[Polish Goalie]

I just found this site. Looks very interesting.

I wanted to toss out a brief description of what I play with a longtime partner and hear your comments.
Background info: At one time we put a lot of work into Romex and did quite well with it; became bored and played Breakthrough Club for a while; became bored and over a 20 year period developed what we now play.

Open all 11 HCP hands. 1♣ = all 11-15 HCPs, other than ♥/♠ two suiters (2♣ for those). All suit bids are 16+ HCP, with a 4 card (or longer) suit (except diamonds may be 2+ cards). Our strongest (only forcing) bid is 1NT: either big distributional hand or very big balanced NT type hand. Almost all doubles are for penalty. NT response is game forcing. 2/1 is not forcing.

There are a lot of other gadgets in the system. We have close to 100 pages of system notes. We have also had the system read by several directors (including national level) and all have agreed that it is 100% legal (if you were wondering) in ACBL events.

Oh, yeah, we call our sysgem "Modified Polish." The very basic part of the system was designed in response to LOL's who play "1 club isn't forcing, but my partner never passes." The original Polish was just coming onto the scene as we were developing our system, so we sort of stole the name, since (technically) in our system 1♣ isn't forcing either.

[whereagles]

Hum.. a sort of reversed precision. Nice on paper, but in practice I'd say experienced opponents can make your life miserable by overcalling your 1♣, especially on part-score deals.

[hrothgar]

This could very well be the worst bidding system I have ever seen, and thats saying something...

Lets get this straight. You have a nubulous 1C opening that shows 11-15 HCP and denies a two suited hand with hearts or Spades. This bid is incredibly vulnerable to preemption and is going to be very common:

You have decided to burden yourself with this in order to devote the 1D/1H/1S openings to show strong hands with 16+ HCP??? These openings occur with what frequency???

But, if it makes you happy, please go ahead and use this system.
Especially opposite me, for money.

[uday]

Goalie, these forums are an adjunct to our free online bridge site (Bridge Base Online, or BBO) . You can learn more at www.bridgebase.com/online

[Free]

At first sight I don't like it. As Richard said, the 1♣ opening is really bad. You should describe the most frequent hands imo, not just showing HCP range. Also the other 1-level openings are awful imo: frequency too low, NF while you can have pretty strong hands, the 1♦ is STILL short (!!!),...

Let me summarize:
- 1♣ extremely vulnerable, can be from void, fighting partscores will be quite hard imo
- 1♦ strong (16+), NF and short (2+ cards)
- 1M strong (16+), NF and only 4+ cards (why? you're pretty strong). Low frequency AND it doesn't tell much about the hand. What do you open with 5+♣ and 4♠ and 16 HCP? How do you describe your hand?
- 1NT strong, I have no experience with such biddings to be honest, but they may be efficient
- 2♣ 11-15 with 2-suiter Majors (??). Really weird imo, you open 1♣ 0+ cards, 1♦ 2+ cards, 1M 4+ cards, and you still don't manage to get the 2♣ bid free for preemptive openings???

Have you ever played with this system at a high-level MP event? I guess not, because fighting the partscore there is very important, and you'll fail bigtime with this 1♣ opening. If opps don't intervene it might be quite good, but these days opps intervene about 80% of the time. It may be as legal as it wants, I think it's a bad system. Great idea perhaps, but just not practical.

[Flame]

I dont like it very much, i cant say how it will work on the table, i would feel bad not to bid my majors with 11-15 which come up very often.
Comparing it with precision, the strongest bids of this systems are imo just like normal precision, 1h and 1S, but it will be rare to open them because you need 16+. Also when you open 1c you need some biddings to deliver your shape , this is easier to do when you have 16+ then when you have 11-15.
One last thing, i believe 1h and especially 1s have a premptive value i would like prefer a system that open 1S with 7-8+ hcp.

[inquiry]

A semi-harsh welcome to the Bridge Base Forum from my fellow members, so let me stop off and say Welcome Goalie.

I am not too keen to slam something until I try it, but I have to admit from the description, your system does seem upside down based upon theory. You must spend all day bidding 1♣ and then trying to find out where you fit and the legth of your suits (no wonder it takes 100 pages). In addition, I suspectyour system should be hassled more than normal by inteference. Come to BBO gaming site and look me up. I would love to play against you and your partner to see your system in action (and unlike richard --- I will keep my money in my pocket for the match).

Again, welcome.

Ben

[mishovnbg]

Hi Goalie, welcome to BBO forum!

Instead of repeat posts, where I agree with almost all written, will be probably interesting for you to know that similar to your idea play top italian pair of the world Fantoni-Nunes. They use all 1 level bids as 14+ natural opening, 2 level for 10-13 unbalanced openings and weak 1NT. Probably other posters didn't understand that you open 11-15 unbalanced hands not only with both majors, but with any hand which include major, probably with 2♥/♠. This leave 1♣ opening for bal and minor hands and is not that bad as looks like.
Misho

[whereagles]

Having 1♣ for balanced/minors is better, but.. I once played a system which had an opening just like that and it was a heck of a problem to compete acurately. The pressure on responder after an overcall was tremendous.. guesses were frequent and did not always work well.

