[mikl_plkcc]

At the dawn of auction bridge, the game was played without conventions. When conventions were introduced into the game (for example, before the 2-point spade was abolished, people assigned different meanings to each of 1♠ to 7♠ - useless bids on their own, that it needed a convention card), some people were vocally against them. For example, in Florence Irwin's book, she claimed that the informatory double (now called takeout double) is dishonest, illegitimate, cowardly, clumsy, dangerous, unkind, insidious and retrogressive and provided examples of how they should be bid instead, but now everyone thinks that it is not useful to double a 1-level opening for penalty and it is better to used to describe an opening hand short in their suit instead.

3rd seat and 4th seat openings used to be stronger than 1st seat and 2nd seat in the past, because the initial passes imply that the partner is weaker than average, so a stronger hand is needed to counterbalance, and it was better to pass out hands rather than opening a marginal hand because only 5% of partscores are completed. Now, a lot of people open ♠ aggressively at the 3rd seat, in order to shut out the 4th seat opening; or open ♠ aggressively at the 4th seat, in order to obtain a plus score.

Opening and raises were based primarily on quality, for example, having 5 small ♥ and side suit honours were not an opening hand and was suitable for a 2nd round bid. It was better for such defensive hands to wait a round before acting. Similarly, having tenaces in the long suit makes the hand not suitable for a preemptive opening as well as it would not be possible to run the suit without consuming multiple entries. A 1NT opening required 3 stopped suits and a 2NT opening required all suits stopped, as it was considered too risky to have a suit wide open when opening NT.

In modern bidding, most guideline now places shape over strength. People no longer care if their 1NT opening has 2 weak suits, opens the longest suit regardless of the quality, and compete with trump length rather than honours, etc., which result in a lot of contracts going down because of the weakness in a certain suit, but why was it considered bad a century ago when it is now a legitimate strategy to bid an expected undertricks better than their making contract?

Why did natural bidding develop in this way? Length in our hand implies length of other suits in opponent's hand, but may not imply extra tricks depending on the distribution. Also, before the era of conventions (e.g. before Stayman was created), how was bidding in high-level tournaments look like? How did they find fits without the modern gadgets?

[hrothgar]

> Why did natural bidding develop in this way

Path dependency

[DavidKok]

 mikl_plkcc, on 2025-February-19, 09:31, said:

In modern bidding, most guideline now places shape over strength. People no longer care if their 1NT opening has 2 weak suits, opens the longest suit regardless of the quality, and compete with trump length rather than honours, etc., which result in a lot of contracts going down because of the weakness in a certain suit, but why was it considered bad a century ago when it is now a legitimate strategy to bid an expected undertricks better than their making contract?

Why did natural bidding develop in this way? Length in our hand implies length of other suits in opponent's hand, but may not imply extra tricks depending on the distribution. Also, before the era of conventions (e.g. before Stayman was created), how was bidding in high-level tournaments look like? How did they find fits without the modern gadgets?

Put bluntly, the modern style is better. People reach more good contacts. The aggressive style makes the opponents guess more. The bidding style from the past, with more emphasis on suit quality and strength over shape, is worse. It gets slaughtered these days by modern bidding, even rudimentary modern bidding. You ask "how did people find their fits before modern gadgets?" and the answer isn't complicated: they didn't. They got to worse contracts. Not always, but often enough that it'd be a severe handicap today.

[mycroft]

The scoring system.

Read Simon on sacrificing with Mrs. Guggenheim as your partner. Read up on "tactics with/against a leg". Frequently all going down on a hand did was make the eventual cost of losing the rubber bigger.

Now realize that in duplicate, tournament, or even Chicago bridge, what happens on one hand is independent of what happened on previous hands - even the vulnerability (something that originally was designed to trigger on a side's previous success) is mandated by the board number.

Now it simply matters if -2 for -100 beats making 2 for -110, or -500 beats -620.

Now remember that in the days of whist, auction and contract bridge, before and after Vanderbilt's Invention, invariably the game was played for money. And that -100 costs little less (in English payout, frequently none less) than -110 (or a 60 leg/game completion), but -300 costs actual cash.

Also note that even though bridge at the absolute highest level is "IMP scored team matches with picked teammates", 90+% of bridge as it is played (and 90+% of tournament players sessions, and even more for club players who don't play tournaments regularly) is matchpoints, where "frequency of wins" has often more impact than "size of losses" (in points, not MPs). "If I turn 3 -90s into -50s or +50s (or -120 into -100 or -110) and one -90 into -1100, I win" changes a lot of thinking about what is an acceptable tradeoff in one's agreements or styles.

But a lot if it, as hrothgar implies, is "the losses are acceptable compared to the gains of not having to deal with these hands when we *don't* bid it". Another example of that is the "16 + 8" story in Precision. Originally, this was a dangerous situation that could lead to minus scores if forced to game, so a lot of bits of the system were designed to be able to get out in 2NT after a strong club and a positive response. Eventually it was realized that those bits of the system could be better used to find better games and slams; so another solution was required to the problem. Two primary ones have come into vogue: putting the balanced 16s into 1NT and playing "16+ unbal, 17+ bal", or "just eat it; some of those 24 HCP misfits make 9 tricks on good declarer play and a small misstep by the defence". Or, of course, some combination of the two.

[awm]

Some things changed in the format of the game:

1. Duplicate instead of Rubber.
2. People playing with the same partner throughout instead of rotating partners.

I think both of these favor more agreements in bidding.

