[straube]

I think that at very low levels (dbl, 1D) that unnatural may be better...something like CRASH. These bids take up little space so they ought to be reserved for hands that don't have a strong preference. The value is when advancer is able to use this information to compete at the 2-level.

At medium levels (1H, 1S) I think that natural is better. 1H doesn't take up any room, but 1S takes a step. The primary benefit (again) is that responder can take up bidding room with a raise.

At the 2-level, sowing confusion has worked against us (we play a strong club). Like 1C (2C) =clubs or something else. Very hard to deal with 2-way bids. We aren't in a GF yet, haven't shown a suit, and have no cue bid. It's true that advancer seldom can't advance, but the work has already been done.

Something I personally find annoying is when the opponents pass and then bid later after we've established a relay auction. We've had the wheels come off. OTOH, I can't really recommend this strategy, because our relays may be too high to want to come in later.

[32519]

straube, on 2012-April-07, 10:50, said:

Something I personally find annoying is when the opponents pass and then bid later after we've established a relay auction. We've had the wheels come off. OTOH, I can't really recommend this strategy, because our relays may be too high to want to come in later.

How does the later opponent intervention interfere with the relay auction? Sure it eats up bidding space, but you have two extra bids available after the intervention: Pass and Double.

[JLOGIC]

Phil, on 2012-April-07, 10:29, said:

No one has a problem with jacking around a 1N opening with Woolsey, and a lot of players think that the 2♦ multi overcall is what creates the most havoc in strong NT bidding.

lol, funny because this is another great example of a convention people overuse way too much and go for numbers. Think about it, if the opponents play one of the two common methods of dealing with multi over your NT, which is double with stayman hands to create a force, then you are in penalty X mode, then effectively they can make both a penalty X and a takeout double of your 2 of a major overcall. As opposed to if you could just bid 2M, they would no longer have a penalty X and would usually bid 3N (or if they passed, often they would hear all pass). You give them the best of both worlds and become much more exposed, since your downside is much greater you should obviously logically be overcalling SOUNDER because you have to bid 2D rahter than 2M. On top of that, your upside is lower since you are not showing your suit immediately which is inferior in competitive auctions obviously. I honestly think of woolsey vs NT and suction vs strong club as 2 examples of bids that opponents make retardedly vs me very often and just go for numbers. Woolsey 2D must be the worst, it's so easy to just double then double (or double then pass and let partner double). I did not know there was a group of people who thought that the "2d bid creates the most havoc in strong NT bidding" but that makes sense.

It is just like a multi 2D opening, you should LOSE when you are opening the convention compared to opening a weak 2, but you should gain enough by freeing up both 2M openings vs having some other meaning for 2D that you gain.

In reality, people thinking multi 2D, or multi over their NT being a winning convention on its own cannot logically follow unless the opponents are so unfamiliar/incompetent at defending against it compared to their competency level of defending vs natural bidding that you are gaining a ton just based on that. So, no doubt these local wizards who do well beating up on fish have gotten most of their experience doing just that, and thus conventions where the opponents don't know how to defend and have accidents have a lot of value. But if you think logically about specifically woolsey 2D, I think you would realize it's a horrible example since it uses up no bidding room and the opponents can just play transfer lebensohl and double for stayman/penalty X hands, and pass then double with light takeouts, etc. And it's really not a hard bid to defend against, and you will pre-alert it in the ACBL so they will likely discuss their defense even if they are bad players.

Similarly, having a philosophy of "jacking around all the time" COMBINED with playing two suited overcalls over a strong club is just a complete disaster if the opponents know what to do when you bid against their strong club. Playing this way your vig is really going to be gaining from confusing them and them having accidents. And, incidentally, these players are also often not smart enough to take full advantage of the information you give them in the auction when they declare.

