the 15 point hand comes up. But that anti-field percentage isn't always against you.

We ended up not playing this system anymore partially because my partner was concerned about anti-field auctions on the 15 point hands (but I wasn't!), but mainly because we switched to playing mini-nt a bunch of the times.

But all of the above is in the context of a strong club system that puts some strength of the balanced hands in the 1♦ opening.

[Mbodell]

akhare, on Jan 10 2010, 03:55 PM, said:

On the related note, has anyone given a thought to playing 11-14 NV in the third seat *when* playing 10-12 NV in the first two seats?

The idea of course is playing a 10-12 in the third seat makes it too easy for the opps and playing a light opening style, there's virtually no chance of game...

I think you are going the wrong way there. If you play 10-12 NV in the first two seats, and open most shapely 10 counts as well, then in 3rd seat a wide ranging mini-nt is pretty effective. I like 10-13 personally. And then play with all systems off (since you can't have game), except off course your system of escapes from 1nt X.

[Vampyr]

akhare, on Jan 11 2010, 12:55 AM, said:

On the related note, has anyone given a thought to playing 11-14 NV in the third seat *when* playing 10-12 NV in the first two seats?

The idea of course is playing a 10-12 in the third seat makes it too easy for the opps and playing a light opening style, there's virtually no chance of game...

This is the reason that many people who play a "normal" weak NT -- ie not mini -- switch to strong in 3rd seat.

[Fluffy]

if you have to pick between 12-15 and 16-18 or 12-14 and 15-18, I think that the latter is better, the higher the strenght, the less uniform it will be distributed, so in 15-18 you can assume if you are in doubt that he has 15-16 and guess more times.

But I see nor problem into introducing some judgement and playing 12-14 and 16-18, forcing you to upgrade or downgrade with 15.