[JanisW]

The given hand is a perfectly reasonable 12count. Yes the ♠J might not be great but 11 of your 12 HCP are well placed. I'd much rather open this, than Qx QJx Qxxx AJxx
If you would not open 1m and rebid 1NT, there was no reason to claim that a 1NT-rebid showed 12-14 whatsoever.
The only question is whether you'd open without the ♠J or KJ♦ instead of KQ.

Arguably you will reach some thin games and will fail to bring them home on some occasions, but in my opinion, the blame lies not with opening these 12counts. More often your P will have been overly ambitious with a flat 12count or the suits just did not break your way.

[Dumoti]

akwoo, on 2018-September-24, 18:24, said:

It's duplicate. Getting +150 when other people are getting +400 is just as bad as getting -100 when others are getting +120.

Yes, opening this hand will get you too high sometimes. It will also disrupt the opponents bidding or get you into thin making games at other times.

Novices frequently play as if you got 1 point for making your contract, lost 10 points for going down, and got 0 points any time you defended. This is very far from the actual method of scoring.

Personally, I found your argument unconvincing. My back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that there is a 52.4% chance of making the game. So, yes, the game is not hopeless. However, it's far more of an argument to make this call at IMPs than at matchpoints. If you play it better than everyone else then it doesn't matter whether you are +150 vs -50 or +150 vs +120. At IMPs, on the other hand, it definitely does matter.

Additionally, I don't find the reasoning of some players here persuasive. Some have advocated opening 11-13 under the theory that if partner has a strong NT, he can put them in game. To my way of thinking, this is rather silly. I'd much rather let the strong NT open the hand and use all the bells and whistles available to get to the ideal contract.

There is something to be said for the idea that JT is better than Jx. However, I think that many here would still open it if you remove the ♠T. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Assuming you subscribe to the rule of 15, you wouldn't open this in third seat. Obviously, not everyone subscribes to said rule. But if you wouldn't open it in 3rd seat, why would you open it in 1st and 2nd?

Nor do I see the problem after P-P-1♠-P-??
You should be able to bid 1NT assuming you play 2/1, a bid that is semi-forcing. If partner has a minimum, he can pass and you're almost certainly in a playable spot even if partner opened a four-card major with sub-minimum values. If he bids on, you have no problems with easy rebids that accurately describe your hand.

[mikeh]

Dumoti, on 2018-September-27, 16:08, said:

Assuming you subscribe to the rule of 15, you wouldn't open this in third seat. Obviously, not everyone subscribes to said rule. But if you wouldn't open it in 3rd seat, why would you open it in 1st and 2nd?

Because I am a bridge player.

More seriously, it is impossible to argue from any specific hand that any particular non-silly strategy will be better than any other non-silly strategy, and few players, especially non-expert players have the experience (or the memory and analysis) to be able to offer persuasive and sufficient data.

There is, however, an alternative source of information.

High-level bridge is very much a classic Darwinian environment, in which failure operates to remove unsuccessful ideas, while allowing for the success, refinement and spreading of those ideas that prove successful in contests between very intelligent, expert players.

I am a bit of a student of the game, with texts dating back to the 1890s (not contract, obviously, but the forerunner games) all the way up to the Rodwell Files. I have virtually every Bridge World ever published, until I ended my subscription in about 2009.

May top players use artificial methods, especially strong club systems, which employ limited opening bids, which mean that they can systemically cater to 1M openings having 10-15, or in some cases as light as 8-15. Such usually employ 10 or 11+ for the 1D method as well, assisted by the upper range being 15.

Those methods don't provide much guidance as to whether a hand such a J10 xxx KQxx KQJx is or is not a viable opening bid in a natural based method. For that we need to look at how such hands are commonly treated by successful natural-based pairs.

I don't think that one can say that 'everyone opens' this or that 'nobody opens' this. What one can say is that the trend over the past 50 years has been very consistently towards lighter and lighter 1st round actions.

