[akhare]

Our current 1♣ structure is the following:

1♦: GF, including all bal, ♥/♠ single suited or with minor
1♥: Semi-positive
1♠: DN
1N+: Various positives

Awm's strong 1♦ system got me thinking about the following possibility:

1♦: GF, including all bal, ♠ single suited or with minor
1♥: Semi-positive
1♠: ♥ single suited or with minor
1N: GF with both majors
2C: GF with both minors
2D: GF with clubs
2H: GF, three suited, short major
2S+: GF with diamonds

Over 1♣ - 1♦, opener continues:

1♥: Ask, various hands
.....1♠: Confirms DN
.....1N: ♠ / ♠ + ♣
.....2♣ / 2♦: Bal hands
.....2H+: ♠ + ♦ (reversed)
1♠: Min ♠ one suiter or with minor
1N: Min bal hand
2♣ / 2♦: Min single suiter

Advantages:

1) Min balanced hand auctions are much more compact, i.e., 1C - 1D - 1N instead of 1C - 1D - 1S - 1N - 2C...which tends to tends to give out too much information, especially when game is the limit

2) Opener can bid 1♠ / 2♣ / 2♦ with min hands over 1♦ and responder still has full relays available if needed

3) Some positive hands are unwound more quickly, which leaves us little better placed in knowing our suits in case of interference over 1♣ - 1♦ (GF).

Downside:

In case of interference over 1♣ - 1♦, opener isn't sure whether we are in a GF.

However, as awm pointed out, the split range between the DN and GF response is much easier to deal with (0-3/8+ vs. the traditional 0-7 range in the Precision 1♣ - 1♦).


Also, since the 1♣ - 1♦ range may contain DN, the opps may not be at as much liberty to take action because it very well be their board.

Comments or suggestions?

[Fluffy]

I don't understand if 1♦ contains weak hands or not.

The biggest problem seems to be the lack of 1♦ definition, not for strengths, but for type hands. Diferentiating between balanced hands with 4M and 5+M can be a pain after preemption.

[akhare]

Fluffy, on 2011-December-18, 14:17, said:

I don't understand if 1♦ contains weak hands or not.

The biggest problem seems to be the lack of 1♦ definition, not for strengths, but for type hands. Diferentiating between balanced hands with 4M and 5+M can be a pain after preemption.

Yes -- 1♦ will contain either:

1) 0-3 hands any shape
2) 8+ balanced hands
3) 8+ hands with single suited spades
4) 8+ hands with spades and a minor

The current 1♦ response includes 2-4 *and*

5) 8+ hands with single suited ♥
6) 8+ hands with ♥and a minor

[awm]

This is going to help you a lot on the double negative hands, and I think it's also a big deal to show the heart positives right away before opponents bury you with spade bids. This should more than compensate you for the potential issues in competition after the two-way 1♦ response. Certainly I have not experienced any trouble with this approach in competitive sequences in the time I've been playing it (although the set of positive hands in my 1♦ is potentially more limited than yours).

[Free]

In fear of repeating myself, I hate this way of handling semi positives.

I'm also not a fan of combining GF hands with DN in 1 response. Opener is now basically obligated to bid 1♥, or responder can't bid properly. For example: 1♣-1♦-2♣-2♠, is this GF or DN with long ♠s? And intervention won't be a big problem for hands where game is the limit, but when you're in the slam zone it might get tricky when opps interfere. I'd like to see this in practice, not sure if it works.
I think I understand the logic though: with ♠s you can always bid at the same level, while with ♥ you want to bid your suit immediately. However, when the auction returns, your 2 opps will have had the chance to overcall/raise.

[awm]

I don't like the treatment of semi positives either, but he didn't change that.

I generally use the cheapest call as relay after 1c-1d-natural bid. The double negative can pass 2m or bid anything but the relay. Yes, this means you can't play 2h after 1c-1d-2d, but looking at Moscito style double negative it seems you wouldn't be able to play two anything after 1d-1s-3d? All opener's 2 level rebids seem devoted to hands with a major.