To release some of the pressure, all balanced hands must go into the 11-13 1NT. That makes 1♣ unbalanced with 5+ in a minor, which is very playable. Note also that the 1NT can have a broken 5-card major, otherwise you'd be opening 2M on a 5332 with 10-13 and lousy suit... not good.

[hrothgar]

mishovnbg, on May 25 2004, 05:00 AM, said:

Hi Goalie, welcome to BBO forum!

Instead of repeat posts, where I agree with almost all written, will be probably interesting for you to know that similar to your idea play top italian pair of the world Fantoni-Nunes. They use all 1 level bids as 14+ natural opening, 2 level for 10-13 unbalanced openings and weak 1NT. Probably other posters didn't understand that you open 11-15 unbalanced hands not only with both majors, but with any hand which include major, probably with 2♥/♠. This leave 1♣ opening for bal and minor hands and is not that bad as looks like.
Misho

Fantoni-Nunes use a natural 1NT opening
This structure uses 1NT as strong, artifical and forcing...

[Polish Goalie]

Actually my partner and I have played this for over 20 years (at least some version of it - it was constantly evolving for a while), with quite a bit of success. As to the problem of preemption over 1♣ ; for over calls thru 2♥ we use, basically, Fishbein for takeout and double for penalty. It's amazing how large the numbers can get when people are trying to screw us up. We have not played this in any national events, but have had success in regionals. Oddly enough our non club suit opening bids come up fairly often. We find that we can bid distributional slams very easily with this. We play mostly in the Pacific NW (USA) and have had a lot of success playing against some of the better players here. While neither my partner nor myself are at the top level of bridge (he has over 5000 MP's and I have about 2500 - I don't play much), we do advise that this system is 1) not for the faint of heart and 2) best kept to better players.

For those of you who don't think much of it, well, when Pete and I first started playing it we didn't either. It really started out as a joke, but, much to our surprise, it seemed to work quite well so we started actually working on it, expanding from 3 handwritten pages to over 100 typewritten (w/ hand diagrams - probably only 40 or so pages without). One thing about this system; like most complex systems it allows no deviation, so when we bid we have what we say we do. Plus, it's a lot of fun to play; most of the time a find bridge pretty boring these days.

[uday]

Let us know when you decide to try it on BBO, we'll come watch

[Polish Goalie]

Unfortunately Pete doesn't have a computer (how can that be?) so you won't get to see it in action.

[1eyedjack]

Goalie

I am not that surprised that you have achieved some success. I suspect that you and your partner are "otherwise" good players. By "otherwise" I mean in respect of matters independent of system. If you combine a pair of good players with a sound knowledge of a system that is not totally ridiculous I reckon that they will do well, ie that system is not the all-important factor that others rate it. I recall some years back a pair (date and names lost from memory) won the European pairs championship playing a system that involved a strong, artificial and forcing 1NT opener. I remember thinking at the time that the system was so "Matchpoint hostile" that the success was bizarre. I am more phlegmatic these days.

There is a possibility to consider, that to the extent that you have achieved success by reason of the system, it could have something to do with opponents' unfamiliarity with the method as well as any intrinsic merit. It has to be a rather unusual system.

I broadly share the scepticism of the other posters regarding the merits of the system but my feelings on the matter are not so strong. One of the aruments repeatedly made by others that I think is possibly overstated is the insistence that the best system must be centred on early distinction of hand types in the bidding by sole reference to the frequency of their occurrence.

Certainly it is a factor, but another factor, that I think is dismissed without sufficient priority, is the likely swing at stake, which should be multiplied by the frequency of the hand type, in order to arrive at the hand's overall "importance".

Position, vulnerability and method of scoring all have a part to play in the equation, and it gets complicated. At Matchpoints the partscore battle assumes (IMHO) a greater importance than in IMPs. Getting +110 instead of +100 at MP is a highly significant gain, but is nothing at IMP.

The potential for loss in the IMP game in the parscore battle arises when both sides can make a partscore, which either side can reasonably "win" in the bidding battle. Even then, you reckon to lose mainly when your making partscore outranks theirs, which is a bit more than half of the total occasions after your 1C opener (as one of your side has more than a quarter of the points available), but by no means all the time. That frequency drops to half (or even less) when playing other frequency-based systems based on "super-light" openers. If opps can outbid you it costs you nothing to let them buy it cheap. If both sides are failing then you are well out of the auction. If one side makes and the other fails then you are talking about fairly small swings. Say +140 v +50 = 3 IMPs.

In the IMP game the big swings will occur on the game and slam hands, and these are more frequent when someone has a strong hand, even though in total the strong hands are a minority. So preemptive opposition bidding over a classical precision strong Club could have, in the long term, more devastating consequences than against a system that immediately splits out the strong Club hand types in the above "reverse precision" method.

Like I say, the whole situation changes at Matchpoints, but the IMP game tends to interest me more. Not saying it is a better game, just a personal choice.

And, like I say, I have some reservations about the system described, but I have a more open mind, and would be willing to give it a go to see how it works in practice. I would not be able to do it the justice that 20 years of practice would give it.

Best of luck to you.