[Double !]

Just a thought...

Could it be that the advent, development, and refinement of the negative double provided a sufficient alternative to help avoiding missing 4-4 major suit fits that the gains of 5-card majors outweights the liabilities, especially when matchpoints necessitates having a better idea of the degree of trump fit in competitive situations?

[MickyB]

Certainly negative doubles made 5 card majors playable. Whether they raised fives above fours is for you to discuss with the Hackett twins

[EricK]

Negative doubles work well if the overcall has been in a major, but if it is in a minor then you can easily end up in the wrong fit or missing a fit altogether (eg give opener a minimum 4423 hand and responder a minimum 4324 hand after 1♣ (2♦) X )

Eric

[Gerben42]

Back to the original topic. This will be based on the following assumption:

* You open 5-card majors on hands that others would not consider an opening bid regularly (this assumption was made already
* Some hands qualify for both a weak two and a 1-bid.

I combine this into the assumption that if you have a decent 6-card suit when you open, you will not have a minimum hand (otherwise you open a weak 2)

The structure is your favorite 2/1 structure but with 2/1 not GF but invite or better.

1M - 2/1 - ?
2M = 5 cards minimum.
2NT = 6 cards (not minimum)
New suit or raise partner's: GF natural
3S = 5332 maximum strength
3NT = 5332 medium strength

So this is "GF except opener rebids 2M". Nonforcing responder's rebids: Pass and 3 of his suit.

[Gerben42]

Freds theory about these kinds of swinging around the equilibrium is interesting. I doubt that Acol-style 4-card majors will ever come back, though. If 4-card majors become popular again it will be in the form of a system with limited opening bids (like Strong Club Canape).

What will be interesting to see if Fantunes-style systems will become popular. I think the news is spreading!

[hrothgar]

fred, on Apr 30 2005, 02:10 AM, said:

For a while there was a clear trend toward lighter preempts among the leading players in the USA. Then people starting leaving in more takeout doubles of preempts. Then the light preempt started to result in too many penalties. Then people started to have a little more for their preempts...

I am not sure if some equilibrium will eventually be reached or if this rates to be a never-ending cycle.

Couple quick comments:

1. So-called cyclical equilibria exist. Its entirely possible that this oscilation process is the steady state for the system. Cyclical equilibria are rare (most systems dampen or explode), however, it is possible...

2. I severely doubt that bidding systems are "transitive". Lets assume that we could provide that Acol > EHAA and BWS is > Acol. I don't think that it necessarily follows that BWS is > EHAA. In the absence of transitivity, the equilibirum is population based. The steady state for the system is (typically) a mixture of X% EHAA, Y% Acol, and Z% BWS...

[hrothgar]

Jlall, on May 3 2005, 08:36 PM, said:

uhh...yeah..what he said.. *goes and enrolls in college*

Cyclical equilibira are actually pretty simple.

The easiest way to conceptualize one is to think about orbital bodies. Consider a star and a planet. The only stable system is one in which the planet orbit arround the star (in actuality they both rotate arround a common center of mass, but you get the picture)

If the system is perfectly balanced, then the planet will continue to orbit the star forever. In some cases, the planet is actually on a long slow spiral towards the star. This system is dampening. In other cases, the planet is on an expanding cycle and will eventually break orbit. This is system is exploding...

Population equilibria are equally basic. Here, its easiest to think about your gastro-intestinal tract. The G/I is an absolutely filthy system. Your stomach is full of E-Coli and all sorts of other nasty critters. This is actually a good thing - All of the wee beasties balance each other out, making sure that none of them is able to take over. Equally significant, all these nasty little critters make it very difficult for foreign pathogens to be able to infect you... I don't know if you've every gone on serious antibiotics. In addition to curing people, a course of antibiotics will destroy all of your intestinal flora leaving you extremely vulnerable to outside infection. Right after finishing the course of antibiotics, the doctors will normally deliberate infect you with a balanced stomach culture. In the olden days they'd feed you yogurt. Now-a-days they got pills.

Now, all you need to do is extend the analogies over to bridge...

[luke warm]

hehe... what he said (i think) is that:

just cuz the saints beat the rams and

the rams beat the pats, it doesn't necessarily follow that

the saints can beat the pats

the steady state part would be gold's power rating

[awm]

Perhaps the main point here is that "invitational" hands are much more frequent and important opposite the light opening style. The range is something like 10-14 points, which is fairly wide and includes many of the most frequent strengths. Methods based on 2/1s being game forcing, or on 1NT as a game force relay, tend to sacrifice accuracy on these invitational range hands in exchange for better game/slam bidding on game-forcing hands. This makes some sense with sound openings where "invitational" is 10-12 and "game force" is 13+ but not so much sense opposite light openings where the ranges are 10-14 and 15+ respectively.

Perhaps the lighter opening style will see a return to popularity for "old-fashioned" bidding without game forcing 2/1 bids.

Of course there are also various relay approaches to consider, but again the main point is that we need a good way to bid the invitational hands. The options seem to be (1) maintain 1NT as natural, making it easier to bid the non-GF hands (but sacrificing a relay step to use 2♣ as the relay) (2) use separate game force and invitational relays (3) make the relay invitational or better. I guess the main consideration here is whether you believe relays are a good way to go on invitational hands (I personally have doubts that relays will do a good job finding light games and stopping in the right partscores on non-game hands, but to each their own).

[david_c]

awm, on May 3 2005, 05:59 PM, said:

This makes some sense with sound openings where "invitational" is 10-12 and "game force" is 13+ but not so much sense opposite light openings where the ranges are 10-14 and 15+ respectively.

Heh - that's not light, that's ultra-light ... change my vote from "other" to (2)

I describe my own methods as light openings, but they're still sound enough that I'd force to game with 13.

[sfbp]

My 2 cents - this is what we have been playing in Purple (standardised) Precision card for a while... doesn't really fit any of the poll's definitions.

2/1 - 5-card suit, 10+ (I guess this invitational or better!) only game forcing if responder supports opener's major at 3-level on second round with or without jump.

Jump shifts - STRONG... (no bergen) - 16 points and KQxxx is a bare minimum

2NT - Jacoby 15+ and 4 trumps

3M - flat hand (3 OR 4 trumps), no ruffing value, pard is advised not to proceed unless he was going to bid 4M over ANY raise

2M - hand which will accept AT LEAST ONE game try (we play short suit game tries, something like reverse Kokish!?)

4M - of course any hand which doesnt need to mess around, this may include 12-counts with 4 trumps as well as 5 counts with 5 trumps

1NT - ANYTHING ELSE. May be very good or very bad hand, or hand which wishes to deposit pd in 2M. Also any hand which thinks it might bid 2NT inviting on second round, or any hand which, with rebid from pard showing SIX, will play in game in 6-2 fit. Also any hand with ruffing value that wants to invite by jumping to 3M at second turn. This is essentially an alertable treatment (no lower or upper point count bound) but usually we just say "forcing". Second round non-jump bid of new suit is drop dead, of course. I call this the "i-don't-know-what-to-do" bid. It works because most of the time opener is sufficiently limited - jump shift or rebid by opener is rare and of course non-forcing.

1S - if partner opens 1H, and we have 4 spades, we treat this essentially the same as 1NT, except for the very good and very bad options. If he rebids 1NT we have XYZ which gives the responder lots of choices.

Splinters, sure. We play 1S 3H as splinter so care must be taken with 1S-2H since it may have a very strong hand, of course, because no SJS available.

And the other major at the 4-level is always natural.

Stephen