[Cascade]

awm, on Jul 16 2009, 10:55 AM, said:

Similarly to what Cascade said...

It used to be that a 1♣ opening showed at least four clubs back in the days of Culbertson and Goren and old-fashioned Acol.

Since the advent of five-card major systems, more and more of us have been opening 1♣ with only three cards, and this is now quite common in the context of "natural" bidding.

In the last decade or so, it has become increasingly popular for a 1♣ opening to promise only two clubs such that the 1♦ opening can promise an unbalanced hand. Some people even take this so far as to open 1♣ on singleton so that 1♦ can promise five, and this approach is no longer extremely unusual even amongst otherwise "natural" bidders.

So obviously 1♣ opening which could be 4441 (i.e. any hand without five cards in any other suit) is just a natural bid right? Shouldn't be regulated, shouldn't be alerted?

Yet Cascade himself is one of the chief opponents of this position. Why is his position so different about 1NT openings?

Any standard which we define for "natural" bids will draw some arbitrary-seeming lines. And at some point some players will want to cross those lines. But as long as we believe that some regulation of methods is permissible, it will be necessary to have some definitions for what is allowed and to require that players who frequently violate those definitions stop doing so. In the case of 1NT openings, the "line" is "no singletons or voids."

For what it is worth in the context of this discussion I think there is a significant difference in describing a bid in a suit where you open your shortest suit as 'natural' compared with a no trump opening in which the intention is to suggest no trumps as a denomination that will be played reasonably often.

[Mbodell]

bill1157, on Jul 15 2009, 12:45 PM, said:

what if you only opened 1NT when the singleton was a high honor (Q or better) and knocked out the 10 pt hands (subtract a point for the singleton honor) would that be sufficiently rare to work under the ACBL rules?

Bill

Yes that would work. Although if you have some system to check for the stiff, you might run a foul of the ACBL rules.

If you knock out 10 from 10-12 you are dealing with around 2/3 of the hands being good. If you require Q or higher you are dealing with 3/13 of the hands with stiffs (so this is around 2/13). But then 4441 are quite rare (1/33 total) compared to the other possible shapes (4333, 4432, 5332, 6322, and 5422 are around 20 times more likely). So that is 2/3*3/13*1/20 = 1/130. If you open all in range 5431 or 6331 1nt as well, you might well be getting too high (although if you changed it to just stiff K, not stiff Q or A, you might be back in business).

[hrothgar]

Mbodell, on Jul 16 2009, 01:21 PM, said:

bill1157, on Jul 15 2009, 12:45 PM, said:

what if you only opened 1NT when the singleton was a high honor (Q or better) and knocked out the 10 pt hands (subtract a point for the singleton honor) would that be sufficiently rare to work under the ACBL rules?

Bill

Yes that would work. Although if you have some system to check for the stiff, you might run a foul of the ACBL rules.

If you knock out 10 from 10-12 you are dealing with around 2/3 of the hands being good. If you require Q or higher you are dealing with 3/13 of the hands with stiffs (so this is around 2/13). But then 4441 are quite rare (1/33 total) compared to the other possible shapes (4333, 4432, 5332, 6322, and 5422 are around 20 times more likely). So that is 2/3*3/13*1/20 = 1/130. If you open all in range 5431 or 6331 1nt as well, you might well be getting too high (although if you changed it to just stiff K, not stiff Q or A, you might be back in business).

5=4=3=1 is a very common shape

6=3=3=1 as well

If I were playing a 10 -12 NT, I'd consider 1N emminently practical holding

♠ K
♥ QT7
♦ KJT3
♣ KT932

[TimG]

Cascade, on Jul 16 2009, 12:25 AM, said:

"B. Special Partnership Understandings
1. (a) In its discretion the Regulating Authority may designate certain
partnership understandings as “special partnership understandings”. A
special partnership understanding is one whose meaning, in the opinion of
the Regulating Authority, may not be readily understood and anticipated by
a significant number of players in the tournament.

So, what ACBL needs to do in order to regulate a NT opening which may commonly be made with a singleton is to designate it as a special partnership understanding.

Or, they could just make a blanket proclamation that calls that are not natural by their definition of natural are special partnership understandings.

[rbforster]

Just to clarify a few common misunderstandings:

peachy, on Jul 15 2009, 01:15 PM, said:

I don't think it is illegal in ACBL or elsewhere, but if you next begin frequent upgrading of 9HCP hands into it you will run into trouble eventually, not because your system allows frequent singletons but because under 10HCP NT openings are illegal. 

