[SixOfWands]

Hi Guys,

I've devised a system based on a Polish Club for match point pairs that I've detailed here...

forcing club

It features a forcing and unlimited club bid on 14+ HCP that is the usual Polish clubs/balanced/4441 or any 19+ specification.

Opening bids are light and aggressive on 9+ five card diamonds, hearts, spades and 2C five card 9-13.

I'd be interested to know people's thoughts especially if you've played a Polish Club.

Nigel

[TylerE]

Not a fan. The big gain from playing an artificial club system _is the hands where you don't open 1♣_. These 1 bids are about as wide ranging as Standard American, so that's not very compelling, and you're still stuck with the rather unweildy Polish 1♣ bid. If you really want light openings, I think you're better off with a Precision-style strong (only) club, say 15+, and make the one bids 9-14. Sure, then your 1♦ opening is nebulous length-wize, but that's less of problem when you're more constrained in HCP.

[SixOfWands]

Yes I have just switched from a strong diamond (like precision) but the problem with both systems is that you can't show a five card major straight away with 16-18 HCP you have to make a strong opening. With this system you can raise five card ♦ ♥ or ♠ in the 9-11 range (which you pass in SAYC) and also get to raise them with 16-18 (which you bid 1C in precision or 1D in strong diamond).

Another thing I don't like about precision is the 1D opener, it says virtually nothing useful, it's very frequent and you don't have enough room to bid over it and you can rarely raise it (three or two card suit!). It's not that useful to know your partner has 11 hcp when you don't know the suit of 11 of his cards.

At least in a strong diamond you have a 1D relay over your catch all 1C opener so you can show five card majors by responding in a major (www.strongdiamond.co.uk for full details).

Precision 1D sucks eggs.

Anyone tried this kind of Polish Club?

[mgoetze]

Polish Club is a Strong NT system, please find yourself a new name.

[straube]

 mgoetze, on 2012-May-29, 14:46, said:

Polish Club is a Strong NT system, please find yourself a new name.

Also, the Polish 1C is either a weak NT, clubs, or strong (18+).

This seems more like a strong club system with and underpowered (14+) club and very light openings. I've seen similar with suit openings of like 9-12 and 1C of 13+. I think that's too aggressive. It's nice when one opens light and finds an immediate fit. When one doesn't, the light openings don't support much fit-finding and the auction bogs down.

When we're balanced, we don't open lighter than 11 hcps and I'm a little nervous opening 11s vulnerable.

[SixOfWands]

 mgoetze, on 2012-May-29, 14:46, said:

Polish Club is a Strong NT system, please find yourself a new name.

A Polish Club is Defined as Follows...
A small club is a system where 1C is forcing but not necessarily strong.
A Polish Club is a form of small club where 1C is forcing and unlimited but not necessarily strong.
The strength of NT makes no difference to this definition but it's normal to play a strong NT.

On your second point, you would know, had you read my link that I have given it another name...

N x

[mgoetze]

Sorry, but your definition is poor, starting with the fact that Polish Club is a bidding system, not a single bid. And a "short club" is something else entirely in my world.

[SixOfWands]

 straube, on 2012-May-29, 15:04, said:

Also, the Polish 1C is either a weak NT, clubs, or strong (18+).

This seems more like a strong club system with and underpowered (14+) club and very light openings. I've seen similar with suit openings of like 9-12 and 1C of 13+. I think that's too aggressive. It's nice when one opens light and finds an immediate fit. When one doesn't, the light openings don't support much fit-finding and the auction bogs down.

When we're balanced, we don't open lighter than 11 hcps and I'm a little nervous opening 11s vulnerable.

Thanks for this, I'm interested. I reckon if you prefer a weak NT and you want to play a Polish Club this is the way works. You can promise more points with your 1C which can only help responder if the opponents pre-empt. Also you have limited your hand much more than a "Strong" Club 14+ and in any case strong clubs on less than 16 are banned in England.

You right about the immediate fit, it is nice when partner finds one and in this system you can raise immediately about 2/3 of the time (over the majors) which is much better than passing I'd say. The average TNT on a hand with a five card suit is more than 17.5 so on average you will be able to compete to the three level if you get in early.

[straube]

So your 1C could be Axxx KQxx x Kxxx ? Any other shapes with fewer than 14?

Or maybe this is an 1N opening?

[SixOfWands]

 mgoetze, on 2012-May-29, 15:15, said:

Sorry, but your definition is poor, starting with the fact that Polish Club is a bidding system, not a single bid. And a "short club" is something else entirely in my world.