We also learned some things about how to win at duplicate over the years:

1. Getting into the auction often pays off despite the risk that you might be doubled off.
2. Finding 8- and especially 9- card fits is really important.
3. Opponents often make the wrong lead so auctions like 1nt-3nt can win even with a suit open.

Even in the days of the Blue Team (up to 1970s) they were showing controls first and shape later, but I think the aggressive modern competitive style has pretty much ended that approach.

[awm]

Another point that many don’t like to discuss was the amount of “black magic” going on in the early days. There was a difference between “double” (good hand) and “DOUBLE” (penalties). No screens and no bid boxes made this hard to avoid. Sometimes that was the answer to how people found fits.

Psychs were a lot more common too.

[pescetom]

mycroft, on 2025-February-19, 10:37, said:

Now realize that in duplicate, tournament, or even Chicago bridge, what happens on one hand is independent of what happened on previous hands - even the vulnerability (something that originally was designed to trigger on a side's previous success) is mandated by the board number.

Could you please expand on that?
My understanding (quite probably mistaken) was that vulnerability was an immaculate conception by Vanderbilt and various poker-pros during that famous cruise and mandated from the start by board number.

[smerriman]

He invented vulnerability, but you became vulnerable when you had won your first game in a rubber, not related to how many hands you had played.

[mycroft]

Yeah, what smerriman said.

Now go and read Simon on "sacrificing when you've cut Mrs. Guggenheim" to see why you may not want to increase the number of hands they are vulnerable on (or how many hands they are *not* vulnerable on, even).

Note that that also applies to partscore battles - is it worth giving them $1.00 (at 2c/point) to stop them getting a 60 leg? to stop them completing a 60 leg? if they're vulnerable or not? What if *they've cut* Mrs. Guggenheim? What if she's going to declare (your side or theirs)?

In rubber, with an equivalent partnership, it pays to push to stop them completing a game, but probably not to let them have a leg. In those cases (and some when it's "completing a game", too), there has to be a decent chance you'll make it for it to be worth doing.

In duplicate (or even Chicago, where the "partscore benefit" is just the +50 rather than a leg), those concepts of "how does this change the state of the rubber for the next hands" simply do not apply; each board is independent of the others. (Yes, "state of the match/session" absolutely does apply; but not in the same way "we/they have a leg" or "if we let them make this, it's time to settle and recut". So it's unambiguously right to go -50, even -100, to defend against +110 or +140. So, bidding strategies evolved to match the scoring.

Similarly, many of the keys of modern systems simply collapse when "2♠ is game, getting to 3 is a slam try", never mind "Partner bid 1NT which is game, what do I do with 5 spades and a 7-count?"

[mikl_plkcc]

mycroft, on 2025-February-20, 10:10, said:

Yeah, what smerriman said.

Now go and read Simon on "sacrificing when you've cut Mrs. Guggenheim" to see why you may not want to increase the number of hands they are vulnerable on (or how many hands they are *not* vulnerable on, even).

Note that that also applies to partscore battles - is it worth giving them $1.00 (at 2c/point) to stop them getting a 60 leg? to stop them completing a 60 leg? if they're vulnerable or not? What if *they've cut* Mrs. Guggenheim? What if she's going to declare (your side or theirs)?

In rubber, with an equivalent partnership, it pays to push to stop them completing a game, but probably not to let them have a leg. In those cases (and some when it's "completing a game", too), there has to be a decent chance you'll make it for it to be worth doing.

In duplicate (or even Chicago, where the "partscore benefit" is just the +50 rather than a leg), those concepts of "how does this change the state of the rubber for the next hands" simply do not apply; each board is independent of the others. (Yes, "state of the match/session" absolutely does apply; but not in the same way "we/they have a leg" or "if we let them make this, it's time to settle and recut". So it's unambiguously right to go -50, even -100, to defend against +110 or +140. So, bidding strategies evolved to match the scoring.

Similarly, many of the keys of modern systems simply collapse when "2♠ is game, getting to 3 is a slam try", never mind "Partner bid 1NT which is game, what do I do with 5 spades and a 7-count?"

So how do modern bidding systems handle accumulated partscores in rubber bridge? For example, with 60 on, a 1NT bid can become wide-ranging.

[mikl_plkcc]

When I started to play bridge (I learnt it in an informal environment), before the exposure to any bidding system, I naively thought that I should make a 1-level opening bid holding 10 HCP, because it represents an average hand, so it should take an average number of tricks if the other 3 hands are also average.

And now I am reading some old bridge materials, and it seems that the practice of declaring NT with 12 HCP originated from the era of bridge-whist, where the declarer couldn't consult the partner to make a declaration, carried into auction bridge and contract bridge, however, suit openings were changed from based on suit quality in auction bridge to approx. 12 HCP in modern contract bridge as well.

If we want to argue, I would argue 10-12 HCP 1NT is the "most natural", and 10+ HCP 5-card suit for a suit opening, and a 16 HCP 2NT opening as well if a complete beginner try to bid without any knowledge to existing bidding systems, but why isn't such treatment commonplace among established players?

[mycroft]

I don't know - I don't play much rubber (I don't gamble at all, for a number of reasons).

"Not well", I think is a good description.

Having said that, rubber is also usually played cutaround, and with no regular partners except luck, by default (and sometimes by club regulation) system is strictly constrained.

Having said all of that, most "rubber bridge" nowadays is Chicago anyway (faster, and more volatile). There, the usual duplicate "50 for partscore, 300 or 500 for game" applies, instead of legs and 500/700 rubbers. Okay, sometimes - TGR's, the most famous rubber house in England, plays "legs stand, 100 at the end of the fourth deal if you have one". But they are very strong on "constrained system" as well.