[gurgistan]

Hi folks,

As some of you may be aware. I am a Precision newbie. The following questions are in the context of the Precision style I am learning.

I have two questions.

Question 1:

Opener bids 1♣. Partner responds 1♠. Opener rebids 2♠. This is a trump ask. The style of Precision I am learning now has a six step response.

Responder rebids:

1st step 5 card suit, Jxxxx
2nd step 5 card suit, Qxxxx or better
3rd step 5 card suit, KQxxx or better
4th step 6 card suit, Qxxxxx or better
5th step 6 card suit, KQxxxx or better
6th step 5 card suit, AKQxx

The notes I am using has opener jump raising with 19-21 pts and good support and going to game with 16+pts and 3 card support.

So Opener must be 16-18 pts and has 2 card support.

Is opener trying to decide whether to play in 4 of responder's major or 3N?


Question 2:

The 1♦ is played as 11-15hcp with 2+ diamonds. The 1♦opener is clearly problematic if left in. Yet, there seem to be enough occasions when responder does not have enough of a hand to do anything about this. Does this work like the 1♣ opener in SA which may have as few as 3 cards it? That is, if 1♦opener and partner are weak then the opposition will inevitable barge in and if not it may work like a sacrifice. What workaround if any do players have when playing the 1♦ opener as 11-15hcp with 2+ diamonds?

[mtvesuvius]

I can't answer the first question, as I have never played that type of style. It doesn't sound optimal, however it might be better for simplicity.

Anyway, for case 2, you treat it as a normal 1♦ opener but can mess around (within reason of course) a bit more, since opener is limited and won't hang you. With very weak hands you pass 1♦, it's not much different than 1♣ possibly being three. When you're playing on the one level, the difference between a 4 card fit and a 5 card fit isn't too significant.

[Mbodell]

With the first question, I think the point is you only make a TAB response if you are going to be interested in the answer. Since you've wrongsided the contract (I.e., the presumed weaker hand will declare) you don't want to reveal information about that hand unless you have to. If you make the 2♠ bid opener should be going for slam, not merely 16-18 with 2 card support. This is why the 19-21 has an upper limit and why the 4 level bid is probably 16-18 not 16+ (I.e., with 3 spades and 25 points the auction 1♣-1♠-4♠ is a travesty).

A lot of precision systems are more relay like in that instead of in standard bidding where both hands tell a moderate amount of information about their hands you try to get one side to say as little as possible (and be captain) and ask questions of the other side. The other side now answers questions and reveals a bunch about their hand, and the captain places the contract. This is why wrong-siding can be so costly (the hand with all the revealed knowledge becomes declarer).

So presumably the TAB asks are used when you are slam curious and like set trump as either this suit or NT. I remember the steps you describe as 0-51-52-61-62-3 where 0 and 3 are how many of the top 3 cards you have and the middle four are suit length and top 3 honors. Presumably after the TAB response is given you'll want to discuss what other suit bids mean (they should be slamming but are they suits, cue bids, or CABs - I think CABs probably will make the most sense to continue the captain theme).

I'll note a modification that I use is to play transfer positives so if partner has a spade positive instead of bidding 1♣-1♠ he bids 1♣-1♥. Now a bid of 1♠ by opener agrees on trump and is some form of ask (you could do TAB, but we usually do control ask A=2, K=1, simple steps and then a later bid of trump is a TAB). This right sides the contract so the hand that is both weaker and doing the revealing also ends up as dummy. It is a bit of extra work, but I think quite worth while.

On question two, it isn't really a big deal. You are right that it is a little bad, but it tends to work out ok in the end. Some things that people do to "fix" this problem include have a wide ranging nt range and open 2♣ on 5♣4M so you basically never have to open 1♦ with 2 cards. Or incorporate part of your nt ladder in to 1♦ and then treat it more like either real ♦ or just a fake 1.5 nt. I've played where 1♦ is 0+, played a lot where it is 2+, and usually in my most frequent partnership it is 4+ if unbalanced (unless exactly 4135 or 1435) or 2+ if some balanced hand in our nt ladder. It isn't too bad once you get used to it.

[Stephen Tu]

gurgistan, on 2011-February-12, 01:52, said:

The notes I am using has opener jump raising with 19-21 pts and good support and going to game with 16+pts and 3 card support.

So Opener must be 16-18 pts and has 2 card support.

Is opener trying to decide whether to play in 4 of responder's major or 3N?

