[softcoder]

In Chess each piece has a strength and a weakness. Even the Queen cannot move as a Knight.
In bridge the spade suit is boss; it has no downside.

I think it would lead to more natural bidding (some consider this desirable) if we changed the scoring table so that:
Clubs and Diamonds were worth 30 pts per trick
Hearts and Spades were worth 20 pts per trick.
But the ranking of the suits would be unchanged. So that when the Opps bid 4m (game) you could still sacrifice in 4M (not game).
And an auction like 1C-(1D)-1H-(1S); 1NT would still be legal.

Now consider the effect on bidding.
Because the minors are now more important, many conventions would have to be re-thought.

For example: Since 4m is now game, the raise 1m-2m is too important to restrict to 'inverted minors' and now becomes the 'normal' 6-9HCP 3+ support kind of raise.
But if you are going to do THAT then you dont want to be opening 3 card minors as a rule. So your minor suit openings are now at least 4 cards.
Natural bidding.

Also you cant really play '5 card minors' since with a 3=2=4=4 pattern you would be opening 1S. For pard to respond 2m over 1S is not nearly as attractive as when responding 1M over 1m as in current bidding.
Since you are not likely to be playing '5 card minors' then the 'Forcing NT' is not nearly as attractive either. You do not necessarily have a home in 2m on a 5-2 fit as you do in current 5 card major systems.
So 1NT now becomes natural. Once again natural bidding.

The major suit auctions would be affected too.
Currently 1m-2m can be 'inverted minors' since you are often looking for 3NT rather than 5m, and furthermore 2m has little pre-emptive value.
However 1M-2M uses up much more room than 1m-2m. Therefore:
1) It does have some pre-emptive value, so you might not want to give that up to play 'inverted majors'.
2) It makes it more difficult to explore for 3NT also.
So once again the best use it is more likely to be natural.

Weak twos in the majors would still be a good idea for pre-emption.
How about the minors? Is is still a good idea to use 2C as 'all strong hands' or is the prospect of a 4C game mean that we want to keep 2C as natural (even if weak) also?
2D Multi, 2D wilcosz etc. might also come in for some rethinking.

I am not sure but even BIG CLUB systems might no longer be desirable.
Everyone might have to revert to a Std-American or Acol kind of bidding.
Would this be a good thing?
Make it easier for new players to take up the game?

So what do you think?
Idea has merit?
Worth playing a few hands on BBO to see how it works out?
(Not that it is ever going to happen in my lifetime..... )

pgmer6809

[ArtK78]

This "change in the scoring table" would result in an entirely different game.

Call it "Minor Suit Bridge."

[kfay]

I was talking with my partner just last night about how I sometimes want to switch the minor-major scoring because I feel like the minors get bossed around with 1) 20/trick and more difficult games. Sometimes I feel badly for them.

But I definitely wouldn't actually do it.

[awm]

I'm not convinced by this. You might see different conventions but you'd retain a lot of artificiality. To give some simple examples:

(1) Over a 1NT opening you'd want to look for a 4-4 minor suit fit rather than a major suit fit. Of course, 2♣ is still the cheapest call so you'd probably still use it as your inquiry, but now you'd be playing much more artificial follow-ups.

(2) You'd see more crazy preempts. If you open 2♥, opponents need to find their "minor suit fit" at the three-level and you also have great potential to sacrifice over their 4m game. So it would pay to open 2♥ on garbage a lot more often.

(3) It might make a lot of sense to play canape openings. After all, if you have 5M+4m, you really want to find the minor suit fit ASAP and the minor suit opening also leaves more room to explore. So probably you open 1m with this hand, and if partner can't raise you bid your major later to obstruct the opposition.

(4) This has little effect on strong club systems, relays, or such things. They are still good. In fact opening an artificial 1♣ on a strong hand now has a good chance to "right-side" the final contract. On the other hand, you might have more incentive to re-arrange the responses to be totally artificial so that your cheap positives of 1♥/1♠ show a five-card minor...