I'm not that interested in definitions to be honest more interested in discussions with someone who has played a similar system so weak openings and a forcing club 14+ based on a Polish Club.

[SixOfWands]

 straube, on 2012-May-29, 15:27, said:

So your 1C could be Axxx KQxx x Kxxx ? Any other shapes with fewer than 14?

Or maybe this is an 1N opening?

Thanks for that...

So 1C is always 14+ and can be...

1. 14-18 five clubs, balanced no five card diamonds hearts or spades, 4441 any shortage
or
2. all 19+ hands

yes we would open 1NT on the hand you describe.

[awm]

A few comments on potential difficulties here:

(1) It seems you are opening 1NT with 9-13 points and 4414/4441. This is moderately bad, as you will miss some major fits and these hands can be quite a bit stronger than their "points" would indicate in the presence of a major fit. The same may apply to 4144/1444. if your 1♦ is really 5+ and not 4+, and in fact these are worse because you may land in a 5-1 fit when partner tries to sign off in a major.
(2) Your 2♣ opening is moderately bad because you can easily miss a major suit fit that way; it is safer to play 2♣ as 6+ and many modern precision players have moved in this direction.
(3) What are you opening with (13)45 and 9-13? If 2♣, then you will have even more issues because responder with (for example) 4432 can't look for a major fit with a 6-2 club fit to fall back on, because opener may not have either of a 4-card major or six clubs. This is somewhat worse than the "precision 2♣" some others are playing. If 1♦, then your 1♦ opening is really 4+ and not 5+. If 1NT, then see point 1.
(4) Your 9-13 NT range is really just too wide. Does responder invite with 12? If so, you will play 2NT on 21-22 high quite often, which will frequently fail. But it's even worse because of the first point; say responder has a 4324 11-count; you might make game opposite a 4441 12/13.. but do you invite? Really?
(5) The 9-18 range may seem similar to the approximately 11-20 range that "standard" bidders use, but you will actually have a much tougher time with it.

To elaborate on the last point... standard openings divide roughly into 11-14, 15-17, 18-20. Three major issues come up -- first, you may miss a game if you open with 18-20 and partner passes with 4-5 points, especially if you have a nice fit in opener's second suit. Second, you may miss a game if you pass opener's NF rebid with 7-8 points and he holds the 15-17 range. Third, you may miss a game in competition if opener has 15-17 and his LHO preempts responder out of the auction; sometimes opener can balance but if he has the "wrong" shape and responder has some 7-9 points you can be talked out of the bidding, or if you balance aggressively as opener with 15-17 you can go for some numbers when partner has a non-fitting 0-4 or the like. Fortunately for standard bidders, these situations are rare. First, you are much more likely to make game when your points are evenly divided; 12 opposite 12 is often game but 20 opposite 4 is a lot more iffy so it's less awful to miss them. Second, opener is much more likely to have 11-14 than any of the other ranges, because hcp are a roughly normal distribution around 10 and because a strong notrump removes the balanced hands (very frequent) from the 15-17 range. Comparing this to the 9-18 range, your openings will divide into roughly 9-12, 13-15, 16-18. While the 9-12 range is more common, your 9-13 1NT opening overlaps mostly the first range, and 13-15 is in general pretty common. Further, you will have trouble with 18-6 and 15-10 games (instead of having trouble with 20-4 and 17-8) meaning much more frequent issues and on hands where the points are more evenly divided. Finally, to parallel standard openings (where you pass with 0-5) you would have to generally pass with 0-7. Maybe you feel comfortable with this, but you will lose a lot of partscore decisions with i.e. 14 opposite 7 where you are not getting much field protection from that choice. If you are not passing with 6-7, then opener cannot really force game with the 16-18 range so you end up with three ranges none of which can GF opposite a minimum response, obviously a tough problem that standard bidding does not have.

[Zelandakh]

Hello and welcome to the forums. You might find it helpful to compare your system with a more traditional Polish set-up in a weak NT setting. So

1♣ = 15+ natural or 15+ balanced or 18+ any
1♦ = (9)10-17, 4+ diamonds, unbal
1♥ = (9)10-17, 5+ hearts, unbal
1♠ = (9)10-17, 5+ spades, unbal
1NT = (11)12-14
2♣ = 10-14, 6+ clubs or 5 cluns and 4M

This is a good set-up, especially if you put some work into follow-ups. (Hint: Polish Club response and rebid structure will not work). Another system you should compare notes with is An Unassuming Club. Another method which is perhaps relevant is Marston's Submarine Opening Strong Club style. Finally, probably the most popular method with a 14+ 1♣ opening right now is Fantunes - it's not a multi-way club in the sense that you are looking for though.

