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GIB Ignores 9-Card Major Fit once again he'd rather rebid his 5-bagger

#1 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 10:43

Time, and time again, GIB rebids a 5-card major before mentioning a 2nd suit, even when the 2nd suit is 5-cards or more.
I can cope with it, so far as competing in robot tournaments, since it’s the same for everyone. However, I would like to see it acknowledged that this isn’t just a minor problem, and I don’t mean on just this hand. I’ve mentioned this same GIB logic on several occasions before.
Since then I’ve given a little on my opposition to rebidding 5-card major. I’m still not crazy about it with 5-3-3-2, but I have no great objection if it’s in the framework of system. Even with a strong 5-card major and weak 4-card minor I’m ok with it. However, I don’t think I’ll ever accept with 5 of a major + good 4-card 2nd suit, and never ever with 5-5 and up.

The definition does say “Opener reverse; 5+ clubs, 4+ hearts, 3-spades, 3-diamonds”, but we shouldn’t even need a definition for this one. GIB chose to rebid spades rather than support hearts with QJ10xx!

Bug report submitted.

Btw, it does make 5 in either suit without diamond lead and continuation, 4 without; but in the great majority of cases a 9-card fit will work better than 7-card fit, especially when you need to take ruffs in either hand.

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#2 User is offline   virgosrock 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 11:39

View Postzhasbeen, on 2017-November-06, 10:43, said:

Time, and time again, GIB rebids a 5-card major before mentioning a 2nd suit, even when the 2nd suit is 5-cards or more.
I can cope with it, so far as competing in robot tournaments, since it’s the same for everyone. However, I would like to see it acknowledged that this isn’t just a minor problem, and I don’t mean on just this hand. I’ve mentioned this same GIB logic on several occasions before.
Since then I’ve given a little on my opposition to rebidding 5-card major. I’m still not crazy about it with 5-3-3-2, but I have no great objection if it’s in the framework of system. Even with a strong 5-card major and weak 4-card minor I’m ok with it. However, I don’t think I’ll ever accept with 5 of a major + good 4-card 2nd suit, and never ever with 5-5 and up.

The definition does say “Opener reverse; 5+ clubs, 4+ hearts, 3-spades, 3-diamonds”, but we shouldn’t even need a definition for this one. GIB chose to rebid spades rather than support hearts with QJ10xx!

Bug report submitted.

Btw, it does make 5 in either suit without diamond lead and continuation, 4 without; but in the great majority of cases a 9-card fit will work better than 7-card fit, especially when you need to take ruffs in either hand.

A picture is worth a thousand words.



This picture is worth a thousand curses notwithstanding curses are also words. Do we need to explicitly file bugs or do the code-fixers read all these and maybe infer a bug? I may have a 1000+ bugs I did not file. Code fix is so simple. Read the blurb for previous bid and about to bid and make sure there is consonance. If you are confused or don't have a valid bid skip the hand. Especially in Money Bridge!!!
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#3 User is offline   steve2005 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 11:44

This may be a bug in the way Gib handles reverses. Rebidding a 5-card spade suit on most hands is a common method.
Obviously when you have 5-card support for partner's reverse suit you should support that suit in some way and be thinking slam!

As far as I know there is no difference in bidding for money bridge games so that is a red herring.
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#4 User is offline   The_Badger 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 12:00

I'm speechless...it just goes from bad to worse...
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#5 User is offline   virgosrock 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 12:03

View Poststeve2005, on 2017-November-06, 11:44, said:

This may be a bug in the way Gib handles reverses. Rebidding a 5-card spade suit on most hands is a common method.
Obviously when you have 5-card support for partner's reverse suit you should support that suit in some way and be thinking slam!

As far as I know there is no difference in bidding for money bridge games so that is a red herring.


exactly!! if 4c could be a splinter (i know can't be on this bidding) would be great. Agree MB is red herring. It just hurts more LOL
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#6 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 12:52

View Poststeve2005, on 2017-November-06, 11:44, said:

This may be a bug in the way Gib handles reverses. Rebidding a 5-card spade suit on most hands is a common method.
Obviously when you have 5-card support for partner's reverse suit you should support that suit in some way and be thinking slam!

