[glen]

Does anybody play, or has played extensively, a system where one of the 1♣ or 1♦ openings promises a four card major? One example is Oakley’s The Diamond Major ("a 1♣ opening bid denies four of either major, but not five or more; a 1♦ opening bid proclaims possession of one or two 4-card majors, but no 5-card or longer major"). Other systems have tried this type of approach in a big club framework.

If you are playing it, or have played it, how do you like it? In particular do you find promising a four card major helps your side lots, somewhat, or not that much, and does it sometimes hurt that the opponents know about the four card major?

[PrecisionL]

I have played Precision with 5-card majors and 1♦ promising at least one 4-card major for over two years. I like it and it works fine. Responder with a weak hand usually responds 1♥ or 1♠, with 1♥ promising 3+♥ and 1♠ promising 4 or more ♠. Even with 5♠ responder bids 1♥ if he has 4♥ and a weak hand. This approach is GCC legal (ACBL).

When opener does not rebid a major, but rebids NT or a minor then responder knows a lot about opener's hand. Example: 1♦ p 1♠ p 2♣ = 4♥ and 5+♣. Or 1♦ p 1NT p 2♣/♦ showing 5+ and unbalanced. Major is unknown.

A 2♦ opening is now like the Precision 2♣ opening (natural 10-15 and good 5 or 6-cards), but denies a 4-card major. We usually promise JTxx or QTxx in the major. 1NT denies two 4-card majors.

The other aspects of Peter's DIAMOND MAJOR ARE INTERESTING TOO.

Larry

[PassedOut]

PrecisionL,

I like your approach, but I have a question about the GCC:

Can you really respond systemically with 3-card hearts, given that the ACBL defines a major suit bid as natural only if it shows four or more cards in that suit ?

[PrecisionL]

What the GCC and directors forbid is for you to bid a 3-card major suit as an opening bid.

Responses in 3-card majors are infrequent and tactical just like a 1♦ response to a natural 1♣ opening might be only 3-cards in certain situations. I have more than once jump rebid in a 3-card minor. Then there are responses to the Precision 2♦ Opening which shows a hand short in diamonds. It is not unusual to respond in a 3-card heart suit with a weak hand to keep the bidding low with 3♥s and 3♠s and 6♦s. Finally, there are responses to the mini-Roman 4441 opening bid of 2♦. Once again, with a weak hand responder might bid 2♥s with 4+ ♠s and only 3♥s.



Larry

[hrothgar]

PrecisionL, on Dec 7 2007, 04:23 PM, said:

What the GCC and directors forbid is for you to bid a 3-card major suit as an opening bid.

Responses in 3-card majors are infrequent and tactical just like a 1♦ response to a natural 1♣ opening might be only 3-cards in certain situations. I have more than once jump rebid in a 3-card minor. Then there are responses to the Precision 2♦ Opening which shows a hand short in diamonds. It is not unusual to respond in a 3-card heart suit with a weak hand to keep the bidding low with 3♥s and 3♠s and 6♦s. Finally, there are responses to the mini-Roman 4441 opening bid of 2♦. Once again, with a weak hand responder might bid 2♥s with 4+ ♠s and only 3♥s.



Larry

Utterly and completely WRONG

The GCC operates under the following (basic) principles:

All bids that are natural (and not conventional) are sanctioned.
Furthermore, a specific list of conventions is explictly sanctioned.

If a bid is not explictly sanctioned, you can't play it.

A 1♥ advance that promises 3+ cards in the suit is not a natural bid according to the ACBL. Furthermore, Artificial / conventional response to this 1♦ opening aren't sanctioned at the GCC level.

In short, you don't get to play this...

You analogy to a Precision 2♦ opening or a mini-Roman 2♣ opening is inappropriate because responses to these openings fall under the following clause:

Quote

ARTIFICIAL AND CONVENTIONAL CALLS after strong (15+ HCP), forcing opening bids and after opening bids of 2♣ or higher. (For this classification, by partnership agreement, weak two-bids must be within a range of 7 HCP and the suit must contain at least five cards – See #7 under DISALLOWED.)

Please note: The ACBL does have a notion of a "deviation". You can have an agreement that the 1♥ advance promises 4+ cards, in which case the advance would appear to be natural and not conventional. More over, it is permissible that you (occasionally) decide to treat a three card heart suit as a four card heart suit.