[EricK]

It seems highly unlikely to me that the scoring table we now have is in any way "the best possible" (almost no matter how that is defined). Unfortunately we are probably stuck with it in the same way we are with the QWERTY keyboard.

[Mbodell]

I'm not sure why natural bidding is your goal. There is a pair who try to play a very, very natural system at the local club sometimes. Like all doubles are penalty and all 3 level bids are stronger than 2 level bids are stronger than 1 level bids. It leads to some unusual situations and alerts occasionally where their truly natural bid is still surprising to the Standard American folks. But if what you really want is to make natural bidding more of a priority, how about the following:

Before you get to make your bid you have to try some "randomize check" that if you fail forces you to pass this round. The longer the auction the more often you fail. Something like your bid is pass c/10 and whatever you want (10-c)/10 where c is which call it is for you. So on your first call you pass 10% of the time, on the second call you pass 20% of the time, and you are forced to pass on your 10th call 100% of the time. Now any sequence bid including stayman, blackwood, transfers, help suit tries, strong club asks, negative doubles, etc. has the downside that sometimes you'll play there. And this downside becomes more problematic the longer your auction goes on. That would make natural bidding much more desirable as you don't want to risk too often getting hung in some unnatural bid as the final contract.

Does this result in a silly game? Yes. But the whole idea of privileging "natural bidding" is a silly thing too, IMHO. And this does a better job of that then scoring changes.

[matmat]

Mbodell, on Sep 18 2008, 06:49 PM, said:

Before you get to make your bid you have to try some "randomize check" that if you fail forces you to pass this round. The longer the auction the more often you fail. Something like your bid is pass c/10 and whatever you want (10-c)/10 where c is which call it is for you. So on your first call you pass 10% of the time, on the second call you pass 20% of the time, and you are forced to pass on your 10th call 100% of the time. Now any sequence bid including stayman, blackwood, transfers, help suit tries, strong club asks, negative doubles, etc. has the downside that sometimes you'll play there. And this downside becomes more problematic the longer your auction goes on. That would make natural bidding much more desirable as you don't want to risk too often getting hung in some unnatural bid as the final contract.

hmmm
maybe i'll start bringing my D10 to the local game. While i'm at it i'll do an agility check.

[Tomi2]

softcoder, on Sep 18 2008, 02:37 PM, said:

Everyone might have to revert to a Std-American or Acol kind of bidding.

doesn't this prove, that these systems suck in the actual game of Bridge?

[Gerben42]

Quote

Worth playing a few hands on BBO to see how it works out?

Sure, why not. But I won't promise we won't play some evil system!

[Hanoi5]

To make the game more 'natural' just create a Universal Natural System which should be played at low-level tournaments, mandatorily (?). Let players use artificial systems in important tourneys.

[Free]

I disagree that this would lead to more natural bidding, even the opposite! I think the system below could be pretty efficient:
1♣/♦ = no 5 card m, 3+♥/♠ (responses: 1♥/♠ = 4+♣/♦)
1♥/♠ = 5+♣/♦

If you use a mapping of ♣<->♥ and ♦<->♠ for the 1-level, you can basically do the same things as before. For example 1♣-1♠-2♦ is very similar as you now bid 1♦-1♥-2♥ in a natural system. Problem is that most conventions use minors for asking bids. This might change to Majors, which is less efficient in most cases.

[helene_t]

Or what about a slightly minor-oriented strong-pass system:

pass= 15+
1♣= 0-14, clubs+other
1♦= 0-14, two-suited not clubs
1♥= 0-7 or 12-14 balanced
1♠= 0-8 any one-suiter
1NT=8-11
2x=9-14 natural

[Free]

I think a more interesting approach would be to change the scoring like you propose, but to keep 4M and 5m as game scores. This way, you should always be looking for 3NT (5m is too high to compete with 3NT, and 4M doesn't score enough), especially in MP.