As far as I know there is no difference in bidding for money bridge games so that is a red herring.
"This may be a bug..."

This is the extreme version, but it has many cousins that have 2 elements:

1) rebidding a 5-card major when better bids are available. As I said initially, I have relaxed my stance on rebidding 5 of a major. There are times when it is accceptable, such as some 5-3-3-2 hands with a decent major, etc. However, it makes no sense to me to rebid 2H with xx AJxxx AQJx xx after a 2C response. Rebid 2D, showing hearts and diamonds. What could be simpler and make it easier for partner to know what you have?.

2) Taking the 2-card preference for 5-2 major fit, when 8, or 9 even 9-card fits are available in a minor. This happens fairly often, even when the 2nd suit has been mentioned.

That said, it is probably not as easy for the programmers to fix as it might look. They may have to start over from scratch. It's not like a Windows patch that Microsoft can do on the fly.
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#7 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 13:26

This can be explained by the well known rule, 8 ever, 9 never.
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#8 User is offline   Stephen Tu 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 16:06

On reverse auctions, it's a very common treatment for North to rebid 5 cd spade suit regardless of suit quality on this auction on most shapes. Opener is usually not expected to support on 2 (usually rebidding 2nt with your hand shape), although with KQ spades and only Jx of diamonds, 3S is an understandable distortion. With your spades and diamonds reversed you definitely should not support on 2.
This style caters to finding 5-3 fits when opener is 3415/3406/3316, now when responder bids 2nt instead of 2s, most likely to sign off in clubs, opener doesn't have to guess whether there is a 5-3 spade fit and can bid 3c comfortably instead of bidding 3s and maybe getting too high.

But not holding heart fit; this one North has a clear raise, and it's clearly a bug. If somewhat weaker hand, less great fit, it should bid 2nt as a weakness signal first then pull to hearts if it wants to stop in a partial opposite a min reverse.

GIB's bidding over reverses is really broken, it doesn't support hearts here, and on other hands, holding 5+ spades and a weak hand, instead of rebidding spades as is std for 99% of people it currently bids 2nt as a weakness/Lebensohl signal which is messed up. 2nt is supposed to be (possibly) weak with almost always FOUR spades, unless having a heart fit and planning to show a weak raise of hearts (which would then imply the fifth spade). So they definnitely need to work on these auctions.

Generally, I think you should be more accepting of 5 cd major rebids on cramped auctions such as after a 2/1 bid, and reverse auctions like these (if robot had diamonds/clubs instead of heart fit). They serve a purpose in giving higher bids tighter ranges/shapes (like supporting clubs directly after a reverse is often played as strongish GF without 5 spades), and as an economical bid it preserves bidding space for partner to more accurately describe their hand.

View Postzhasbeen, on 2017-November-06, 12:52, said:

This is the extreme version, but it has many cousins that have 2 elements:

1) rebidding a 5-card major when better bids are available. As I said initially, I have relaxedmy stance on rebidding 5 of a major. There are times when it is accceptable, such as some 5-3-3-2 hands with a decent major, etc. However, it makes no sense to me to rebid 2H with xx AJxxx AQJx xx after a 2C response. Rebid 2D, showing hearts and diamonds. What could be simpler and make it easier for partner to know what you have?.


Does GIB actually do this? I tested on a bidding table, it bid 2D. The tougher question is what it should bid with xx AJxxx xx AQJx after 1h-2d. To me this is a vastly different situation, and think 2h after 2d is perfectly normal.

Quote

2) Taking the 2-card preference for 5-2 major fit, when 8, or 9 even 9-card fits are available in a minor. This happens fairly often, even when the 2nd suit has been mentioned.

Please post the actual hand so we know what you are talking about.
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#9 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 17:29

View PostStephen Tu, on 2017-November-06, 16:06, said:

On reverse auctions, it's a very common treatment for North to rebid 5 cd spade suit regardless of suit quality on this auction on most shapes. Opener is usually not expected to support on 2 (usually rebidding 2nt with your hand shape), although with KQ spades and only Jx of diamonds, 3S is an understandable distortion. With your spades and diamonds reversed you definitely should not support on 2.
This style caters to finding 5-3 fits when opener is 3415/3406/3316, now when responder bids 2nt instead of 2s, most likely to sign off in clubs, opener doesn't have to guess whether there is a 5-3 spade fit and can bid 3c comfortably instead of bidding 3s and maybe getting too high.