On the system itself, Adam's write-up is pretty much on the money. Basically you are just trying to do too much with the opening bids. What you end up with is a system that does not do anything particularly well. It will score well against beginners, who always have a tough time when opponents open and will not see that they should disrupt your methods. Against better players you will hit a wall.

That said, I do not want to discourage you. There is a playable system under the covers there but you need to decide in which direction you want to go. I think you need to do a lot of testing to get a feel for what kinds of things work in practise. On the other hand, if you are just messing around with system design for fun, rather than creating something good, then just play around and hopefully you will learn something that helps your bidding along the way.

[Cthulhu D]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-May-30, 02:58, said:

Another system you should compare notes with is An Unassuming Club. Another method which is perhaps relevant is Marston's Submarine Opening Strong Club style.

To supplement Zelandakh's excellent advice: http://bridgewithdan...systems/UAC.txt <--- Full unassuming club writeup. Lots of stuff to loot.

In the same vein, http://users.abo.fi/...ridge/bclub.pdf Bolish club. Bolish really hammers home how nice it is to take out the 'too strong for 1NT' openers out of the 1C.

[glen]

 Cthulhu D, on 2012-May-30, 04:49, said:

To supplement Zelandakh's excellent advice: http://bridgewithdan...systems/UAC.txt <--- Full unassuming club writeup. Lots of stuff to loot.

In the same vein, http://users.abo.fi/...ridge/bclub.pdf Bolish club. Bolish really hammers home how nice it is to take out the 'too strong for 1NT' openers out of the 1C.

The last system is quite close to Polar (polar.pdf), except to keep a natural 2♣ opening I put the 18-19 balanced in 2♦, more of a Molish (Mexi-Polish) system.

[SixOfWands]

 awm, on 2012-May-29, 19:21, said:

A few comments on potential difficulties here:

(1) It seems you are opening 1NT with 9-13 points and 4414/4441. This is moderately bad, as you will miss some major fits and these hands can be quite a bit stronger than their "points" would indicate in the presence of a major fit. The same may apply to 4144/1444. if your 1♦ is really 5+ and not 4+, and in fact these are worse because you may land in a 5-1 fit when partner tries to sign off in a major.
(2) Your 2♣ opening is moderately bad because you can easily miss a major suit fit that way; it is safer to play 2♣ as 6+ and many modern precision players have moved in this direction.
(3) What are you opening with (13)45 and 9-13? If 2♣, then you will have even more issues because responder with (for example) 4432 can't look for a major fit with a 6-2 club fit to fall back on, because opener may not have either of a 4-card major or six clubs. This is somewhat worse than the "precision 2♣" some others are playing. If 1♦, then your 1♦ opening is really 4+ and not 5+. If 1NT, then see point 1.
(4) Your 9-13 NT range is really just too wide. Does responder invite with 12? If so, you will play 2NT on 21-22 high quite often, which will frequently fail. But it's even worse because of the first point; say responder has a 4324 11-count; you might make game opposite a 4441 12/13.. but do you invite? Really?
(5) The 9-18 range may seem similar to the approximately 11-20 range that "standard" bidders use, but you will actually have a much tougher time with it.

To elaborate on the last point... standard openings divide roughly into 11-14, 15-17, 18-20. Three major issues come up -- first, you may miss a game if you open with 18-20 and partner passes with 4-5 points, especially if you have a nice fit in opener's second suit. Second, you may miss a game if you pass opener's NF rebid with 7-8 points and he holds the 15-17 range. Third, you may miss a game in competition if opener has 15-17 and his LHO preempts responder out of the auction; sometimes opener can balance but if he has the "wrong" shape and responder has some 7-9 points you can be talked out of the bidding, or if you balance aggressively as opener with 15-17 you can go for some numbers when partner has a non-fitting 0-4 or the like. Fortunately for standard bidders, these situations are rare. First, you are much more likely to make game when your points are evenly divided; 12 opposite 12 is often game but 20 opposite 4 is a lot more iffy so it's less awful to miss them. Second, opener is much more likely to have 11-14 than any of the other ranges, because hcp are a roughly normal distribution around 10 and because a strong notrump removes the balanced hands (very frequent) from the 15-17 range. Comparing this to the 9-18 range, your openings will divide into roughly 9-12, 13-15, 16-18. While the 9-12 range is more common, your 9-13 1NT opening overlaps mostly the first range, and 13-15 is in general pretty common. Further, you will have trouble with 18-6 and 15-10 games (instead of having trouble with 20-4 and 17-8) meaning much more frequent issues and on hands where the points are more evenly divided. Finally, to parallel standard openings (where you pass with 0-5) you would have to generally pass with 0-7. Maybe you feel comfortable with this, but you will lose a lot of partscore decisions with i.e. 14 opposite 7 where you are not getting much field protection from that choice. If you are not passing with 6-7, then opener cannot really force game with the 16-18 range so you end up with three ranges none of which can GF opposite a minimum response, obviously a tough problem that standard bidding does not have.

