Free, on 2012-November-23, 08:47, said:
First of all, let me say that I'm no fan of relays of a balanced hand.
Agreed. I've thought about it a bit more, I'm starting to lean towards something like 2
♥ as the start of opener showing various shapes and leaving it up to responder. I'm familiar with the theory about who should be relaying from playing a "variable captaincy" relay system, so this appeals to me. And thinking about the relay structure each night (and trying to incorporate a way for the responder to show some idea of his strength as well) is convincing me it's not such a good idea.
straube, on 2012-November-23, 09:12, said:
I agee that it's much much better to pattern the unbalanced hand. In fact, if it's legal in your area, why not respond 1D with those balanced hands and then reserve artificial GF bids to relay opener's patten after his first natural rebid? 1C-2D then could offload the long/ weak diamond hands.
Secondly, I'm always surprised when folks who play natural systems (I think natural openings are not very good) spend lots of energy on artificiality in their continuations. Conventions like BART, Cole, etc. I'd rather spend the energy at the beginning where it most matters.
I'm not strongly in favour of either natural or strong club systems. Natural seems to work for me and our partnership has lots of agreements that we don't want to do away with before trialing for a Bowl, otherwise we might explore other systems.
straube, on 2012-November-23, 09:20, said:
The other thing is that you're really running out of room. Standard symmetric's 1N response shows balanced hands so you are two steps higher. You don't have room to ask for controls/strength/relay points before passing 3N and that information is critical. Also, if you did invest time in learning to use control asking bids, why not just go altogether to a strong club relay system?
Agreed, with reservations. I've learnt a symmetric relay system, control asking bids, denial cue-bidding etc. in the past but didn't think the system was that powerful overall. I also didn't enjoy people interfering with our strong club when we would've opened a descriptive natural bid in standard. You make some very good points about relay structures that I'd missed.
glen, on 2012-November-24, 07:12, said:
I think this idea is very good, sorry to the above poster. Reasons included:
* Allow balanced hands the capability to explore for the best spot without treating the hands as suit oriented hand or disclosing unnecessary information.
* Establish a game force immediately to reduce interference.
For a general structure, I had:
bridgematters ask4hs.pdf
Thank you. I'm using this to discuss with my partner about other possibilities to the structure I initially posted. We are also considering having 1C-2C as gf bal and 1C-2D as inverted to give us more room if we need it.
fromageGB, on 2012-November-25, 06:44, said:
As a player who has never played a relay system, the contradiction between these two parts strikes me as amusing.
I can sort of relate to this, but our partnership is fairly good at remembering something once we've practiced it a few times. I guess everyone has different ways of learning system.
Thanks for all the replies so far. And yeah, 5542, not 5422 (too much thinking about relays...)