But not holding heart fit; this one North has a clear raise, and it's clearly a bug. If somewhat weaker hand, less great fit, it should bid 2nt as a weakness signal first then pull to hearts if it wants to stop in a partial opposite a min reverse.

GIB's bidding over reverses is really broken, it doesn't support hearts here, and on other hands, holding 5+ spades and a weak hand, instead of rebidding spades as is std for 99% of people it currently bids 2nt as a weakness/Lebensohl signal which is messed up. 2nt is supposed to be (possibly) weak with almost always FOUR spades, unless having a heart fit and planning to show a weak raise of hearts (which would then imply the fifth spade). So they definnitely need to work on these auctions.

Generally, I think you should be more accepting of 5 cd major rebids on cramped auctions such as after a 2/1 bid, and reverse auctions like these (if robot had diamonds/clubs instead of heart fit). They serve a purpose in giving higher bids tighter ranges/shapes (like supporting clubs directly after a reverse is often played as strongish GF without 5 spades), and as an economical bid it preserves bidding space for partner to more accurately describe their hand.



Does GIB actually do this? I tested on a bidding table, it bid 2D. The tougher question is what it should bid with xx AJxxx xx AQJx after 1h-2d. To me this is a vastly different situation, and think 2h after 2d is perfectly normal.


Please post the actual hand so we know what you are talking about.


“With your spades and diamonds reversed you definitely should not support on 2.”
After getting to know GIB better I would not show delayed support with Jx, although there could be some hands where there would be no better choice. In this case I was not shocked to see 5 spades come down, but I gasped when I saw all those hearts. I looked back and forth at the bidding chart and our hands to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me.
Btw, most pairs did find hearts. They either opened 1NT with my hand or the auction went
1C – P – 1S –P
2H – P – 2S – P
2NT – P – 3H – P
4H – all pass
I can imagine opening 1NT with my hand, but if I’m going to do it with 2 doubletons I want at least Kx in each of them. If I were to make an exception with Jx or Qx it would be with a strong 6-card minor and 2-2-3 in the other suits.
The sequences starting with 1C as shown above are totally foreign to my way of thinking. How can you rebid 2NT off that auction with Jx of diamonds? There’s nothing more I can say about the way GIB bid it.

“Does GIB actually do this? I tested on a bidding table, it bid 2D.”
I’ll try to be better about making comments without an hv picture to back it up. Until recently I kept only screen captures.
Is the bidding table you use available on BBO? Have there been instances of when you played that contradicted the bidding table? Either way I’d be interested in checking it out.

“Please post the actual hand so we know what you are talking about. “
Same response as first 2 sentences of last.

I still might be able to find something that I can type out manually, but from now on I won’t make statements without pictures to back them up before posting.
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#10 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 18:26

View PostStephen Tu, on 2017-November-06, 16:06, said:

On reverse auctions, it's a very common treatment for North to rebid 5 cd spade suit regardless of suit quality on this auction on most shapes. Opener is usually not expected to support on 2 (usually rebidding 2nt with your hand shape), although with KQ spades and only Jx of diamonds, 3S is an understandable distortion. With your spades and diamonds reversed you definitely should not support on 2.
This style caters to finding 5-3 fits when opener is 3415/3406/3316, now when responder bids 2nt instead of 2s, most likely to sign off in clubs, opener doesn't have to guess whether there is a 5-3 spade fit and can bid 3c comfortably instead of bidding 3s and maybe getting too high.

But not holding heart fit; this one North has a clear raise, and it's clearly a bug. If somewhat weaker hand, less great fit, it should bid 2nt as a weakness signal first then pull to hearts if it wants to stop in a partial opposite a min reverse.

