[the hog]

I think the argument weak vs strong NT is irrelevant on its own. You need to look at the rest of the system. Contrary to Adam's assertion, I believe there is no intrinsic weakness in opening a strong NT hand with 1m and rebidding NT. I also disagree what good/bad does not work as well in a wnt system.

I have played both - wnt in a big club, Acol and Flint-Pender context and snt in a Polish Club and 2/1 context. I have no great preference either way, as it is the way in which nt bids fit into the rest of the system that matters.

[chicken]

ralph23, on Aug 2 2007, 10:49 AM, said:

♣♦♥♠

This sounds a bit screwy but it does in my experience work .. player #4 will often pull the double after being informed that responder's pass (which is of course alertable) requires the opener to redouble.

ts.... ts..... my aunt would run after told that pass is forcing to xx, therefore the proper explanation on clublevel would be "forcing to xx with usually a weakhand wanting to initiate DONT". in a normal world nobody runs until the passer has converted into a penalty xx via a 2nd pass.



edit.: saw that this fact has already been mentioned. sry 4 flooding

[JanM]

awm, on Aug 6 2007, 07:03 PM, said:

While WBF has no problems with the transfer opening bids, I don't think they'd be so happy about 2♥ multi......

2♥ multi actually came up a few years ago (the Norwegians in the Paris Bermuda Bowl played it). The bid was allowed, obviously as a Brown Sticker bid. It came up once in the finals, I think during the segment where the USA team was having its huge comeback against Norway - I'm too lazy to go find the hand, but my best recollection is that the ambiguity about the Major allowed the US pair to bid and make 3NT when the Norwegian pair didn't after a natural 2M opening - not a disadvantage you'd expect for what is clearly an extremely weird method. In preparing defenses to the 2♥, 3♥ and (1m)-2♥ bids (all of them showing one Major, weak), our worst problem was not knowing how often the bid would be passed and also how often 2♥-DBL would be passed and what that Pass would mean. That was relevant both to help us decide with what hands we could afford to pass and DBL also to help us figure out what hand the opener would have. After all, if responer is going to bid with some random balanced hand with 3-2 in the Majors or something of the sort, the 2♥ opener would have to be prepared to play 3♥. If responder was going to pass on random balanced hands with equal majors, the 2♥ opener wouldn't be eager to open it with a good spade preempt. We never got very good responses to lots of questions about what responder would do with specific hands. The method seems not to have withstood the test of time, so hopefully we won't have to confront it again.

2♣ multi, which doesn't have the problems of 2♥ and is "obviously" easier to defend against than 2♦ was actually really hard to devise a defense for. I guess that's because of course no-one can resist all the extra bids they give you, so the defense can be much more complex than that to 2♦ multi. That opening also doesn't seem to have withstood the test of time, so I haven't looked at the defense in some time, but I know that it took Chip and Eric ages to come up with it and it was pages and pages and pages long.

Jan, about to start reviewing convention cards for Shanghai to see what new and imaginative things people have come up with this year

[glen]

For 2005 I prepared this for the Canuck teams:

Countering Vexing Bids

Since it was pages and pages, they mostly didn't use it. However it was used by one pair in the Canadian finals the next year, when faced with a whole bunch of unusual stuff. For 2007 we will see how things develop, as we now have some Ottawa-based pairs.

This was the match-by-match document for 2005 Open:

Defenses by round

So, for, example, we have:

Defence to 2♥ weak two in ♠s or ♥s & minor:

- Doubles of major suit bids are Passable Takeout Doubles.
- 3♣ is natural overcall in ♣s, or takeout double of ♥s with 0-1 ♥s (so has ♣s).
- Natural bidding including bids of majors – in reply new suits forcing if below game

--- ----

Note that Eric Kokish and Bev Kraft prepare documents about 10 times the size shown here, as part of their professional coaching efforts. These documents are unavailable to the Canadian teams, since the CBF cannot afford to pay for the months of work involved. However Eric does run coaching clinics for the Canadian teams, which have really helped our teams over the years.

[JanM]

Chip and I are somewhere in between you and Eric & Beverly - we try to keep the defenses, especially those that must be memorized, reasonably short, although our BS defenses are fairly long. For instance, our defense to 2♥ = weak in spades or (hearts + minor) is 4 pages long, as compared to your 3 lines. That's partly because we write out all the follow ups carefully so people can find them at the table, partly because the defense is more complicated. That method seems to have disappeared, by the way.

Our position is a little different from Eric & Beverly's on dissemination of the defenses, however - we tend to give them to anyone who wants them, because (to be honest) we'd like to see the BS methods go away and the better the available defenses are the sooner they're going to disappear

[hrothgar]

JanM, on Aug 8 2007, 08:16 AM, said:

Our defense to 2♥ = weak in spades or (hearts + minor) is 4 pages long, as compared to your 3 lines. That's partly because we write out all the follow ups carefully so people can find them at the table, partly because the defense is more complicated. That method seems to have disappeared, by the way.

For the past few years I've scanned the Convention Cards for "Big" events like the World Championships and the like. I normally prepare some summary statistics describing the different break down of bidding methods (how many pairs are playng Strong Club versus Polish Club versus 2/1 Game Force, what does a 2♦ opening show, that sort of thing)

I seem to recall a few pairs using 2♦ = Weak in Hearts or Spades and a Minor, 2♥ = weak in Spades or Hearts and a minor last year. I certainly wouldn't claim that its a popular method, but I don't think that it has completely fallen by the wayside.