Opening 1NT can be done with less than 10 HCP and a balanced hand (more on 'balanced' later). The relevant ACBL rules from the GCC are

1) 1 level openings (such as 1NT) can't be made systematically with less than 8 HCP, and
2) conventional continuations (Stayman, transfers, etc) are not allowed if 1NT could have less than 10 HCP by agreement

If you want to open 1NT with 8-9 (or 9-11 or 8-15, or whatever), you're free to do so as long as you use natural continuations. It's not unreasonable to play new suits at the 2 level are natural and weak, new suits at the 3 level are natural and forcing, and 2N is a (semi)balanced game force allowing opener to bid a 4 card suit. If you really cared, you could employ the definition of a 'natural' minor as only 3+ cards to play 'better minor stayman' or somesuch if you really wanted.

I will also point out that the previous ACBL position on singletons may be outdated (I'll try to dig up the reference), as well as without basis in the actual ACBL charts:

Stephen Tu, on Jul 15 2009, 01:40 PM, said:

ACBL position:
http://www.acbl.org/...aSingleton.html

For a non-forcing NT ostensibly natural opening, supposedly at most 1% of your opening NTs can have singletons, and you can't have methods to expose the stiff.

I think the rule is just stupid, as I do many ACBL rules.

For example, some contradictions in the ACBL's cited position include:

1) Unless you're opening most of your 4333 and 4432 hands something other than 1NT, even a system where you open 1N with any 4441 (or 4333, 4432, or 5332 shape) will not 'generally' have a singleton simply because the 4441 shapes are so rare. I think they represent about 4% of all those hand types IIRC. Certainly if you've got no singleton, void or two doubletons over 95% of the time, I think one would be hard pressed to argue your openings weren't 'generally balanced' even assuming one agrees with their definition of balanced.

2) These rulings are never applied to standard 2N openings with a singleton, since the poor ability of "standard" bidding systems to handle 20+ HCP semibalanced hands has made it expert standard to (mis?)describe these hands as balanced. A consistent approach would allow all similar hand shapes to these 'expert' semibalanced 2N openers to be allowed for 1N openings as well (but since when was the ACBL known for its consistency?).

3) There is no rule that forbids conventional methods to discover a singleton in the 1NT opener's hand (assuming 1NT shows <4 a point range and >9 HCP), although since they are such rare occurrences it might not make sense to bother with such a convention. The only relevant rule would be regulations disallowing psychic controls and psychic bids are 'gross distortions' which missing a single card in length (while still having the correct strength range) seems very unlikely to qualify.

[ArtK78]

I have read the posts in this thread with some interest.

While I don't mean to insult any of the posters in this thread, I can't help but think that this is a tremendous waste of time.

Statements to the contrary notwithstanding, the ACBL position on opening a non-conventional 1NT with a singleton is quite clear - it is permitted as long as there is no partnership agreement that this will be done, and there cannot be any conventional method for determining that the opener had a singleton. Can I cite chapter and verse on this? No.

If a partnership opens a non-conventional 1NT with a singleton frequently (and three times in one session certainly would come under that heading) there is a presumed partnership agreement, and the partnership will be subject to penalties. Can I cite chapter and verse on this? No.

Whether you agree or disagree with the ACBL position on opening 1NT with a singleton is not really the issue. It is what it is. You might as well be arguing that gravity should not be in effect on Thursdays.

Again, this is in no way meant to disparage any of the posters in this thread. But you must have something better to do.

[hrothgar]

ArtK78, on Jul 16 2009, 05:30 PM, said:

If a partnership opens a non-conventional 1NT with a singleton frequently (and three times in one session certainly would come under that heading) there is a presumed partnership agreement, and the partnership will be subject to penalties.  Can I cite chapter and verse on this?  No.

I tried to raise this point before and it got glossed over:

If you look at any large data set, you're going to find some weird looking *****. More too the point, if you play enough sessions of bridge, you're going to run into sessions where something looks off.

The fact that a given patnership opened 1NT with a singleton three times in one session is an interesting factoid. If anyone actually cared that these dastardly individuals are opening 1NT with a singleton, this results from this session might even warrant looking at a broader set of hands.

However, this occurence doesn't prove anything.