GIB's bidding over reverses is really broken, it doesn't support hearts here, and on other hands, holding 5+ spades and a weak hand, instead of rebidding spades as is std for 99% of people it currently bids 2nt as a weakness/Lebensohl signal which is messed up. 2nt is supposed to be (possibly) weak with almost always FOUR spades, unless having a heart fit and planning to show a weak raise of hearts (which would then imply the fifth spade). So they definnitely need to work on these auctions.

Generally, I think you should be more accepting of 5 cd major rebids on cramped auctions such as after a 2/1 bid, and reverse auctions like these (if robot had diamonds/clubs instead of heart fit). They serve a purpose in giving higher bids tighter ranges/shapes (like supporting clubs directly after a reverse is often played as strongish GF without 5 spades), and as an economical bid it preserves bidding space for partner to more accurately describe their hand.


Does GIB actually do this? I tested on a bidding table, it bid 2D. The tougher question is what it should bid with xx AJxxx xx AQJx after 1h-2d. To me this is a vastly different situation, and think 2h after 2d is perfectly normal.

Please post the actual hand so we know what you are talking about.

This is only a distant cousin but I only had to go a couple folders deep out of dozens. I should have more before long:





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#11 User is offline   Stephen Tu 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 19:15

View Postzhasbeen, on 2017-November-06, 17:29, said:

I can imagine opening 1NT with my hand, but if I'm going to do it with 2 doubletons I want at least Kx in each of them. If I were to make an exception with Jx or Qx it would be with a strong 6-card minor and 2-2-3 in the other suits.


This is kind of antiquated thinking. Requiring stoppers in all suits for NT openers went out the window many decades ago. People found out that it's more effective to just open 1nt on average.

Reversing only gains in rare situations vs. opening 1nt. These are mainly situations where you belong in clubs for slam/game. Responder may just blast 3nt at some point and not have a great system to look for a club fit with say 4324/3325 type of hand, and down you go on a diamond lead. You also tend to gain when partner has 4 hearts and not enough to bid over 1nt.

On the other hand, 1nt vs. reversing gains when:
- responder is weak with 5 spades, you get to play 2S rather than getting higher.
- responder is weak misfit with say 4342, you get to play 1nt instead of being at 3c.
- sometimes responder is weak with heart fit or club fit, but 1nt makes but 3c/3H doesn't.
- 1nt preempts opp from finding their spade/diamond fit.
- 1nt-3nt or other simple auctions reveal less about your shape to the opps and let them guess wrong on opening lead or the defense.

Quote

How can you rebid 2NT off that auction with Jx of diamonds?

I'd want to be stronger to rebid 2nt instead of reversing (I'm a 1nt opener). But rebidding 2nt on Jx of diamonds (which would be routine if you were say 3325 shape and 18, Jx of diamonds) often works out. Partner will often have help in diamonds, or will get you to a major instead of NT. If the opps had diamonds to run, a fair percentage of the time they will have bid them.

As for the people who reversed than bid 2nt, even that isn't completely unreasonable:
- partner will often be 5242 or 5332 or 5143 with some help in diamonds, 3nt can be perfectly reasonable spot, and might be better than 52 spade fit
- if partner has club support no diamond help, after 2nt he can bid 3c (or 3d artificial if 3c is NF to play), and you can support spades then, and he will know only 2 and bid 4S/3nt/4c/5c intelligently.

This might arguably be better than supporting on 2 and encouraging partner into a 5-2 spade fit even when he is 5242 with diamonds decently stopped, because most people will assume 3 spades is 3415.
- partner not really supposed to have this great heart fit but GIB is broken here.

Quote

Is the bidding table you use available on BBO? Have there been instances of when you played that contradicted the bidding table? Either way I'd be interested in checking it out.

There is a practice section on BBO where you can set up bidding practice tables and use robots. You can use the advanced dealing features to predeal a hand and test out options. If you want to force certain auctions it can take a bit of tedious getting up and swapping yourself between the north/south seats.


Your last hand post is certainly ridiculous bidding by GIB. It has a lot of problems in this area, finding the right passes/preferences in competitive auctions; competitive auctions just find lots of holes in the DB. Unfortunately there is not much to do but post the hand here or use robot report, the programmers have to fix them piecemeal, when they are doing that they hopefully figure out rule additions to cover as many analogous auctions as possible.