We can see this from the 1N ranges in play. Again, we have to leave out Acol type approaches, which always used (roughly) 12-14 1N, as did Kaplan-Sheinwold.

For the strong notrumpers, the range used to be 16-18, and if one looks at how the game was taught back then (to the extent that point count was used, which wasn't universal until well into the 1950s), the normal opening bid required 13 points....this was taught, for example, by Goren, by far the most successful teacher after Culbertson, and possibly the most successful ever.

13-15 for 1suit then 1N worked well, in terms of having a good definition.

Tournament players learned that the 1N opening bid was powerful. Decent methods for responding were developed, starting with Rapee (but called after Sam Stayman) and then Oswald introduced Jacoby Transfers, and eventually we got walsh relays, 4 way transfers, fragments, etc.

The better the methods became, the more helpful it was to open 1N, and so people began playing 15-17....15 point hands arise far more frequently than do 18 point hands, so changing the range greatly increased the opportunity to use these powerful new tools.

Once one lowered the 1N to 15-17, one could lower the opening 1suit to 12, preserving that very useful 3 point range for the rebid.

Thus it became increasingly common to open 1suit with 12 hcp.

Nowadays, if one watches top-level bridge one sees, increasingly, 14-16 1N. Why? Because one gets a 14 count far more often than one gets a 17 count, and all good pairs have very powerful, accurate methods over their own 1N opening bids.

In turn this allows opening 1suit to be 11, preserving that 3 point range for the rebid of 1N.

While I do think that the foregoing logic is valid, I suspect that for some pairs the motivation may have worked at least in part in reverse: players found that opening the bidding carries with it more advantages than disadvantages, provided that the opening bid wasn't so wide as to cause issues later.

It is fundamental to bidding theory that the methods employed (leaving aside relay methods) permit the partners to describe shape while defining strength, and the earlier this can be done, and the lower the bidding when it is done, the better. One of the reasons why big club methods are as successful as they have been is not the ability to show a big hand via 1C, but the ability to limit and define the strength of the non-1C opening bids. One of the difficulties natural bidders face is the very wide range between minimum and maximum opening bids. If one lowers the requirements for 1suit to 11 hcp, one widens the range, unless one also lowers the requirements for the strong openings (which may well be counter-productive for a variety of reasons). One way of dealing with this is to lower the notrump range, thus allowing most minimum opening hands to define their strength very well via a 1N rebid that has an upper limit of 13 (playing 14-16) or 14 (playing 15-17)

All of this is by way of saying that high-end bridge reflects a trend towards lower range 'strong' notrump openings and a corresponding trend towards lower requirements for opening 1suit with a balanced hand, intending, usually, to rebid 1N (of course, not with 4 card support for partner's major).

Opening is not merely about bidding games. If it were, then we'd be discussing entirely different ideas.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that one needs 25 hcp combined to bid game. Then one should pass all 12 counts because we won't miss game if partner passes his 12 count...so long as we open all 13 counts, and so long as we have a way to force as a passed hand, we can pass our 12 count.

That's obviously silly since some 12 v 12 offer a good play for game. It's also silly because partscores count as well, and we want to maximize our ability to compete for partscores.

One way to compete is to open with modest values. This may offer some preemptive value and may also allow partner to compete with minimal values but a fit.

It may pave the way to beating the opps, by getting partner off to a good lead, or avoiding a bad one.

It may allow a very strong responding hand to better reach the correct slam or grand.

In short, which I am almost never capable of being, the trend in high-level bridge is towards more and more aggressive hand evaluation, and while some good players may reject the notion of opening a flat 12 count in 1st seat, I am pretty sure that most would do so happily.

As it happens, I am a 14-16 1N bidder and open virtually all 11 counts and, while I am a rung (or two) short of the highest levels of the game, I have significant experience with and against some of those who compete there. It's what wins.