[awm]

Recently I've been wondering: are there many hands where you would pass an opening 1m but would bid game over an opening 2NT? With the typical opening range for 2NT being something like 20-21, and people responding lighter and lighter to 1m, I'm starting to feel like hands that would bid game over 2NT almost never pass 1m....

If this is the case, does the opening 2NT range really make sense? After all, when partner is really broke you will often fail in 2NT, and slam bidding is also easier after opening at the one-level. The main advantage to opening 2NT would seem to be that it's easier to get to game on some hands where partner would pass 1m, but doesn't this argue more for a range like 22-23 with the modern response style?

[jtfanclub]

Well, um, I agree with what you said, except...

What do you plan to do with these hands after the 1m opening?

Suppose it goes 1m-1M, and you don't have 4 cards in the major...

if you reverse, you've probably made things worse, since it'll likely be higher than 2NT before you can stop anyways.

If you bid 1NT or rebid a suit, it's doubtful partner will bid again....

And if you bid 2NT with 20-21, then what are you going to do with 18-19 balanced?

I think it could be done...say, 1D-1M-2NT showing 18-19 and 1C-1M-2NT showing 20-21, but it's not as simple as it sounds.

[mike777]

Great question

I guess over one of a minor I pass with:
5hcp,,very flat.....no aces...no tens, no good 4 card major and some cards in partner's minor.

Does this sound rare, yup. But it came up the other night.

Same hand I bid 3nt over 2nt.

As other poster mentioned..how do we later show 20-21 balanced?

[cherdano]

If I have a flat hand with two queens I might raise 2N but pass 1m.
I am not a fan of the artificiality you will probably need to be able to show your balanced 20-21 after a 1m opening.
It may be worth noting that there are some world-class strong club partnerships who play 2N natural 20-21 (or even 19-21), surely your reasoning would apply to a strong club system too...

[Echognome]

cherdano, on Aug 16 2007, 04:03 PM, said:

If I have a flat hand with two queens I might raise 2N but pass 1m.
I am not a fan of the artificiality you will probably need to be able to show your balanced 20-21 after a 1m opening.
It may be worth noting that there are some world-class strong club partnerships who play 2N natural 20-21 (or even 19-21), surely your reasoning would apply to a strong club system too...

This is an interesting point. Mainly because the preempting works both ways. If you open a strong club and opponents get in a good lead directing overcall (that they couldn't do over 2NT), you might be destined for a poor result. I think those that play 2NT as natural in a strong club context do it for a different reason however. It just fits better with the rest of their system. If you do not play that the 20-21 balanced hand opens 2NT, then you have to add that hand into the 1♣ opening. That is fine if you play an artificial 1♥ over a negative 1♦, or if you have some other methods, but it is another hand type. Of course, the issue at hand is that you both preempt your own side with a 2NT opening or you might be too high if your partner is a bust hand.

[pclayton]

Goren had a 2N opener showing 22-24. 1N was 16-18 and 1x - 1y - 2N was 19-21. I believe the next development wasn't the 15-17 NT, but rather the need to have a 2 point NT ladder instead of a 3 point ladder. In the late 60's and 70's, 16-18 1N and 21-22 2N became popular. Requirements for opening values have declined in the past 30 years, so 15-17 / 20-21 is the norm, since more people are opening on balanced 12 counts.

I would agree that responding lighter has become more and more common. A senisble corallary is that the requirements for a 2♣ opening have become stricter, but its inevitable that some revisions of the NT ladder are due.

Matt and I are playing 1♣ - 1x (1♦/1♥ (T-Walsh)) - 1N to show 17-19. This gels nicely with responding on just about anything. 1♦ is supposed to be an unbalanced opener, but we are debating two ideas related to 1♦. One is that the 1♦opener can include an 18-20 point balanced hand with diamonds as the predominant suit, and the other is that the 1♦ opener could include a larger balanced hand such as 20-21.

Another idea is that 1♣ - response - 2N can show a bigger range, but we are using that as a big raise of the major.

Neither of us like a 2N opener to be a big balanced hand, so 2♣ - 2x - 2N is currently 21-22 or 21-23. Kokish shows the next range.

Perhaps the simplest method is to go back to a strong 2N opening and a range of 21-22 makes a lot of sense.

[Echognome]

The only thing I want to add to Phil's discussion is that our 1N rebid is actually 18-20. So the NT ranges (as they stand) are:

12-14 Open 1♣ and over 1♦/♥ complete the transfer. Over 1♠ (diamonds or no good bid), bid 1NT. Over 2♣ inverted, bid 2♦ showing a weak NT.

15-17 Open 1NT

18-20 Open 1♣ and over 1♦/♥ bid 1NT. Over 1♠ (as above), bid 2NT. Over 2♣ inverted, bid 2NT.

21-22 Open 2♣, rebid 2NT.

23-24 Kokish.

Right now we have that with 5♦332 and 18-20, we open 1♦ and have some follow-ups to show that hand type.

[han]

Inquiry and I used to open 1m with balanced 20-21 hands for a while. the 2NT opening showed a stronger hand and 2C-2D-2NT showed a strong 3-suiter.

It did occur maybe once that we passed out 1m when 3NT was a decent contract, but this didn't seem the biggest problem to me. It was more difficult to distinguish all the different ranges (1m could be balanced with 11-13 or 17-21, we opened the better minor).

We tried several solutions to this, I don't remember it very well since it has been a while. At some point we had to jump to 3NT over 1m-1M with the 20-21 balanced hand (unless we had 4-card support), which does not make the slam bidding more accurate than opening 2NT.

At some other point we had to make a fake reverse with all strong balanced hands. This also had plusses and minusses. I don't know if Ben is still working with the method, it would be interesting to hear his experiences with the 20-21 balanced hands.

Of course I don't have to tell Adam that if you open 1m with 20-21 balanced hands and you do better on those hands, it may not necessarily be an overall improvement.