Try to use links to myhands (either go to bridgebase.com/myhands, or in BBO go to your my BBO, recent hands/tournaments, and use export deal/handviewer link) to get a tinyURL, so that the hands you post include the bots highlighted bidding descriptions. Visit the link in a browser so you can copy/paste the full expanded URL Use
[hv=(expanded handviewer link URL)]400|300[/hv]

Rather than manually constructing the handviewer yourself or using screenshots.
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#12 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-06, 22:30

"This is kind of antiquated thinking. Requiring stoppers in all suits for NT openers went out the window many decades ago. People found out that it's more effective to just open 1nt on average."

Ok, Stephen. Give the old man a break. I've opened more 1NT's without a stopper in all suits than I can count, sometimes even 2 suits, e.g. AKQx xxx KQJ xxx. In fact, I'm pretty sure I open one that looked something like that within past 2 days.

Here's what I said:
"I can imagine opening 1NT with my hand, but if I’m going to do it with 2 doubletons I want at least Kx in each of them. If I were to make an exception with Jx or Qx it would be with a strong 6-card minor and 2-2-3 in the other suits." I'm capable of getting a little wild at times...ha,ha.

I know about tinyurl files now, but had trouble combining them with the the diagram you just posted the last time I fooled around with it. I'll get around to it before long.
Notice that for this last one I didn't include the east-west hands. I wonder if it's not better that way when you are looking for comments about the bidding. That way there's no bias based on the hands we can see. I don't know; I have mixed feelings and I'm not seeing anyone else post that way.
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#13 User is offline   virgosrock 

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Posted 2017-November-07, 05:43

View Postzhasbeen, on 2017-November-06, 22:30, said:

"This is kind of antiquated thinking. Requiring stoppers in all suits for NT openers went out the window many decades ago. People found out that it's more effective to just open 1nt on average."

Ok, Stephen. Give the old man a break. I've opened more 1NT's without a stopper in all suits than I can count, sometimes even 2 suits, e.g. AKQx xxx KQJ xxx. In fact, I'm pretty sure I open one that looked something like that within past 2 days.

Here's what I said:
"I can imagine opening 1NT with my hand, but if I’m going to do it with 2 doubletons I want at least Kx in each of them. If I were to make an exception with Jx or Qx it would be with a strong 6-card minor and 2-2-3 in the other suits." I'm capable of getting a little wild at times...ha,ha.

I know about tinyurl files now, but had trouble combining them with the the diagram you just posted the last time I fooled around with it. I'll get around to it before long.
Notice that for this last one I didn't include the east-west hands. I wonder if it's not better that way when you are looking for comments about the bidding. That way there's no bias based on the hands we can see. I don't know; I have mixed feelings and I'm not seeing anyone else post that way.


After suffering with GIBBO, perhaps otherwise too, I try not to do such reverses with 5422. any 5431 15+ yes. In the given deal 17 hcp and 5+ clubs I open 1c and then 2NT. Has worked quite well. It also gets me in the region where GIB continuations are well defined. Learned the hard way. Perhaps the adage :know your partner" holds true.

vrock
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#14 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-07, 13:10

View Postvirgosrock, on 2017-November-07, 05:43, said:

After suffering with GIBBO, perhaps otherwise too, I try not to do such reverses with 5422. any 5431 15+ yes. In the given deal 17 hcp and 5+ clubs I open 1c and then 2NT. Has worked quite well. It also gets me in the region where GIB continuations are well defined. Learned the hard way. Perhaps the adage :know your partner" holds true.

vrock


I hear you on the “getting to know partner”. I’m open to changing my NT requirements, but will probably stick with what I’ve been doing a little longer, while keeping closer track of how it works over time. I generally don’t let the results on a given hand have too much of an effect.
However, there’s one call I’ve stuck to stubbornly; the rule of 20. It has worked great in live play but I almost always get a bad board when a deal is passed out here. Starting the next time it comes up, I’m not going to pass out a hand.
I average 60.5% per round in ABCL robot tournaments, so it doesn’t make sense to keep settling for average or below without putting up a fight. After 551 tournaments it’s time for a change. As a rule we old people don’t like change.
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#15 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2017-November-07, 15:07