[PassedOut]

hrothgar, on Dec 7 2007, 08:44 AM, said:

More over, it is permissible that you (occasionally) decide to treat a three card heart suit as a four card heart suit.

That was my understanding, and the reason I used the word "systemically" in my original question. Even without an explicit agreement, it seems to me that regularly responding in a 3-card heart suit with certain hand types would establish an implicit partnership agreement.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely disagree with the rule that you can't bid ever a 3-card major naturally. But that rule is why I don't play the sort of method that PrecisionL described.

On this topic, a couple of months ago, playing SAYC in an ACBL cross-IMPs tournament on BBO with a very nice old lady, I responded 1♥ to partner's 1♦ opening with:

  ♠xx   ♥AKx   ♦KQ10xx   ♣xxx

(We had no forcing diamond raise on the card.)

Partner rebid 1NT and I raised to 3NT. When dummy appeared, my RHO (with a large "J" on her profile) expressed outrage and called the director. I said we had no agreement regarding such a response and nothing further happened (that I know of).

If this situation comes up again with the same partner, though, I suppose I will have to bid 2♣.  

[keylime]

I've had to bid a major as 3+ as a tactical call to then make a preemptive raise to 3m to bury the opps. I've also seen others alert it over Precision 1♦ openings (Weichsel-Sontag a few years ago had 1D-1H as 3+).

Thusly, I fail to see what is so utterly wrong about something which when reading directly states that it is infrequent and tactical.

[hrothgar]

keylime, on Dec 7 2007, 07:09 PM, said:

Thusly, I fail to see what is so utterly wrong about something which when reading directly states that it is infrequent and tactical.

The earlier passage made a number of incorrect statements:

Quote

What the GCC and directors forbid is for you to bid a 3-card major suit as an opening bid.

The difference between an opening bid and a response is irelevant.

Quote

Then there are responses to the Precision 2♦ Opening which shows a hand short in diamonds.

Responses to a Precision 2♦ opening are explictly sanctioned

Quote

Finally, there are responses to the mini-Roman 4441 opening bid of 2♦.

Responses to a Mini-Roman 4441 opening are explictly sanctioned.

I agree that its legitimate to have an agreement that 1♥ promises 4+ Hearts and to (very rarely) choose to make a tactical bid with a 3 card suit. However, this is not the crux of the original post.

[AlexOgan]

I've been playing the following structure for a while now:

1C: ART, F1, 17+ bal / 16+ unbal
1D: 14-16 bal OR 11-15 with 0+D, at least 1 4c major, not 5+/5+ minors
1H: 11-15, 5+H
1S: 11-15, 5+S
1NT: 11-13 bal (5cm OK, rarely 5cM)
2C: 11-15, 5+C, no 4c major, no 5cD
2D: 11-15, 5+D, no 4c major, no 5cC
2H: 4-10, 5+H, undisciplined
2S: 4-10, 5+S, undisciplined
2NT: 11-15, 5+C/5+D

I think it's been working rather well.

[PassedOut]

AlexOgan, on Dec 7 2007, 03:15 PM, said:

I've been playing the following structure for a while now:

1C: ART, F1, 17+ bal / 16+ unbal
1D: 14-16 bal OR 11-15 with 0+D, at least 1 4c major, not 5+/5+ minors
1H: 11-15, 5+H
1S: 11-15, 5+S
1NT: 11-13 bal (5cm OK, rarely 5cM)
2C: 11-15, 5+C, no 4c major, no 5cD
2D:  11-15, 5+D, no 4c major, no 5cC
2H:  4-10, 5+H, undisciplined
2S:  4-10, 5+S, undisciplined
2NT: 11-15, 5+C/5+D     

I think it's been working rather well.

I played the same structure with several partners for about ten years starting in the late 1960s, but with two differences:

1) All of our ranges were 1 point higher than those you give here.
2) Our weak 2-bids were fairly disciplined.

It worked well for us too.

It was interesting to follow Fredrik Nystrom and Peter Bertheau using the same basic structure in The Bridge World's "Challenge the Champs" over the past two months. However, they open 1NT with 14-16 and include the weak notrump range in with the 1♦ opening.

