[kenberg]

I play a fair amount of standard, and I play some 2/1. Typivcally in an evening of bridge there is not a single hand where the final contract (as opposed to the route) is affected by which I am playing. However, I offer the following somewhat philosophical point:

You can generally expect to draw more accurate inferences from a person's course of action if he has a variety of choices. If an adult is reading "A Tale of Two Cities" you can infer he finds it interesting. If a high school student is doing so, such an inference may not be correct. If the auction goes 1H-1NT-2D with a standard partner, you can infer he has four diamonds. No such inference is available if the NT was forcing. Sometimes this matters, usually it doesn't.

My main view of 2/1 is that if you are going to use it, you want to make sure you have discussed it enough to get something out of it. Often in casual bridge, say pick-up in an on-line acbl tourney, 2/1 means that after 1S-2C everyone bids around for a while and then they bid the same game they would bid anyway, with no one really any clearer about what is going on. In an extreme case of this, I had an auction something like 1S-2C-2D-4S after which dummy came down with controls in hearts. This is giving up some of the flexibility of standard, without getting the benefits of 2/1 in return.


Ken

[mikeh]

Any player who plays 2/1 badly is likely to be no better, and may be far worse, at standard.

Don't blame the tools for the inadequacies of the users.

Also, keep in mind that there is really no such thing as 'standard'. Not that there is really any clearly defined '2/1' either

In my view, it is easier to explain a simpe 2/1 structure to an intermediate player than it is to explain an equivalent 'standard' method, if only because standard methods require significantly more 'fudges' to keep auctions alive, in sequences in which the 2/1 players have already established a force and can thus, more or less, bid naturally.

This is not to say that 2/1 is a panacea.

When the perfect and simple bidding system finally arrives, I will quit the game because a good deal of the challenge will disappear. I am not holding my breath.

[bestguru]

Quote

My vein was the fact that so many on BBO and in real life have the "laundry list" of conventions that most of the time are misused, misunderstood, etc. I rather just play p's card and try to win at the table, so to speak. Some of my BEST games have been using both simple and complex methods."

Thanks for not mentioning me by name

Seriously though I agree with your post and decided its finally time I did something about it.

[awm]

Standard is dramatically better than 2/1 when responder has an invitational hand type. The 2/1 players have to start with a forcing notrump and then try to "catch up" whereas in standard you can actually bid a suit that you have, and your later bids are never ambiguous about strength (the way the 2/1 new-suit bids after forcing NT are).

I also think standard is better when responder actually has 6-9. This is not so much an issue of my thinking it's better to play 1NT than a 5-2 major fit; I think double dummy these come out fairly even, although there are mild matchpoint gains for 1NT because the opponents much more frequently seem to drop a trick on defense (it's hard to know what to lead against 1NT when declarer's hand pattern is not really known). The reasons standard is better when responder has 6-9: (1) Opener's rebids show real suits. You can pass 2m with four in the minor and two in the major with min values, which both avoids the three level when opener has mild extras and plays the superior 4-4 minor fit. (2) Responder can feel free to make "pushy" raises when holding a good fit for opener's second suit. Opener will know that this is not based on 10-12 hcp and not take it too seriously unless holding a lot of shape.

When you have a game force, I agree that 2/1 will normally do better if in the hands of competent players (note that it can be very hard to determine whether anyone has extras in 2/1 auctions, whereas in standard this is usually easy because opener has to show extras to get to game). However, in these days of lighter and lighter openings, is it really true that 12 points is a game force? Is even 13 a game force, if it's a lousy 13 with no fit? I have my doubts.

One of the nicest aspects of standard is that you don't always have to decide whether to game force at your first bid. If you have a borderline invite/game force hand, you can start by showing a suit and then downgrade if partner indicates a misfitting minimum, and bid on to game otherwise. This is more difficult in 2/1 because you have to start with the forcing notrump and you don't generally have a lot of forcing bids available after it (not to mention having not shown your suit).

[MickyB]

My verdict on Keylime's list...

1) 2/1 GF - I've got mixed views, I quite like light 2/1s, and I definitely prefer a 2C relay and 2D over 1S showing hearts, but 2/1 GF except rebid with a semi-forcing NT is ok.

2) Everything Bergen - agree wholeheartedly.

3) Support doubles - Agreed, I'd much rather have a takeout double in most sitations.

4) CAPP and DONT - Yup, DONT is awful and CAPP isn't great.

5) Gerber - I don't think it deserves the stick it gets. Not that it is useful very often...

