[ArtK78]

helene_t, on Oct 22 2007, 03:45 PM, said:

The_Hog, on Oct 22 2007, 06:09 AM, said:

Polish club is better than either of the aforementioned, but not many US players play it.

Rubish. PC sucks. I only play it to please Gerben, Ewa, Elenka, Stan and a few other partners. Anybody who thinks PC is better than some other standard system is a low-grade moron and deserves to play as a sub with a self-rated expert in a non-psyche playing-TD tourney

Disclaimer: I only wrote this because Han told me that I should make such posts on occasion, it will make me feel good. Let's see if it works

Helene, don't sugar-coat it. Tell us what you really feel.

[helene_t]

ArtK78, on Oct 22 2007, 10:54 PM, said:

Helene, don't sugar-coat it.  Tell us what you really feel.

I feel terrible because I now have one night to do all the work I should have done the last two weeks while I was busy writing on the Venice Cup incident.

As for Polish Club versus SA, my general opinion is that the inherent difference in effectiveness between modern bidding systems is marginal and by far over-shadowed by cultural concerns such as the availability of good books.

I do have the feeling that the definition of the minor-suit openings in SA is sub-optimal. The PC-like treatment of Wackojack and Carmen looks interesting to me. At the moment I feel most comfortable with Precision, but my preferences change quite often.

[awm]

SAYC is actually a very good system. The problem is that the system gets a bit of a bad name, because there are a lot of people who really don't know SAYC, but claim to play it (they are really playing some form of "standard american" but not following the SAYC document).

Another issue is that people like to compare SAYC, as is, with no additional conventions... against their customized personal version of 2/1 with every gadget imaginable. It's possible to improve on basically any system (at the cost of additional complexity) by adding carefully chosen conventions (yes, you can also make basically any system worse by adding conventions). Should it be surprising that SAYC (fully described in something like 5 pages of notes) doesn't perform as well as 2/1 (mostly described by a couple hundred pages in Lawrence/Hardy's books, but most people add some other stuff that's not in those books either).

Assuming that partner knows our methods (i.e. partner doesn't think 1♠-2♣-3♣ is NF in SAYC), I would rather play SAYC as per the notes than play a stripped down 2/1 without all the extras. If I'm allowed to add a few conventions of my choice, I would rather play SAYC with some carefully chosen extras than 2/1 with some carefully chosen extras.

As for Polish club, from my limited experience you basically have to play negative free bids to have any chance of recovering after interference with the 1♣ opening. Since I think negative free bids are a bad method in general, I have no particular desire to play Polish club.

[TAXI]

So it is not widely accepted that SAYC (with or without useful extras) is a low grade bidding system?

[Stephen Tu]

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So 1♦-1♠-1NT-2♣-2♠ does indeed show exactly 3 card support for most people.

Note that after a 1nt rebid, it's common to use a gadget "new minor forcing", or various types of "checkback stayman" to get partner to show belated 3 cd major support. However these gadgets are not part of vanilla SAYC, and require special agreement. Without that agreement, simple non-jump new suits at the 2 level by responder after a 1nt rebid are by default natural and non-forcing, so would be a poor choice with 11-12 pts, as opener might pass with game on (more or less have to rebid 2nt, if not playing the gadgets). If possible make the "new minor forcing" (bidding in the minor partner didn't open) or "checkback stayman" (bidding 2c always artificial) or "2-way checkback" (both minor bids artificial, 2d game forcing) agreement with partner before the game, so you are on the same wavelength.

Quote

So it is not widely accepted that SAYC (with or without useful extras) is a low grade bidding system?

The problem with SAYC is that it wasn't really constructed to be a good bidding system but rather a collection of commonly used treatments/conventions for individuals and tournaments where people were forced to use the same system. So there are a lot of inconsistencies & holes in spots. You can fix up these spots with more complete agreements & alterations here & there, but then you are really playing "Standard American" (the more generic term for the family of systems) with your own set of gadgets/treatments, and no longer playing "SAYC".