Hi Awm,

Thanks for your post, well thought out criticism and very welcome. Here’s the way I look at the problems you’ve suggested…
1. You do miss some 4-4 major suit fits when you play a mini NT 9-13 anyway, even without a 4441 shape. This is kind of par for the course with this bid. What we are aiming to do here is shut the opponents out by taking out a level of bidding and not really telling them what we have. However we don’t ever lose a 5-4 major suit fit because we open five card majors 1Major and responder always makes a weak pull to a major if he has five. Responder can also show a mildly constructive spade hand 11+ five spades by bidding our 2C relay first (this is a bit complex so I’ll refer you to here…http://www.forcingclub.co.uk/1nt-opener.php). We also can bid 1NT with 4315, 3415, 3451 and 3451 shapes too since partner only pulls to a six card minor generally unless doubled. If partner pulls to a five card suit when doubled we can pull to the next suit up for takeout (squirm).
2. We are allowed to open 2C 9-13 with a five card or six card suit and a singleton major but we prefer 1NT generally with five clubs. We can indeed miss a major suit fit here as you need 13+ to do anything other than raise. However we are considering leaving this opening to third and fourth seat and passing instead for the reasons you give. What do you think of pass on these 9-13 club hands?
3. See 2.
4. I’ve been playing a wide mini NT for some time and the style I suggest with five point ranges is this. With a minimum of 24 HCP between you play in 3NT, with a minimum 22 raise to 2NT and partner puts you in game with a minimum of 24. You find all 26 point games and play in some 24 and 25 point games too. With marginal values at match points it makes little difference if you bid game because there is about a 50% change it will make – you can get a top underbidding as well as over-bidding!
5. The argument for a 10 point suit range is simple, in SAYC and Acol a five point range is fine for weaker rebids…
1C 1H 2C 11-15
and an 11-18 point range is also normal in this situation…
1D 1H 2C 11-18 points
So if it’s fine there then it’s fine in the system I’m suggesting, we just respond with a point more 8+ rather than 6+.
When playing SAYC or Acol I divide my range into 11-15 or 16-20 and then split these two ranges in exactly the same way as I described in point 4.
Second point on missing games is that we have two types of raise to 2 of a major available so we can find some tight games based on a ten or nine card fits using our weak pre-empts…
1H 2H 0-7 three card support
3H 0-7 four card support
4H 0-7 five card support
6. Opening with five card 9 counts is better than opening 12 for two reasons. Firstly you can raise very aggressively and quickly when partner opens a nine count. 9-11 is the most frequent three point range so this happens a lot. Secondly because you limit your range to 18 HCP rather than 20 in SAYC partner can safely pass with 6 or 7 and you can actually play in 1D/H/S. I have had several tops making 1Suit when others go down in two!

[SixOfWands]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-May-30, 02:58, said:

Hello and welcome to the forums. You might find it helpful to compare your system with a more traditional Polish set-up in a weak NT setting. So

1♣ = 15+ natural or 15+ balanced or 18+ any
1♦ = (9)10-17, 4+ diamonds, unbal
1♥ = (9)10-17, 5+ hearts, unbal
1♠ = (9)10-17, 5+ spades, unbal
1NT = (11)12-14
2♣ = 10-14, 6+ clubs or 5 cluns and 4M

This is a good set-up, especially if you put some work into follow-ups. (Hint: Polish Club response and rebid structure will not work). Another system you should compare notes with is An Unassuming Club. Another method which is perhaps relevant is Marston's Submarine Opening Strong Club style. Finally, probably the most popular method with a 14+ 1♣ opening right now is Fantunes - it's not a multi-way club in the sense that you are looking for though.

On the system itself, Adam's write-up is pretty much on the money. Basically you are just trying to do too much with the opening bids. What you end up with is a system that does not do anything particularly well. It will score well against beginners, who always have a tough time when opponents open and will not see that they should disrupt your methods. Against better players you will hit a wall.