6) Two suited overcalls - Vital, but I think that playing them as 6-10 or 16+ (common in the UK) when vulnerable is, as you put it, "providing a roadmap". I'd rather they were 8-12 or 17+, or something like that.

7) I've never used a game-try double, but I much prefer to play takeout doubles in most auctions.

8) Opening 1NT with a 5 card major - fine. I'd much rather open it 1NT than have no way of showing the hand later.

9) Transfers in competition are very powerful.

10) Not quite sure what you are trying to say about 4th suit forcing.

11) I agree that a weak 2D is very useful, but some of these artificial preempts aren't bad.

12) Mini-Roman/Flannery - these need to be filling a pretty big hole before I would consider playing them.

13) Puppet Stayman - Yeah, I agree that it is shocking the way I play it at the moment (3S response showing 5S4H). I'll be much more comfortable once I've got that into the 3C response, leaving 3S+ to deal with hands with minor suits.

14) Ace asking bids - agreed, Turbo is much better!

[SteelWheel]

With regard to some of the specific things Dwayne mentioned in his re-edited version:

1. 2/1 GF: 2/1, as played by the masses (i.e., without lots of discussion of various auctions), is a mess. There is no such thing as an agreed-upon "reference" 2/1 system. This is a constant complaint of mine, especially when playing online. Your pickup pard, says, "2/1, partner". Great. Which/whose version? Lawrence, Hardy, Walsh, Bergen, Eastern Scientific....? I just pray for simple auctions, because if they get complex, I know I'll be in an uncomfortable spot...and then I'll get an earful from my "expert" partner who explains to me how the auction was "supposed" to go.

As for what I actually prefer to play: I think one can have one's cake and eat it, too. In my last regular partnership, I played a method known as "TOOT", devised by a friend of mine (look through your old Bridge World back issues, you'll find it). Basically, some of responder's 2nd round continuations after making a not-game forcing 2/1 on the first round are transfers, allowing more room to describe various hand types. It works well. But again, it requires discussion. It's not for casual partnerships.

2. Some of the Bergen toys are ok, some are not. I agree that all of them can be mis-used or abused. I actually do prefer new suits non-forcing after weak-two bids..but then again, I'm not a huge believer in the "preempt with any 6 (or 5) card suit" school.

Actually, although I've played Bergen raises in quite a few partnerships, I've lately come to think they are sort of unnecessary. The only time they really come in handy is when our side opens the bidding in first seat. Assuming that 2nd hand passes, it's nice to be able to make a noise that gets us to the three level quickly. But if my RHO has already passed, and LHO then passes over my one of a major opening, who's left to be shut out of the bidding?

3. Support doubles are ok..it's just that most people play it as a "high priority" bid. Taking any call other than double when in a "support double position" virtually denies holding 3 cards in partner's major, in many partnerships. This is just one more occasion where "the rules" get in the way of "the bridge".

Another case of this sort of thing: Have you ever seen how many people play weak NTs in conjunction with support doubles? Playing these two treatments together shows that people don't truly understand their system, methinks (see the Robson/Segal book for more discussion of this topic).

4. Capp is just plain awful. Bidding 2♣ to show a single suiter is ridiculous. You never get a chance to show your actual suit...unless the opponents actually want you to. DONT is better, but the real emphasis of these kinds of takeouts over NT needs to be on the majors, not the minors. Same thing happens: You bid 2♣ to show clubs and another, and they get the entire 2-level anyway, effectively. You'll never be able to show your other suit.

5. Gerber is ok...it's a rare bid, but it actually does come up once in a great while. On a frequency basis, I can see the argument for leaving it on the shelf, in favor of something like South African Texas. But a good partnership should have some method of being able to ask for Aces in bunches over a NT opening. And that need to be able to ask for Aces actually goes up a bit, if you're playing a weak or super-weak NT.

6. Two-suited overcalls: The longer I play bridge, the less use I have for these. I do believe that they have their place. But you really have to be sure that the hand in question is a suitable dummy for only the suits indicated by the call. Far too often, these calls are taken when a hand is held which might play better in the third suit, or when you should actually be (horrors!) defending. The conventions are ok, the over-application is the problem.

7. Competitive doubles are ok..I've actually played maximal overcall doubles and snapdragon, etc...they do come up. They have their uses. At some level though, well short of 7♥, these things have to be interpreted as "takeout with transferrable values".

8. Five card majors when opening 1NT: I've played always/sometimes/never on this one in various partnerships. I think any of these approaches have their moments. I've seen Ron Klinger's "Keri" system which appears to allow a "sometimes" or "mostly" approach to this. But this is not a tool which can be employed by a casual or pickup pair.

