[Fluffy]

Last night I though about how to free up 2NT opening or 2NT rebid, I got to this idea:

1♦-1♥

Now bid 1♠ as gazzili, IE, either natural (unbalanced) or a strong hand, including a balanced hand that might rebid 2NT, and maybe some other 16-18 hand.

This idea has a lot of potential in my opinion, one easy improve is that it frees up 2NT as 6♦-3♥ invitational or whatever, or you can even free up the 2NT opening and have 20-21 balanced hands open 1m*

The draw back is when 1♥ opener has 4 spades, he cannot be sure of 4♠ anymore, so he cannot bid 3♠ nor 4♠ naturally (in fact both of these bids should be used as splinter/voidwood with diamond support), but since those hands are strong, they will start with 2♣ or 2♦, and after that it would be easy to unfold the strong hands from the weak distributional.

To free up 2NT opening completelly it is required to have a way to show both ranges 18-19 and 20-21 somehow, one way would be:

1♦-1NT, now 18-21 has no problems bidding 3NT wich should be best contract regardless, fake reverse to a major is also an option for 20-21 if you like.
1♦-1♠, now 20-21 would bid 2NT, but 18-19 would have to bid 2♥ after wich 2♠ would be an inquiry, this overloads 2♥ reverse and its probably the worse option of the set
1♦-1♥, 2NT is 20-21 and 1♠ is gazilli including 18-19

1♣-1NT (10-11) ain't a problem
1♣-1♠ (diamonds or balanced weak) now 2NT 20-21 and 2[di[ is a reverse that might be 18-19 balanced
1♣-1♥/♦ (transfer) now completing transfer is 12-14 bal, 1NT is 18-19 and 2NT is 20-21

[kenrexford]

Thought along similar lines a while back. An alternative to consider is to make a 1NT rebid show spades and minimum, 1S then balanced minimum or spades extras or other rider extras. I think,I wrote something about it on my blog.

[Zelandakh]

This is the logical next step from using 1♥ - 1♠ - 1NT as Gazilli, which we had a few of weeks ago. I agree with Ken that an alternative rebid should show the spades. Personally I think I would use 2♣ for this though, in combination with a black suit inversion. Then 1♠ is clubs or strong. An alternative would be transfers (eg 2♣ = diamonds, 2♦ = spades) but then you probably create some inconsistencies in the follow-up auctions and I think a design goal of this kind of convention should be to keep it as similar as possible to the equivalent auctions (after 1♠).

[Fluffy]

why do you think 1♠ showing either spades (umbalanced) or extras is not best?, I don´t see the gain from bidding 1NT or 2♣ with spades. But I haven´t been looking deeply for wich 16-18 hands would like to bid gazilli other than 63 reds

[Zelandakh]

Fluffy, on 2012-September-13, 09:02, said:

why do you think 1♠ showing either spades (umbalanced) or extras is not best?

In Gazilli the Opener shows the other major immediately. The ambiguous bid is a minor (clubs or strong). Without having looked into the auctions my instinct says it is best to mirror this here too. Effectively this allows you to play exactly the same structure over 1♦ as over 1♠. The only awkward type becomes 4144 but I think we should be able to handle this. I daresay MickyB's 1♥ structure (aiming to keep things as natural as possible) would also work. That does mean remembering slightly different rules within the different versions though.