[ralph23]

What are people's opinions/preferences among the following, against either Precision 1♣ openings or strong artificial 2♣ openings (or both)?

1. Suction

2. Psycho Suction

3. Inverted Psycho Suction

Note: You can ignore those over NT openings... we can't/don't play it.

[pclayton]

Suction sucks against a prepared pair.

Psycho Suction is better. WTF is inverted psycho suction?

[gwnn]

inverted psycho suction shows

x=(x and x+1) OR x+2

1♥=majors or clubs

the good part is that you usually end up in a 7+ card fit when they leave you alone (because when you like the prospect of a 1-suiter, you can correct to the other suit even without real preference) without opps having an assured 2nd bite at the cherry (is that the expression?).

psycho suction has the upside that the 1-suiter is the more often use for it and you take most room from opps (for example for a 1 level ♠ overcall you'll use 1♦, yielding precious space to opps (??).

real suction is bad because it allows opps to have 3 possibilities: bid, X then bid, pass then bid.

[ralph23]

pclayton, on Sep 11 2007, 06:01 PM, said:

Suction sucks against a prepared pair.

Psycho Suction is better. WTF is inverted psycho suction?

http://bridge.thomas...com/psycho.html

From the Thomas bridge site.

[ralph23]

gwnn, on Sep 11 2007, 06:09 PM, said:

without opps having an assured 2nd bite at the cherry (is that the expression?).

the apple, but I like the idea of the cherry ... very very small bites

[the hog]

As a long time Moscito/big C player, I lick my chops when pairs sit down and announce they are playing any methods like this.

[awm]

Any of these work well against unprepared opponents. This includes most people who play a strong 2♣ (they are just unused to people bidding over their strong opening) and surprisingly many who play a strong 1♣.

Against well-prepared opponents, the forcing nature of suction usually makes it fairly easy to defend, since responder can pass and be virtually guaranteed of another call, or can double and be virtually guaranteed opponents won't leave it in.

I've found that it works best against a strong opening to play methods where your overcall can (and will, with some frequency) be passed. This puts maximum pressure on the opponents. When playing suction, I like to pass partner's suction overcall fairly frequently and randomly for just this reason. My preference is to play psycho-suction at non-vulnerable; I have had very good results with this against opponents at all sorts of levels. At vulnerable I play natural (okay, Mathe, a natural 1NT overcall is usually silliness). It's just hard to figure out what to do when opponents are sometimes bidding your suits before you do and in a non-forcing way. The main risk of psycho-suction is that you have to be willing to play undoubled in a non-fit partscore (i.e. 1♣-2♠-A/P) and this is much more likely to work out at NV when it's just 50 a trick.

[mycroft]

I think interfering against a strong club should have one (or more) of three goals in mind:

1) get to three of a fit before opener's rebid.
2) increase the variance in a manner that doesn't expose a cuebid
3) (this one's more after 1C-p-1D): get the lead-director in that will make 3NT a hopeless cause, and hope the natural auction is 2NT-3NT or the like.

I'm usually more of a strategy player than a roll-the-dice player, so I play Reverse Truscott, which maximises 1) and has some 3), and has nearly no 2). If I was a roll-the-dice player, I'd probably play wonder bids - that suit or takeout of that suit. I would never play a system that tells the opponents: "if you do know what to do, do it; if you don't, wait one round until we clarify what we have, then you can do it and pass the additional information that you weren't sure." Suction is the classic for that one.

Michael.