9. Transfers are "a good thing". Devices which slow an auction down, and allow one to tell about a variety of hand patterns are one of the best developments in bidding theory ever.

10. Fourth suit forcing is yet another concept that is over-applied. I've seen this used by those oft-mentioned (nominally) 2/1 partnerships, in situations where a GF has already been established by the original 2/1 bid. Clearly, this is redundant, unnecessary, and just muddies the waters, to no good effect.

11. Preemption: I agree, the weak 2♦ bid doesn't get enough respect.

12. Mini-Roman is just ridiculous. It proposes to solve a problem that just doesn't exist. Flannery (either flavor) is also pretty silly. Even Flannery stopped playing Flannery, long ago.

13. Puppet Stayman is ok. The real problem, as Dwayne mentioned, is the 2NT opening itself, which sort of kills room for all kinds of exploration. This is just a problem with any kind of "Standard" or 2/1 approach.

14. I've participated in all kinds of Kickback and other RKC disasters in my day. Yet, I have also gotten to/stayed out of all sorts of slams as a result of good, well-understood BW agreements, including the afore-mentioned Kickback, exclusion Blackwood, etc.. But a much under-used slam exploration tool exists. It's called "cue-bidding".

How many of the unwashed masses have we all seen, who believe that all slam exploration begins and ends with that 4NT call? Better yet, is the convention that I refer to as "Fishwood". That's where you bid 4NT to look for a slam when holding xx in a side suit. They end up bidding the slam, and scratch their heads in wonderment when the opponents cash the A and K. How could they have gone down? They had the points, and they bid 4NT. "Unlucky, partner." Yeesh.


General observations: Bridge is not an easy game. Beginners are taught rules to get them going--so many points for game, for slam, etc. Second hand low, third hand high. Eight ever, nine never. Etc.

They finally master the basics. Now it's time to move on and really start to learn the game. This is where most go afoul. Instead of moving on from rules to concepts, most just learn more rules. Michaels. Bergen raises. The somewhat-overrated law of Total Tricks. Coded 10s and 9s...the list goes on forever. Plop one of these people down in front of a brand new partner who hasn't been given the same rules, and the partnership is booked for many bad sessions. These people have learned all the rules, but they've never learned "the bridge part" of the game.

All of the toys that Dwayne or the rest of us have bashed are probably ok, in the right hands. Very few are truly terrible. The actual problem is that so few really understand the purpose of these conventions, or what problems each one is intended to solve--or what new problems might be created by the usage of this or that particular gadget.

When I play with new partners, I try to keep things as simple as possible. One approach I've sometimes used is: 12-14 NTs, low-level doubles are takeout, high-level doubles are for penalty--and that was about it. Amazing how well some of those games went. But the reason why they did is because in each case I was playing with a partner who understood "the bridge part" of the game.

OK, go ahead and flame away now.

[joshs]

awm, on Mar 1 2006, 09:47 PM, said:

One of the nicest aspects of standard is that you don't always have to decide whether to game force at your first bid. If you have a borderline invite/game force hand, you can start by showing a suit and then downgrade if partner indicates a misfitting minimum, and bid on to game otherwise. This is more difficult in 2/1 because you have to start with the forcing notrump and you don't generally have a lot of forcing bids available after it (not to mention having not shown your suit).

An important point, which falls into the "SA is better when responder is INV" category.

[gwnn]

Jlall, on Jun 22 2008, 05:30 AM, said:

Fit non jump in the auction p 1H 1S 2H ?

Dude that's nothing, I wonder how you'd react to Robson/Segal's advocated method of 1♥-1♠-2♥-?, FNJ's from an unpassed hand

[han]

From an old bulletin:

2/1 gameforcing dramatically better on invitational hands!
By Pat Sherne, St Paul MI

Just the other day I was playing at the club and I picked up KJx xx Axxx K10xx and my partner opened 1H. Playing standard I would have to jump all the way to 2NT, but playing my favorite 2/1 gameforce system I didn't have to do that. First, I started with a "semi-forcing" 1NT call. Partner passes this with a balanced minimum, in which case we would be playing 1NT while the rest of the room is playing 2NT.

But that's not the end of it. If partner bids 2D then I can comfortably bid 2NT, showing a balanced 11-12 count. But if partner bids 2C then my hand is more suitable for 2S, showing an invitational raise in clubs! After all, partner either has extras (in which case she would bid on) or partner is unbalanced with 4+ clubs, in which case 3C likely plays better than 2NT.

To summarize: 2/1 gameforcing deals much better with invitational hands. Here we can temporize with the semi-forcing 1NT so that we won't have to decide how to describe our hand until after partner has made a second call. An added benefit is that sometimes we get to play 1NT while the field is in 2NT, an excellent proposition at matchpoints!