[akhare]

awm, on 2011-December-20, 12:26, said:

I don't like the treatment of semi positives either, but he didn't change that.

I generally use the cheapest call as relay after 1c-1d-natural bid. The double negative can pass 2m or bid anything but the relay. Yes, this means you can't play 2h after 1c-1d-2d, but looking at Moscito style double negative it seems you wouldn't be able to play two anything after 1d-1s-3d? All opener's 2 level rebids seem devoted to hands with a major.

Regarding 1♥ as all SPs, it comes down to system design choice.

As I recollect, the latest Moscito structure was:

1♦: Most positives
1♥: Bal or unbalanced with no 5CM
1♠: DN
1N: Single suited with diamonds, 5♥+minor OR 5M440
2♣: Single suited with hearts, or 5♠+minor
2♦: 5♠, 4♥
2♥: 5♥, 4♥
2♠: Single suited with ♠

This undoubtedly has an advantage when responder can show 2-suited major SP hands immediately, but comes at the cost of playing the positives relays at +1.

IMO, separating SP hands from 0-7 1♦ response in classic Precision was the brilliant idea. The tradeoffs of compressing all SPs into one bid vs. assigning several immediate SP bids are less clear to me, but perhaps someone can outline the case for it.

[straube]

I don't like this, but I'm trying to be open-minded.

I'm really surprised that Adam thinks that contested auctions would not be a problem for the 2-way 1D response, but I know he has a lot lot more experience than we do. I also want to point out that we have significantly fewer DN and SP responses than does Moscito because our DN is usually 0-1 QP and our SP is 2-4 QPs. We immediately establish a GF like 40% of the time and up to now, I've always understood this to be a huge achievement for a constructive auction and against interference.

I think that 1C-1D, 1N as a balanced hand is extremely problematic. Opener might be tempted to rebid 1N with all the manner of odd shapes and configurations (1444, 3154, 2452, etc). Bidding constructively would be impossible after this. There isn't space for opener's hand pattern to be relayed out (including those odd shapes) and there isn't space for responder's hand to be relayed out either. On top of this, one would be tempted to use a 2C continuation for both strong relay and weak relay purposes. Just impossible I think.

Much better to rebid 1H over the 2-way 1D response and see what happens. This preserves room for relays. If partner shows the DN, one can rebid 1N now.

This leaves 1C-1D, 1N for something else. My first thought would be majors or 3-suited short a minor (just as before). But perhaps it could be something else.

So we have...

1C-1D

.....1S-S/m, S
.....1N-S/H, 3-suited short minor
.....2C-?
.....2D-?
.....2H-?
.....2S-?
So I suppose one could just slide single-suited club, diamond, and heart hands into 2C, 2D, and 2H. We'd be -1, +0, and +1. It's tempting to use 2C for something else...say C/H, but then one would be dealt 6H/4C and languish in clubs just for the possible chance of having a nice relay auction. We would be cross-purposed quite a lot and especially at higher levels. 2S could be 5/5 minors? I can't really envision a sensible meaning for bids much higher than 2S. Which means opener cannot reverse relay all of the shapes he currently can.

So far with this new scheme, opener can be relayed for S, S/C, S/D, S/H, 3-suited short minor, C, D, H and 5/5 C/D leaving H/C, H/D, the 3-suited short major, and the rest of the minors.

But we still have room.

1C-1D, 1H-2m showing the balanced hands. We can reverse relay opposite these. We would want to. But that only reliably leaves us 2H and higher (over 2C) and 2S and higher (over 2D). So arbitrarily maybe the H/C patterns when space permits?

That means we have reverse relays for everything but the H/D, the 3-suited short major, the rest of the minors, and sometimes the reverser H/C hands. We could probably clean that up.

Adds a bit of complication though.

But we might as well reorganize everything.