[helene_t]

I played something like this in the context of Polish club for a short while, I liked it but my p did not, he thought the opps benefited too much from the information. I don't think I agree with that, I would say that playing standard minor suit openings help opps in the defense because they know something about your minor suit holding, something that is usually not of interest to p. In any case, we only played it for three or four evenings so it was premature to draw a conclusion.

Wackojack plays Polish Club with 1♣ promising a 4-card major unless strong.

[cwiggins]

I can help with the legality of the 3-card major in the ACBL. Per a thread in rec.games.bridge, Mike Flader said the official ACBL position is that a

Quote

response in a three card major is a treatment, not a convention.  As such, it is legal with the appropriate alerts and explanations in all ACBL-sanctioned play.

Go to Google's rec.games.bridge and search for "Flader three card major." It's a November 3, 2006 posting titled "Official ACBL Response to 3-card Major Responses."

[hrothgar]

cwiggins, on Dec 9 2007, 07:53 AM, said:

I can help with the legality of the 3-card major in the ACBL. Per a thread in rec.games.bridge, Mike Flader said the official ACBL position is that a

Quote

response in a three card major is a treatment, not a convention.  As such, it is legal with the appropriate alerts and explanations in all ACBL-sanctioned play.

Go to Google's rec.games.bridge and search for "Flader three card major." It's a November 3, 2006 posting titled "Official ACBL Response to 3-card Major Responses."

Bloody hell:

I'm all for allowing people the freedom to play whatever they damn well please.

Even so, I really wish that the ACBL was capable of drafting a coherent set of convention regulations rather than having 1001 special cases, exceptions treatments, what have you scattered in obscure locations.

This is actually a very significant exception in that it completely contradicts the base logic behind the convention regulation structure.

[PassedOut]

cwiggins, on Dec 8 2007, 11:53 PM, said:

I can help with the legality of the 3-card major in the ACBL.  Per a thread in rec.games.bridge, Mike Flader said the official ACBL position is that a

Quote

response in a three card major is a treatment, not a convention.  As such, it is legal with the appropriate alerts and explanations in all ACBL-sanctioned play.

Go to Google's rec.games.bridge and search for "Flader three card major." It's a November 3, 2006 posting titled "Official ACBL Response to 3-card Major Responses."

Thanks for the link. I also found a nicely formatted version of the thread here:
http://www.n-n-a.com...about46538.html

As someone who is trying to get up to speed on the current ACBL regulations, I found this explanation puzzling:

Quote

Dear Kurt,

Here is the official answer. This response in a three card major is a treatment, not a convention. As such [italics mine], it is legal with the appropriate alerts and explanations in all ACBL-sanctioned play.

Regards,
Mike Flader

Although this wording suggests that all treatments are legal, the convention charts themselves clearly contradict that interpretation. Where can I look to find a complete list of the treatments that are permitted by the ACBL?

The word "treatment" is defined in the ACBL's alert definitions, but does not appear at all in the GCC or the ACBL Mid-Chart. The word does appear (once) in the ACBL Super-Chart.

[helene_t]

Right, if you want to play an illegal convention you just call it a "treatment" and if you want to play an illegal relay you give it some kosher name like "forcing 1NT" or whatever.

However, it is unclear how you can get official status for your pet use of terminology.

[rbforster]

cwiggins, on Dec 8 2007, 11:53 PM, said:

Quote

response in a three card major is a treatment, not a convention.  As such, it is legal with the appropriate alerts and explanations in all ACBL-sanctioned play.

Go to Google's rec.games.bridge and search for "Flader three card major." It's a November 3, 2006 posting titled "Official ACBL Response to 3-card Major Responses."

Good to know. The popular scientific treatment of

1♦-1♥* - hearts or GF relay

just got 1 card closer to ACBL playable. At least now with a 3 card heart suit I've got a cheap relay bid, and I imagine with only 2 or fewer hearts and GF values I might wish to make another more descriptive call anyway...

[bigmax]

Does anybody knows any link with notes on this 1D opening?

So far I only found nystrom-bertheau CC at ecats.

Thanks

[PrecisionL]

bigmax, on Dec 11 2007, 09:49 AM, said:

Does anybody knows any link with notes on this 1D opening?

So far I only found nystrom-bertheau CC at ecats.

Thanks

If you mean the Diamond Major:

http://www.bridgeclu...ude/Diamond.htm

If you mean something else, please state exactly what system you are looking for.

Larry