View Postzhasbeen, on 2017-November-06, 22:30, said:

Here's what I said:
"I can imagine opening 1NT with my hand, but if I’m going to do it with 2 doubletons I want at least Kx in each of them. If I were to make an exception with Jx or Qx it would be with a strong 6-card minor and 2-2-3 in the other suits." I'm capable of getting a little wild at times...ha,ha.


Playing with GIB, that's not a reality based conclusion with the current state of GIB development. GIB usually handles 1NT auctions quite well for GIB. Opener's hand is well described, the basic response system is pretty complete, and the followups are usually defined ok.

When you reverse, it's almost as if the original developer didn't understand reverses, or didn't have time to do any robust programming, so it's a crapshoot.

Playing with GIB, if you don't open 1NT when you can, any disasters that happen are your fault for not opening 1NT, especially when you know the severe limitations on GIB bidding "judgement".
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#16 User is offline   virgosrock 

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Posted 2017-November-07, 16:10

View Postzhasbeen, on 2017-November-07, 13:10, said:

I hear you on the “getting to know partner”. I’m open to changing my NT requirements, but will probably stick with what I’ve been doing a little longer, while keeping closer track of how it works over time. I generally don’t let the results on a given hand have too much of an effect.
However, there’s one call I’ve stuck to stubbornly; the rule of 20. It has worked great in live play but I almost always get a bad board when a deal is passed out here. Starting the next time it comes up, I’m not going to pass out a hand.
I average 60.5% per round in ABCL robot tournaments, so it doesn’t make sense to keep settling for average or below without putting up a fight. After 551 tournaments it’s time for a change. As a rule we old people don’t like change.


what is the rule of 20?

vrock
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#17 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2017-November-07, 16:22

View Postvirgosrock, on 2017-November-07, 16:10, said:

what is the rule of 20?

vrock


Generically, this is the Rule of XX. Add the number of high card points to the lengths of your longest 2 suits and it should be >= XX.

So, 10 HCP and a 5-5-x-x hand is 20, as is 11 HCP and a 5-4-x-x, and 12 HCP and 5-3-3-2. These would all satisfy the Rule of 20.
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#18 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-07, 18:11

View Postjohnu, on 2017-November-07, 16:22, said:

Generically, this is the Rule of XX. Add the number of high card points to the lengths of your longest 2 suits and it should be >= XX.

So, 10 HCP and a 5-5-x-x hand is 20, as is 11 HCP and a 5-4-x-x, and 12 HCP and 5-3-3-2. These would all satisfy the Rule of 20.


I would add that you make sure points are concentrated in long suits for borderline hands. I wouldn't add a stiff queen to get to 20.
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#19 User is offline   virgosrock 

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Posted 2017-November-08, 11:59

View Postzhasbeen, on 2017-November-07, 18:11, said:

I would add that you make sure points are concentrated in long suits for borderline hands. I wouldn't add a stiff queen to get to 20.


I remember reading this in the ACOL days. about 30 years ago. Did you grow up on ACOL?

vrock
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#20 User is offline   zhasbeen 

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Posted 2017-November-09, 21:06

View Postvirgosrock, on 2017-November-08, 11:59, said:

I remember reading this in the ACOL days. about 30 years ago. Did you grow up on ACOL?

vrock


I never played it, but some of the players in the clubs I went to did. I started with Goren and played it for a couple years, but the transition from it to 2/1 is very hazy. Although the Goren years were more than 40 years ago, there have been only about 8-9 years when I played regularly. That was in the late 80’s and early 90’s. By then I was playing 2/1 but hardly remember anything about the transition. However, I do remember many of the partners and other players from the clubs. The Bergen versions began in 90’s when I moved to where I am now. I thought it was the coolest thing to come down the pike. Although it doesn’t have the following it had then, I was surprised to see many people are still playing it.

Do you play in the clubs at all?
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