1C
.....1D-DN, bal, S, S/C, S/D
.....1S-C,D,C/D, 3-suited, short major
.....1N-S/H, 3-suited short minor
.....2C-H/C
.....2D-H
.....etc-H/D

It's interesting, messy, and worrisome.

[Free]

akhare, on 2011-December-20, 14:51, said:

This undoubtedly has an advantage when responder can show 2-suited major SP hands immediately, but comes at the cost of playing the positives relays at +1.

I thought we already had this discussion many times

The point in MOSCITO is that SP is more frequent than GF. It's a choice between:
- GF relays +0 steps & SP relays +2 steps
- GF relays +1 step & SP relays +1 step (on average, a few cases are +2 steps, a few cases are +0 steps)
For the SP's to be +1 step, you need to describe the SP immediately, which is what we do. Because the frequency of SP is higher, the overall relay structure improves because on average, we end lower to show our exact shape. So it's not a tradeoff, it's an improvement.

Playing 1-♣-1♥ as "any SP" keeps the SP relays +2 steps (if you use 1♠ as a GF relay). In this case, you can actually call it a tradeoff.

The structure you wrote is some of the many experimental structures of Marston. I've never played this one, I always played the one suggested by Richard where you get the Majors in quickly. This gives us a big advantage when responder has a Major, and a small advantage over "any SP" when we don't have a 5+ card Major.

[straube]

Free, on 2011-December-21, 03:01, said:

I thought we already had this discussion many times

The point in MOSCITO is that SP is more frequent than GF. It's a choice between:
- GF relays +0 steps & SP relays +2 steps
- GF relays +1 step & SP relays +1 step (on average, a few cases are +2 steps, a few cases are +0 steps)
For the SP's to be +1 step, you need to describe the SP immediately, which is what we do. Because the frequency of SP is higher, the overall relay structure improves because on average, we end lower to show our exact shape. So it's not a tradeoff, it's an improvement.

Playing 1-♣-1♥ as "any SP" keeps the SP relays +2 steps (if you use 1♠ as a GF relay). In this case, you can actually call it a tradeoff.

The structure you wrote is some of the many experimental structures of Marston. I've never played this one, I always played the one suggested by Richard where you get the Majors in quickly. This gives us a big advantage when responder has a Major, and a small advantage over "any SP" when we don't have a 5+ card Major.

Yeah, we've had this discussion before.

Not surprised if Marston used the 1H semipositive first. Makes sense. But I think Mark Abrahams wrote the variable captaincy part. Well, we hopefully pick tradeoffs that we think are improvements. Our SP is 2-4 QPs and our GF is 5QPs+ and we GF significantly more than Moscito. We have nearly as many GF auctions as SP auctions. It's like a 5% difference. We are showing shape immediately with hands with which Moscito is responding 1H. We are showing shape immediately with many hands with which Moscito is responding 1D. Nice that Moscito shows its major suit positives right away. But we have 1C-1N+ auctions, too. All of Moscito 1N+ responses are set up to relay but many are aborted shy of game. That would make me ask whether we were getting the full benefit of that space. All of our relays end in game. We allow for reverse relays and are +0 and we think it's better to be +0 and have the right hand be captain when slam is more likely. We have far more slam auctions when responder can GF. Offhand, I'd say most of our slam fishing occurs when both opener and responder has a QP or two above base (10 and 5 for us).

I think Moscito is a very strong system, but it's designed with a 15+ club. Our 1C is 16+/17+bal and we ought to give more weight to game and slam auctions.

[Free]

straube, on 2011-December-21, 06:08, said:

I think Moscito is a very strong system, but it's designed with a 15+ club. Our 1C is 16+/17+bal and we ought to give more weight to game and slam auctions.

I agree that's a very important difference. In a strong ♣ system where 1♣ would promisse 20+HCP, it would be ridiculous to play SP responses. In a 15+HCP strong ♣ it makes a lot of sense to use SP's. Somewhere in between is the borderline, but I haven't done the math to know where it is exactly. I play a 16+/17+bal strong ♣ system as well, we don't use SP's either, and I must say that I haven't missed them so far. In MOSCITO considerably more auctions started with 1♣-1♦.