I mean, seriously, think about an auction like 1C* (strong) 1D(suction) 2D (natural GF) 3H (p/c). This auction is a pretty good auction for suction, luckily advancer had a big enough fit in 2 possible suits to preempt to the 3 level immediately and the pressure is on. This auction has gone well for suction, but 1C 1H 2C 3H would have been much better. Why is that? Because assuming I play the hand, I know a ton about responders hand. 3H really says "I want to play 3H if you have hearts, or at least 3S, or at least 4D". He's probably got 4 hearts and 5 clubs or 4 hearts and 4 spades at least, and I really know even more than that (many 4432 hands would just bid 2S not 3H for instance, etc). He might have 5 hearts, but if he does I know he doesn't have 5 clubs, with 5-5 he would bid 4C at least. If he had 5 hearts, I would bet a lot on him being 4522 exactly. Maybe they will lead a heart at trick one and I will get the heart count, and play double dummy and get written up cuz I played for 4522 at trick one. Of course 4522 might just bid 2S, maybe I'll play him for good spades and bad hearts as well. And if the overcaller has spades and clubs, the auction has gone well for him, his partner was able to preempt early in the auction, nice, but I am going to be able to pick off the play easily, esp if I get to 4H.

Basically, you are simply gambling a ton that you ***** them in the auction, because they will often know your shape. And what is the best way to ***** them? It's either to preempt to a high level with your first bid, OR TO MAKE A BID THAT ENABLES PARTNER TO PREEMPT TO A HIGH LEVEL. If opener has to make his first bid at a high level, that's great. But wait, playing these "either/or" bids not only means that the pass or correct bids give a way a ton of info about the shape, it also severely hampers your partners ability to preempt to a high level which is one of the main ways of achieving your dream of ***** them in the auction! I see you play crash, so over 2 suits of the same rank for instance, for your partner to preempt aggressively he needs a good fit in both a minor and a major, otherwise he has to be more cautious. If you could have just shown the majors, your partner would be free to jump immediately. Also, think about this stupid style of bidding super aggressively to begin with. What happens? Oh, partner can't really preempt THAT aggressively, even with 2 fits in possible suits, you might be 4-4 or have a 4 card suit overcall or something stupid. Better be cautious. Oh you had a real 5/5 this time? Too bad, unlucky! The get in every time style is very poor in that respect, it just runs counter to your goal of getting in their auctions a lot. If responder makes a GF bid and the next guy cant jump to at least the 3 level, their auction isn't hurt too much. They have forcing passes, cuebids, they are in a GF and can bid suits. Oh, yeah, they can double you too.

Your GOAL when you overcall over a strong club should be:

--Always to possibly play it. You are bidding to try and play the hand. This means a making partial or game, or obviously finding a good save.

If you DON'T play it your goal should be to:

-- Distruct their auction effectively, while not giving them too much info in the play if you fail at that goal (as you almost always will unless you find a big fit.

The most likely way to disrupt their auction effectively is to preempt them early. The best ways to do this are:

1) Overcall with a preempt obv, this hurts their auction immediately. Even something like 2S. Well, to overcall soemthing at the 2 level, you're much mroe likely to have a 1 suiter. One suiters have more safety for less. And no, artificial 2 bids are not good. For instance multi 2D overcall would be hopeless, you take away you biggest advantage by allowing LHO to double, to show some cards and then make another bid, he can make 2 bids at the 2 level often. You must overcall in a suit that you might have even if its a 2 suited bid (spades and a minor could work, psycho suction is much superior to suction because youre bidding your possible suit, etc).

2) Overcall at the 1 level, enabling partner to at least raise, but hopefully to make a big jump immediately if you hit a big fit. Even if you have a spade and club 2 suiter, overcalling spades is not that bad, if you're going to make a big splash it's probably in spades and if you have a save or a make somewhere you're unlikely to win in clubs, spades is far more important (goign to my theory that majors is the only important 2 suiter over 1C). Yes, obviously some bid that showed both suits exactly would be better. But I would submit that if I have 5 spades and 5 clubs and my option is to DOUBLE as a crash bid, or bid 1S, 1S is far better. 1S at least enables partner to jump raise if he has a good fit whereas crash means he has to have a good fit in 2 suits. It also is far more preemptive than X or 1D, it's funny that crashers want to disrupt and 2 of their 3 bids are X and 1D, those are much easier for strong clubbers to deal with.

Also it's worth noting that even 1S is a pretty effective preempt even if your partner can just raise to 2S.

