[Gerben42]

Hi, how do you like to play your Strong Club system in a passed hand. Minimum opening bids in 1st and 2nd were approximately rule-of-19.

Assume 1♣ in 3rd/4th is 17+ because otherwise you won't have any positive responses left as you would've opened them all... What I'm looking for is the rest of the opening bid structure.

[Free]

At this moment with my f2f partner, we play MOSCITO (very light opening system with frequent preempts) in 1&2 seat. Therefor we prefer a solid opening system in 3&4. This is what we play:

1♣ = 17+ any
1♦ = (11)12-16, 2-suited with 4(+)♦ and a longer sidesuit (unless with ♣)
1M = (11)12-16, 2-suited with 4(+)M and a longer sidesuit (unless with ♣)
1NT = (12)13-16, any balanced
2♣ = (11)12-16, any 3-suited
2♦/M = (11)12-16, singlesuited with 6+♦/M (when NV we have a 0-6 or 12-16HCP)
2NT = (14)15-16, singlesuited with 6+♣
3♣ = <(14)15, singlesuited with 6+♣
3♦/M = preemptive (can be agressive)
3NT = weak 2-suiter
4X = preemptive

The 2-suiters open with the shortest suit, and with 5-5 we open the lowest suit (not ♣). When it's with ♣, we always open the other suit. We have some continuations to find our best fits, find the difference between longer ♣ or not, show min/max,... No real need for slam try, but I have to admit we've missed an occasional one (which nobody else found anyway).

[tysen2k]

I also do light openings in 1st&2nd, so our openings are sound as well for 3rd&4th. However, preempts are wide ranging from complete trash to a minimum sound opening bid. Also we expanded our 1NT opening in 3rd seat to be 8-15 (no 4cM) since partner can't have anything more than a balanced 10.

Tysen

[awm]

Sam and I currently play the exact same opening structure and follow-up methods in 3rd/4th as in 1st/2nd. This may seem a bit strange, but there are several reasons it works out for us:

(1) The light opening bids can be useful weapons in 3rd seat as well. They often get partner off to a good lead, or help partner preempt in the auction. Just because we would've opened a lot of 9-10 point hands (and all 11s) in 1st seat doesn't mean we don't want to get partner off to the right lead on defense, or find our 4♠ sacrifice over opponents 4♥.

(2) Our response structure to 1♣ is highly nonstandard (although it has a few similarities to the latest version of moscito). Since we are showing semi-positives immediately, it is hardly the case that "all passed hands will respond 1♦ to 1♣."

(3) We're not real fans of relays after our natural, limited openings. Some of this has to do with openings having a wide range (basically 8-15 hcp possible for 1M), and some has to do with that we don't like to have to decide whether to game force until all the fit information comes to light.

Come to think of it, we may not be a real good example for this post because our methods seem to violate some of the implicit assumptions that may be being made about what a strong club system should be like...

[luke warm]

Free, on Dec 1 2005, 10:59 AM, said:

1♣ = 17+ any
1♦ = (11)12-16, 2-suited with 4(+)♦ and a longer sidesuit (unless with ♣)
1M = (11)12-16, 2-suited with 4(+)M and a longer sidesuit (unless with ♣)
1NT = (12)13-16, any balanced
2♣ = (11)12-16, any 3-suited
2♦/M = (11)12-16, singlesuited with 6+♦/M (when NV we have a 0-6 or 12-16HCP)
2NT = (14)15-16, singlesuited with 6+♣
3♣ = <(14)15, singlesuited with 6+♣
3♦/M = preemptive (can be agressive)
3NT = weak 2-suiter
4X = preemptive

damn, that looks strangely familiar