[rbforster]

Free, on 2011-December-21, 03:01, said:

I thought we already had this discussion many times

The point in MOSCITO is that SP is more frequent than GF. It's a choice between:
- GF relays +0 steps & SP relays +2 steps
- GF relays +1 step & SP relays +1 step (on average, a few cases are +2 steps, a few cases are +0 steps)
For the SP's to be +1 step, you need to describe the SP immediately, which is what we do. Because the frequency of SP is higher, the overall relay structure improves because on average, we end lower to show our exact shape. So it's not a tradeoff, it's an improvement.

just to offer the other side of the coin, I think you just don't need as much space for SP hands - one relay step isn't the difference between finding your proper game strain below 3NT, but it does let you inquire a little more often about slam prospects safely. However, you don't need that many steps to resolve the limited range of QPs or whatever in a known SP hand (a GF responder can have a wider range of values), and furthermore GF opposite GF is more common than GF extras opposite SP. So both on frequency grounds and useful space grounds, it seemed more important to allocate the extra space to showing GF relays.

In the spirit of disclosure, I decided to go the a 3rd route - including almost all the 0-7 hands in 1♦ like precision, while adding a few more GF ones too. This gives:

- GF relays at -1 on 2 suiters, -1 to +0 on balanced or single suited, and no relays on SPs

Shows you what I think of SPs .

[akhare]

straube, on 2011-December-21, 02:21, said:

I don't like this, but I'm trying to be open-minded.



I think that 1C-1D, 1N as a balanced hand is extremely problematic. Opener might be tempted to rebid 1N with all the manner of odd shapes and configurations (1444, 3154, 2452, etc). Bidding constructively would be impossible after this. There isn't space for opener's hand pattern to be relayed out (including those odd shapes) and there isn't space for responder's hand to be relayed out either. On top of this, one would be tempted to use a 2C continuation for both strong relay and weak relay purposes. Just impossible I think.

This interpretation is incorrect. In this scheme opener is allowed to bid 1N only on the truly balanced hands.

straube said:

Much better to rebid 1H over the 2-way 1D response and see what happens. This preserves room for relays. If partner shows the DN, one can rebid 1N now.

Maybe the post wasn't clear, but opener bids 1♥ with a hand that doesn't qualify for any other bid.

straube said:

This leaves 1C-1D, 1N for something else. My first thought would be majors or 3-suited short a minor (just as before). But perhaps it could be something else.

No -- the whole idea is to have shorter and less revealing auctions with balanced hands. An auction like 1♣ - 1♦ - 1N - <transfer> - 3N - Edit: 4♠ is much better than the tortured auction with min bal hands like 1♣ - 1♦ - 1♥ - 1♠ - 1N - 2♣ - 2♦ - (5 spades) - 3N - 4♠, which reveals both hands and makes the defence double dummy.

Granted, the same risk of revealing too much information always exists, but it's especially bad for the min balanced hands and it's much better to better to reach our games fast when slam is ruled out.

straube said:

But we might as well reorganize everything.

1C
.....1D-DN, bal, S, S/C, S/D
.....1S-C,D,C/D, 3-suited, short major
.....1N-S/H, 3-suited short minor
.....2C-H/C
.....2D-H
.....etc-H/D

It's interesting, messy, and worrisome.

This throws out everything. The idea was to create a *simple* swap of the 1♣ - 1♠ (DN) with 1♣ - 1♦ - 1♥ - 1♠ (DN). As noted this opens up several other possibilities, including letting us play in 1♠ / 2♣ / 2♦, *and* allows shorter auctions in the case of balanced hands as well.

[wclass___]

akhare, on 2011-December-18, 13:46, said:

Comments or suggestions?

Not that this helps you, but I have strong feelings about 1D as most 0-7 (negative) being best.. or at least superior than this.