Consider the following analogy:

I grab a quarter from my pocket.
I flip it 100 times and record the number of times that it turns up heads versus tails.
I end up observing a grand total of 52 heads and 48 tails.
All fine and dandy

I decide to repeat this same experiment another 99 times using different quarters, each time recording the number of heads and tails that I see.

In general, I see something fairly close to a 50-50 distribution.
Sometimes I see more tails than heads.
Sometimes I see more heads that tails. But most of the observations are pretty 50-50

However, one of the quarters acts a bit weird.
I end up observing 35 Heads and 65 tails.
This is three standard deviations away from the mean...
Kind of a freaky occurrence.

Have I found a "loaded" quarter?

The answer is probably not: It's not at all surprising to see 100 trials produce an event three standard deviations away from the norm... (If you're looking at normally distributed data, you expect to see

68% of the observations within one standard deviation of the norm
95% of the observations within two standard deviations of the norm
99.7% of the observations within three standard deviations of the norm

(This is even referred to as the 68 - 95 - 99.7 "rule")

What I am trying to get across is the following:

Large data sets can be very dangerous...
If you search through a large enough data set you're almost guaranteed to some pretty freaky looking *****, even if absolutely nothing suspicious is happening.

Or, more specifically, if you plan enough sessions of bridge, you shouldn't be surprised to see one where you open 1NT with a singleton two, maybe even three times...

[jdonn]

hrothgar, on Jul 16 2009, 10:02 AM, said:

ArtK78, on Jul 16 2009, 05:30 PM, said:

If a partnership opens a non-conventional 1NT with a singleton frequently (and three times in one session certainly would come under that heading) there is a presumed partnership agreement, and the partnership will be subject to penalties.  Can I cite chapter and verse on this?  No.

I tried to raise this point before and it got glossed over:

Of course you are technically correct, I didn't mean to be the first to gloss over this point. However, 3 times in one session is so unlikely if you don't generally open 1NT with a singleton with enough frequency to alert it that I don't think you will be wrong once in ten lifetimes if you force such a partnership to alert / change their methods / whatever.

[hrothgar]

jdonn, on Jul 16 2009, 06:07 PM, said:

Of course you are technically correct, I didn't mean to be the first to gloss over this point. However, 3 times in one session is so unlikely if you don't generally open 1NT with a singleton with enough frequency to alert it that I don't think you will be wrong once in ten lifetimes if you force such a partnership to alert / change their methods / whatever.

I'm not sure about the relative frequencies.

Mini NTs are much more common than strong NT openings. This might be enough to push things into the realm of the plausible.

Here's something that I would hate to see happen...

Let's assume that two different partnerships are playing a style in their 1NT opening can contain a stiff

Partnership A plays a traditional strong NT system.
15% of the hands that they open 1NT contain a stiff

Partnership B plays a weak NT system
5% of the hands that they open contain a stiff

Partnership A is able to happily use their system because the low frequency of NT opener masks the high frequency that the hand contains a stiff. Partnership B gets crucified because high frequency of the their NT opening outweighs the relatively low frequency that they do so with a singleton.

As I noted originally, I'd really want to be able to look at a large set of hands and see what does/does not get opened 1NT before trying to reach any kind of conclusion.

[jdonn]

Our of curiosity, what is the minimum amount of times in one session of bridge that a pair playing this notrump range could open 1NT with a singleton that you think would be adequate to require such a pair alert their 1NT opener? How about if playing 15-17?

[hrothgar]

jdonn, on Jul 16 2009, 06:59 PM, said:

Our of curiosity, what is the minimum amount of times in one session of bridge that a pair playing this notrump range could open 1NT with a singleton that you think would be adequate to require such a pair alert their 1NT opener? How about if playing 15-17?

I'm not sure that I agree with the (proposed) metric.

I think that the decision to alert 1NT should be based on the percentage of 1NT openings that contain a singleton. I don't think that the frequency of the NT opening should factor in to the decision.

The frequency of the NT opening would (obvously) impact the frequency that a pair needs to alert said opening; however, this strikes me as a second order effect.

[jdonn]

Well I was more going for a gut feeling than a calculation. Although actually I don't think this would be a very difficult calculation to perform, someone would just have to want to bother doing the work and making the necessary assumptions (at what % of notrump openings do you have to start alerting?)

[ArtK78]

hrothgar, on Jul 16 2009, 10:26 AM, said:

Mini NTs are much more common than strong NT openings. This might be enough to push things into the realm of the plausible.

