mike777, on May 4 2007, 11:08 AM, said:
mikeh, on May 4 2007, 10:57 AM, said:
mike777, on May 4 2007, 10:50 AM, said:
Yes I see that my "topic comment" which I used as a header does not show up. I guess on the forum "topic headers" do not show up to all.
Yes I meant, 6 card suit and around 8-13 hcp...
I seriously doubt that you will find many buyers for the notion that a 1st or 2nd seat weak two, in standard bidding methods, could contain a 6 card suit with 13 hcp... nor 12... some horrible 11's, yes.. but you remain 2 hcp higher than the world standard. Why? I am interested in knowing if this is a considered-choice or whether it is a holdover from having come under the spell of the good Dr. Roth at an impressionable age
Thanks for comment, as I repeated I am not pushing anything, I do think simply accepting we need to open these hands as a one level bid without knowing the upside or downside of our other choices should be discussed in detail.
Dr. Roth has many ideas that were accepted and many that were not over the decades, I enjoy finding out why or why not.
As an earlier poster said, referring to Rodwell, there is a good argument for conservative 1st and 2nd seat opening bids IF the opps promise to stay silent. We would need to open light in 3rd and 4th to balance this approach, else we may find ourselves passing out 26 hcp hands.
Having high requirements for an opening bid narrows the range covered by that bid, since the range between a 1 bid and a 2
♣ opener is reduced. This cannot but have salutary impact on the accuracy of our constructive bidding once we do have an opening hand.
In Dr. Roth's day, there were far more uncontested auctions than we have these days. Indeed, he was one of the driving forces behind such revolutionary tactics as weak jump overcalls, weak two bids, and the unusual 2n overcall (which I think was first mentioned in print in an article by Sonny Moyse reporting on the Nationals held in Florida in 1948... when he attributed the concept to a discussion he had with a rising young expert by the name of Alvin Roth.
Back then, opening preempts were, by today's standards, ultra-sound... which in turn meant that they were infrequent. Jump overcalls were strong. Cuebid overcalls were strong takeouts: showing approximately a 2
♣ opening, and so were also extremely infrequent and so on. Overcalling required a good suit and (by today's standard) a decent hand.
Thus, if we passed with 13 hcp, there was an excellent chance that partner, if blessed with 11 or so, could open untroubled by 2nd seat preempting or opening light. And when 3rd seat did open opposite our passed hand monster, the odds were that 4th seat would remind silent.
But today (and for at least the past 30 years), most players, even average players, get into the auction with any excuse. I remember, years ago, my partner opened at the 1-level with 9 hcp, protected by playing a home-grown big club method. I stretched my response on a 4 count and partner of course bid again. I passed, and the opps balanced and missed game. They were no better than we were back then and I am not claiming that we were brilliant.. but I still remember declarer's comment when dummy hit: 'These guys took 3 bids before we got into the auction, and we have 27 hcp!'
While that kind of scenario will rarely work today against good players, it will still work better than 'pass - pass' will work, by taking away bidding space, by creating a degree of ambiguity otherwise absent, and by directing the lead or allowing for even more dramatic preemption: in Verona, against a good Swedish team, one of my team's few good boards came when a teammate psyched 1
♥ on a zero count. His partner bid 3
♦, a constructive 4 card raise. The red v white 4th hand held 21 hcp with 3=2=4=4 shape and the KQ tight of
♥s. The bidding made perfect sense to him: LHO opens on 12 and RHO bounces on a decent 7 and so his partner has zero... and his best chance for a plus was to pass. Unfortunately +100 against 3
♥ (it should have been 150) was not a good score compared to 1440 at the other table.
While that was an example of an outright psyche, the principle remains valid and applicable to light openings (and light responses). Destroy bidding space, maximize space consumption on light but fitting hands, and force the opps to deal with this barrage rather than give them a clear path to the best spot.
The downside is that the light opening, opposite a good but mis-fitting, hand will be driven too high, especially in the context of 2/1 methods. This is a price that cannot be ignored (some methods cater to this by limiting the range, but we are discussing standard methods, which do not). Experience has shown that the more active approach has been a consistent winner... those who succeed in big events generally play this style... so it appears that the downside of being aggressive does not outweigh the advantages.
Clearly, at least in theory, there must be a dividing line, beyond which the uncertainties caused to one's own constructive bidding by too-wide an opening range will offset the space-consumption benefits... which is why approaches such as EHAA (every hand an adventure) fizzled in, I think, the 70s or early 80s.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
Help
and hopefully get some feedback here are some extreme examples of hands I assume most experts would open at the one level and not with a weak(ish) two level bid, why or why not?
incarnation by Mr. Fantoni and Mr. Nunes. EHAA two bids with a four point range are a VERY different animal than those with a 7 point range (where you really can't bid your games with any accuracy).