That said, I do not want to discourage you. There is a playable system under the covers there but you need to decide in which direction you want to go. I think you need to do a lot of testing to get a feel for what kinds of things work in practise. On the other hand, if you are just messing around with system design for fun, rather than creating something good, then just play around and hopefully you will learn something that helps your bidding along the way.

Hi Thanks for that,

What you're describing there is very similar, just a wider NT and 9 point openings.
Your links seem to be describing quite different systems though.
Interesting nevertheless.

Nigel

[Zelandakh]

 SixOfWands, on 2012-May-30, 06:30, said:

Hi Thanks for that,

What you're describing there is very similar, just a wider NT and 9 point openings.
Your links seem to be describing quite different systems though.
Interesting nevertheless.

You are welcome. The basic structure I posted is a fairly standard one and used in a few different systems which you can look up. It also happens to be the basis for my own system (sorry, no link available). Note that these systems give up on opening the 9-10(11) point balanced hands. I think this is better than giving up on opening the 10-13 point club hands. I would regard this structure as the basic version of the kind of system (multi-way, strong club, weak NT) you are trying to design so it would be natural to compare where you are with this.

The other systems I linked to are ones which have certain similarities to yours and might suggest to you directions in which you could develop what you have. An Unassuming Club is a multi-way 1♣ opening with a weak NT that solves the 2♣ opening problem in an innovative way; Martson's system is a strong club with a low (15+) bottom end; Fantunes uses a 1♣ opening to be 14+, but here it is always either natural or balanced (15+ if balanced). Finally, my system takes the standard base and fits a (not quite but similar) symmetric relay response structure onto it. After a positive response to 1♣, bidding the next step is a relay (18+) while anything else shows the 15-17 hand types. I also use transfers over the 2♣ opening. Almost everything can be found in other bidding systems - just look around for ideas.

[SixOfWands]

 Zelandakh, on 2012-May-30, 06:50, said:

You are welcome. The basic structure I posted is a fairly standard one and used in a few different systems which you can look up. It also happens to be the basis for my own system (sorry, no link available). Note that these systems give up on opening the 9-10(11) point balanced hands. I think this is better than giving up on opening the 10-13 point club hands. I would regard this structure as the basic version of the kind of system (multi-way, strong club, weak NT) you are trying to design so it would be natural to compare where you are with this.

The other systems I linked to are ones which have certain similarities to yours and might suggest to you directions in which you could develop what you have. An Unassuming Club is a multi-way 1♣ opening with a weak NT that solves the 2♣ opening problem in an innovative way; Martson's system is a strong club with a low (15+) bottom end; Fantunes uses a 1♣ opening to be 14+, but here it is always either natural or balanced (15+ if balanced). Finally, my system takes the standard base and fits a (not quite but similar) symmetric relay response structure onto it. After a positive response to 1♣, bidding the next step is a relay (18+) while anything else shows the 15-17 hand types. I also use transfers over the 2♣ opening. Almost everything can be found in other bidding systems - just look around for ideas.

Thanks,

Sadly in the UK the minimum for a strong club is 16 HCP but right now I'm fairly happy with the basic structure. I'd be interested to see a post of your system if you get one together,

Nigel

[awm]

People tend to overestimate the frequency of 9-11 point ranges. This may seem like an odd thing to say, because the frequencies are readily available online (and easy to compute)! The issue is that frequencies change when we're not in first seat. Each pass ahead of us implies (assuming vaguely normal methods) that someone doesn't have the points to open, which gradually increases our expected point total. For example, playing this system it will be rare that you hold 9-11 in third chair, since you know that partner holds less than 9 and RHO holds less than 12 (or whatever their minimum opening is, which could easily be 10 or 11 on many hands given the modern style). In fact I'd expect that in this situation holding 12-14 is quite a bit more frequent than 9-11.

Game bidding is important at matchpoint scoring. Arguably it is more important than at IMPs, because at IMPs the game bonus is so significant that you can bash a lot of games reasoning that even if the contract is quite anti-percentage, the possibility of a defensive error (especially against a low-information auction) might bump it over the quite low bar for an IMPs game contract. Further, finding the right partial is important at matchpoint scoring. Landing in 2NT instead of 1NT is a significant minus position at MP, even worse than at IMPs (because at IMPs, the points you lose are at worst a partscore swing and the difference between -1 and -2 is even less significant, whereas at MP this could be just as bad as missing a game or slam). For these reasons I'd be quite wary of a system with extremely wide ranges even (or perhaps especially) at MP scoring.