Here's something that I would hate to see happen...

Let's assume that two different partnerships are playing a style in their 1NT opening can contain a stiff

Partnership A plays a traditional strong NT system.
15% of the hands that they open 1NT contain a stiff

Partnership B plays a weak NT system
5% of the hands that they open contain a stiff

Partnership A is able to happily use their system because the low frequency of NT opener masks the high frequency that the hand contains a stiff. Partnership B gets crucified because high frequency of the their NT opening outweighs the relatively low frequency that they do so with a singleton.

As I noted originally, I'd really want to be able to look at a large set of hands and see what does/does not get opened 1NT before trying to reach any kind of conclusion.

I don't agree with your premise.

It is no doubt true that hands meeting the requirements for opening a mini-NT are more common than hands meeting the requirements for opening a traditional strong 1NT.

However, the opportunity to open a mini-NT is much less frequent, as it is far more likely that there will be an opening bid of some sort in front of the hand holding the mini-NT opener.

When one holds a traditional strong 1NT opening hand, the chances of someone else opening the bidding in front of your hand is much less.

Furthermore, the vast majority of players who play a mini-NT do so only in 1st and 2nd positions, for obvious reasons.

So, if one were to compare the number of times a mini-NT hand comes up when that hand actually has the opportunity to open a mini-NT vs. the times that a strong 1NT opening comes up and that hand has the opportunity to open a strong 1NT, I suspect that you will find the numbers to be much closer to equal than you would have originally thought.

[hrothgar]

ArtK78, on Jul 16 2009, 07:49 PM, said:

I don't agree with your premise.

It is no doubt true that hands meeting the requirements for opening a mini-NT are more common than hands meeting the requirements for opening a traditional strong 1NT.

However, the opportunity to open a mini-NT is much less frequent, as it is far more likely that there will be an opening bid of some sort in front of the hand holding the mini-NT opener.

When one holds a traditional strong 1NT opening hand, the chances of someone else opening the bidding in front of your hand is much less.

Furthermore, the vast majority of players who play a mini-NT do so only in 1st and 2nd positions, for obvious reasons.

So, if one were to compare the number of times a mini-NT hand comes up when that hand actually has the opportunity to open a mini-NT vs. the times that a strong 1NT opening comes up and that hand has the opportunity to open a strong 1NT, I suspect that you will find the numbers to be much closer to equal than you would have originally thought.

Anyone out there willing to generate a sim (won't be home til quite late tonight)

I'd be interested in seeing

The PDF for HCPs given a first seat opening
The PDF for HCPs in second seat, conditional on a first seat pass
The PDF for HCPs in third seat, conditional on a first/second seat pass
The PDF for HCPs in 4th seat, conditional on three passes

[Cascade]

TimG, on Jul 17 2009, 01:28 AM, said:

Cascade, on Jul 16 2009, 12:25 AM, said:

"B. Special Partnership Understandings
1. (a) In its discretion the Regulating Authority may designate certain
partnership understandings as “special partnership understandings”. A
special partnership understanding is one whose meaning, in the opinion of
the Regulating Authority, may not be readily understood and anticipated by
a significant number of players in the tournament.

So, what ACBL needs to do in order to regulate a NT opening which may commonly be made with a singleton is to designate it as a special partnership understanding.

Or, they could just make a blanket proclamation that calls that are not natural by their definition of natural are special partnership understandings.

No that would be unreasonable because then:

They would be overriding the requirement that these Special Partnership Understandings require '...not be readily understood or anticipated...in the tournament'.

This could easily very from tournament to tournament.

I doubt that one could claim that 9-12 1NT is not able to be readily understood. And further if I pre-alert or it is known that some play this method then it would be hard to reasonably claim that this method could not be anticipated.

The only reason it is not anticipated is because it has been made illegal.

[jdonn]

I disagree with your interpretation of 'anticipated'. By your definition any system or bid at all is anticipated as long as you tell your opponents before play begins. In other words, the word would be meaningless in that context. No, the only reasonable interpretation is that it means anticipated in advance. And it is more than reasonable (quite certainly true in many jurisdictions in fact) for an organization to believe that frequent notrump openings with a singleton "may not be readily anticipated by a significant number of players" in many tournaments.

[awm]

Suppose partner and I just agreed to open 1NT on all hands in the 10-12 hcp range. It's easy to explain, we're happy to disclose it... and it's not forcing at all and conveys a willingness to play in notrump. After all, notrump could be right on any hand.