[jdonn]

My initial reaction is

invitational hands are less common than game forcing hands
invitational hands have fewer points riding on them than game forcing hands
invitational hands are easier than game forcing hands to bid without accuracy (frankly you could blindly accept every invitation and not do much worse than a person who judges perfectly)

Why would a system where this is the only advantage to the alternative (and even then not always, TY han) ever be chosen?

[kenrexford]

Jlall, on Jun 22 2008, 12:45 PM, said:

gwnn, on Jun 22 2008, 05:34 AM, said:

Jlall, on Jun 22 2008, 05:30 AM, said:

Fit non jump in the auction p 1H 1S 2H ?

Dude that's nothing, I wonder how you'd react to Robson/Segal's advocated method of 1♥-1♠-2♥-?, FNJ's from an unpassed hand

Do they really?

All over it.

[gwnn]

yep, every 3 over 2 bid in a lower suit after opps found a fit should show a fit according to them

[MickyB]

han, on Jun 22 2008, 10:41 AM, said:

From an old bulletin:

2/1 gameforcing dramatically better on invitational hands!
By Pat Sherne, St Paul MI

Yup, indeed, starting with 1NT leaves as much room as possible to allow responder to decide what strain to invite in - e.g. 1M:1N, 2M:??. I came to the same conclusion on the way to coming up with "split range 2/1s", where the main handtypes in a 2/1 are GF hands and 9-10 with a doubleton support, it's those slightly weaker hands that benefit from getting to show some strength with their initial response because they can't really do it later.

[Elianna]

I still want to know how St. Paul moved to Michigan.

[awm]

Pat Sherne said:

Just the other day I was playing at the club and I picked up KJx xx Axxx K10xx and my partner opened 1H. Playing standard I would have to jump all the way to 2NT.

Not true, 2NT Jacoby is part of SAYC and almost all versions of standard. If not playing jacoby then the default is 2NT game forcing (as SAYC plays over minors). The correct bid in standard is 2♣.

Pat Sherne said:

First, I started with a "semi-forcing" 1NT call. Partner passes this with a balanced minimum, in which case we would be playing 1NT while the rest of the room is playing 2NT.

Semi-forcing notrump is not a default 2/1 agreement. While it does give you the advantage of potentially playing 1NT instead of 2NT, you also lose most of the advantage of the forcing notrump when responder has a weak shapely hand.

jdonn said:

invitational hands are less common than game forcing hands

While this seems true if taken at face value, there are a few additional considerations. If you open as light as many people do nowadays (opening many shapely ten counts) then the invitational range is a lot wider than in "old fashioned" 2/1: more like 10-13 than 10-11. Also, the vast majority of gamegoing hands are actually pretty easy to bid; it is the slam interested hands where 2/1 is actually winning, not the non-fitting 13-14 pointers. So I think a better comparison is 10-13 versus 15+ and it's no longer clear to me that Josh's point even holds.

jdonn said:

invitational hands have fewer points riding on them than game forcing hands
invitational hands are easier than game forcing hands to bid without accuracy (frankly you could blindly accept every invitation and not do much worse than a person who judges perfectly)

Almost all the IMPs ride on decisions. The hands where partner opens a 15-17 notrump and responder has a balanced 11-count with no major suit fit usually don't have a lot of IMPs riding on the auction. Invitational hands by their nature involve a decision -- game or no game? If you can consistently bid the good games and avoid the bad ones you will win lots of imps (game swings are big)! I agree that slam hands potentially swing even more IMPs, but the vast majority of "game forcing" hands don't involve a serious slam decision. In general I bet the number of hands where you have to decide to bid or not bid a close game outnumber the hands where you have a similar decision at the slam level.

jdonn said:

Why would a system where this is the only advantage to the alternative (and even then not always, TY han) ever be chosen?

This is not the only advantage. Standard does better on 6-9 point hands. And it breaks even on most of the minimum game force hands (in fact opener's rebids are carefully structured to show or deny extras in standard since you need this opposite invites to make a game decision, and these exact same extras help you make the slam decision in many cases). Why would I want to play a system where the only advantage is when partner opens and I hold enough extras to make slam opposite a minimum opening bid with the right distribution?

[655321]

Wow, a 2 year old thread on convention bashing, and up until now nobody has mentioned the word...

Ghestem!

[han]

Elianna, on Jun 22 2008, 09:07 PM, said:

I still want to know how St. Paul moved to Michigan.

Pat Sherne must have mistaken MI for MN.