This is all rather dubious. It's why you should learn Precision from books (E.g. Precision Today, Berkowitz, or Precision in the 90s, Rigal), rather than try to learn from someone's bare system notes without deeper understanding of how the system works. In this sequence with trump asking bid (TAB), opener is deciding whether to play slam, after this + following up with various control asks. So it is typically 3+ support, really usually 4+, with 20+ pts. If opener has only 2 or 3 cd support, he has an alternative of bidding another suit or notrumps, and usually should. This is because you may belong in game/slam in a different strain, and it's near impossible after TAB to play somewhere else since subsequent bids are usually played as control asking bids/responses not secondary suits. With 16-18 notrump, not 4 cd support, clearly you should rebid 1nt (if playing mostly natural continuations other than the TAB/CAB sequences). Note that most precision players these days play 14-16 notrump openers, so the strong club hands only have 17+ balanced.

I doubt opener should be jumping to game much, other than splintering with a min 1c opener and good support. One of Precision's advantages is establishing a low level game force, you don't want to blow that away by jumping to 4M frequently when responder is unlimited and may want cue bidding room. Jump raise should be the 17-19 min 4 cd support IMO.

Quote

Question 2:

The 1♦ is played as 11-15hcp with 2+ diamonds. The 1♦opener is clearly problematic if left in. Yet, there seem to be enough occasions when responder does not have enough of a hand to do anything about this. Does this work like the 1♣ opener in SA which may have as few as 3 cards it? That is, if 1♦opener and partner are weak then the opposition will inevitable barge in and if not it may work like a sacrifice. What workaround if any do players have when playing the 1♦ opener as 11-15hcp with 2+ diamonds?

If responder has to pass he passes. Sometimes it will be passed out. Sometimes this will be bad, you have to live with it. It doesn't happen that often, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Way more problematic is competitive auctions where responder has something, and has to guess whether to support diamonds or not, you are going to get some of these wrong.

[olien]

I'll make a recommendation regarding TAB

Should play compressed steps:

1st step = 6+ card suit (now 1st step asks honours with none, 1, 2, 3)
2nd step = 5-card suit, no honours
3rd step = 5-card suit 1 honour
4th step = 5-card suit 2 honours
5th step = 5-card suit 3 honours

It may not be that worthwhile differentiating length with no honours, and just play steps of 5-card suit, no honours, and 1/2/3 honours with 6+ card suit.

Anyways, just an idea

[Mbodell]

olien, on 2011-February-12, 11:09, said:

I'll make a recommendation regarding TAB

Should play compressed steps:

1st step = 6+ card suit (now 1st step asks honours with none, 1, 2, 3)
2nd step = 5-card suit, no honours
3rd step = 5-card suit 1 honour
4th step = 5-card suit 2 honours
5th step = 5-card suit 3 honours

It may not be that worthwhile differentiating length with no honours, and just play steps of 5-card suit, no honours, and 1/2/3 honours with 6+ card suit.

Anyways, just an idea

If you do this you have more bids for lead/sacrifice doubles and you exchange information slightly slower, but do you save room?

Doing the full honor length with compressed we have:

50 - first step in original, second step in compressed, lose 1 level
51 - second step in original, third step in compressed, lose 1 level
52 - third step in original, fourth step in compressed, lose 1 level
53 - sixth step in original, fifth step in compressed, gain 1 level
61 - fourth step in original, (resolved by) fourth step in compressed, equal
62 - fifth step in original, (resolved by) fifth step in compress, equal
63 - sixth step in original, (resolved by) sixth step in compress, equal

So in exchange for knowing the difference between 50 and 60 and 53 and 63 you potentially spend more bids made (in the 6 card case) and in the frequent 5 card space you consume an extra level.

If you combine 50 and 60 then you usually save a level with 6 card suits but still burn a level with the 5 card suits.

The other advantage the compressed level has is if what you care about is not the honors, but instead is it a 6+ card suit you may be able to ask, get the cheap answer, and then not clarify honors but make some CAB or other slamming response.

But overall I think the original TAB responses are better.

[mtvesuvius]

For TABs it seems better to compress it even more though...

S1 = 6+ Card Suit (next step asks, following the same pattern as below)
S2 = 5 Card Suit with 0 or 2 top honours
S3 = 5 Card Suit with 1 or 3 top honours

I think the normal TABs take WAY too much valuable space...

[PrecisionL]

mtvesuvius, on 2011-February-12, 15:49, said:

For TABs it seems better to compress it even more though...

S1 = 6+ Card Suit (next step asks, following the same pattern as below)
S2 = 5 Card Suit with 0 or 2 top honours
S3 = 5 Card Suit with 1 or 3 top honours

I think the normal TABs take WAY too much valuable space...

Agreed, Dwayne and I don't use TABs, we use BETA (asking for Controls) instead. If there is still slam interest, we either use CABs (Control Asking Bids) or denial cue-bidding including trumps.