Yet I think it's reasonable to say that this is a pretty "weird" method, not "natural" at all and potentially could be restricted.

The question is just where you draw the line. ACBL has decided that two doubletons is okay, but singleton is not. This seems a reasonable enough place to me.

Of course, you can always bid whatever you want on a particular hand. So there needs to be some guideline as to how frequent a "deviation from agreements" can be before it's not really a deviation any more. This is where the much maligned "1%" rule comes from. Again, you can argue about where the line should be, but it seems logical that if I very often bid in a way which contradicts my disclosed agreements, I'm not really disclosing my agreements accurately and there should be some consequences. And if the way I actually bid implies an illegal agreement, then there should be serious consequences.

[Cascade]

awm, on Jul 17 2009, 12:56 PM, said:

The question is just where you draw the line. ACBL has decided that two doubletons is okay, but singleton is not. This seems a reasonable enough place to me.

On what basis is this reasonable?

A 1NT opening with an occasional singleton (our frequeny might be up as high as 10% 4-4-4-1 with black singletons, other 4-4-4-1 with singleton high honours, 5-4-3-1 with singleton high honours but with some exceptions, maybe occasional other hands) requires no special defense. In most cases we cannot find out about the singleton (unless it occurs by accident as a cue-bid or something). The exception is that we can bid 3♣ 1=4=4=4 and 3♦ 4=4=4=1 to show maximums with usually a small singleton in response to Stayman.

Essentially these are natural bids we are indicating a desire to play in notrumps unless partner has sufficient distribution to warrant another contract or unless we find a fit in some suit.

The affect of the regulation is that for example a 4=4=4=1 hand in a five-card major system we must open 1♦ and then over a 2♣ response we have to make some silly bid - rebid our diamonds, reverse into a major with insufficient strength or distribution (depending on the no trump range) or ironically rebid no trumps which apparently is fine and dandy with a singleton as a rebid when it is not suitable as an opening.

[awm]

Cascade's argument here sounds an awful lot like:

"This is a method I want to play therefore it is ridiculous to regulate it."

to me. Why is this "a natural bid"? It doesn't seem natural to me (and it doesn't fall under any definition of natural I've ever seen, including ACBL's or WBF's). Why is bidding your four card suits consecutively ridiculous but opening 1NT with a small singleton not ridiculous? Why is this easy to defend (certainly it is very likely to cause opponents to go wrong in play or defense)? If 1444 1NT openings are okay because of rebid problems, why not 0445?

Honestly this sounds an awful lot like the reasoning people used to argue that 1♣ "clubs or balanced" was a natural bid and that artificial defenses should be BSC. Back when that came up, I thought it was a terrible argument and so did Cascade. I'm disappointed to see that his opinions are so heavily influenced by what he personally wants to play or thinks of as good bridge.

[Cascade]

awm, on Jul 17 2009, 05:49 PM, said:

Cascade's argument here sounds an awful lot like:

"This is a method I want to play therefore it is ridiculous to regulate it."

to me. Why is this "a natural bid"? It doesn't seem natural to me (and it doesn't fall under any definition of natural I've ever seen, including ACBL's or WBF's). Why is bidding your four card suits consecutively ridiculous but opening 1NT with a small singleton not ridiculous? Why is this easy to defend (certainly it is very likely to cause opponents to go wrong in play or defense)? If 1444 1NT openings are okay because of rebid problems, why not 0445?

Honestly this sounds an awful lot like the reasoning people used to argue that 1♣ "clubs or balanced" was a natural bid and that artificial defenses should be BSC. Back when that came up, I thought it was a terrible argument and so did Cascade. I'm disappointed to see that his opinions are so heavily influenced by what he personally wants to play or thinks of as good bridge.

You can think it sounds like that if you want?

I was trying to explain and to get some information about why you think this is the right place to draw the line.

I don't think you are correct about the WBF definition. Their definition is "Natural a call or play that is not a convention (as defined in the Laws)". Although this does not appear to have been updated since the law changes maybe if I look under specific tournaments there maybe an update. Essentially as far as 1NT is concerned conventional would be showing something other than willingness to play in no trumps.

Consequently my WBF system card is marked as "GREEN - natural" and we have never had a problem over that classification.

It does seem weird to me something that is WBF GREEN is unplayable in North America.