All of these things argue for natural bids, not either/or bids and not 2 suited bids, and that is just on top of the main point that we do not want to tell them so much about shape every single time when we are unlikely to declare the hand! They also argue for not bidding super aggro and just bidding normally at the 1 level, because WHEN you bid, you want your partner to be able to bid very aggressively. You can argue whether you should be preempting aggressively, this is more random and has a lot more upside but you will just get doubled a lot. IMO this is the same thing, people just preempt too much. Yes maybe novice strong clubbers don't know what to do over 1C 3S X(GF no bid) p ? with xxx AJx AKJx Axx but any good player is just going to pass and let you play it, so good luck to you if you have a retarded hand. Yes, 3S is a very effective preempt, but if you are bidding it too often they can counter it by just defending 3S X when they have game going points and no super long suit. And that is a common battle these days. But that is a totally different argument about best style for preempting over a strong club, it's way different than best methods and style on 1 level bids imo.

Also Remember that even overcalling a preempt like 2S with 6 spades gives them far less info about the shape than 2 suited bids.

This post is going on and on, but I would say that you should devise your system/methods for playing against people who are competent. Even if they are incompetent, they might have no idea what they're doing in their uncontested auctions anyways that you are risking a lot to gain not a ton. I admit there is a class of players who knows their auctions very well if you don't bid, but has very poor judgement in competitive auctions. For instance, I used to play against some relay guys and I would always bid, because they were hopeless at bridge but they knew their relays 100 %. But that is just exploiting their particular weaknesses, it should not be your general strategy. When people play vs meckwell, they often freak out and think they're getting fixed or something if they let them have an uncontested 1C auction. That couldn't be farther from the truth, yes they are in a +EV spot vs natural, but sometimes natural works better, usually it doesn't matter at all it's just a normal whatever contract. Let's say 90 % of the time it doesn't matter what system you play in an uncontested auction, you're just going to get to the same spot. In those auctions, do I want to risk going for a number for no reason, or even worse, do I want to tell meckwell a ton about the shape and let them pick me clean in the play? And for what gain, because I'm going to screw meckwell really hard by overcalling 1D CRASH and then my partner can bust out 3D, pass or correct? What percentage of the time do you think that stops natures course of them playing a routine game or something? It is just a really bad strategy and this conventional wisdom comes out of some fear of strong clubbers having a strong club auction like you will always get burned, combined with how inept bad strong clubbers are at dealing with competition, combined with people not considering the implications of the play after these auctions, only the bidding.

[JLOGIC]

double post

[JLOGIC]

Phil, on 2012-April-07, 10:29, said:

I suppose if you wanted to make better definitions about two suiters, this gives responder more opportunity to preempt, which is the biggest drawback to anything like suction or Crash.

This is true, there is a correlation between people who play these toys and how often they want to bid over a strong club, but they don't have to be. Kind of like how people who play odd/even in USA falsecard less often than people who play ud or std discards...that does not mean there is a flaw with o/e. Still, it is a broken system to have either or 2 suiters, and even if you use those bids cautiously, you have now lost your 1D overcall which would be potentially useful if partner could jump in diamonds (and he'd just need like 4 diamonds to do so, nothing crazy). You could convince me to play that X and 1N show 2 suiters that are specific...Oh wait thats what X majors NT minors is!

2H overcall showing spades or hearts is different, that is a preempt that is with a ONE suiter not a 2 suiter, where you are bidding one of your suits (eg doubling and forcing overcaller to bid again is not possible). That is very tough to defend against and is possibly very good NV. I rememebr townsend and gold going 4 off in 2H vs me in a pair game when we couldn't make anything and they had spades though. A convention like that is highly random but obv that doesn't make it bad.

FWIW that type of bid AS AN OPENER is banned at even the highest level in the WBF I think, because it is so tough to defend against. If you wanted to play it NV I would say that it could be fine, but again it's following what seems theoretically logical, it's not just because people are inept at defending against it, it is just naturally really hard to defend against.

[mgoetze]

JLOGIC, on 2012-April-08, 02:55, said:

FWIW that type of bid AS AN OPENER is banned at even the highest level in the WBF I think,

It's just a brown sticker convention. That makes it legal to play in the KO phase of the Bermuda Bowl, or in 4th league in Germany...

[the hog]

PrecisionL, on 2012-April-07, 09:17, said:

OK, for $?

Of course.

[gwnn]

mgoetze, on 2012-April-08, 04:04, said:

It's just a brown sticker convention. That makes it legal to play in the KO phase of the Bermuda Bowl, or in 4th league in Germany...

But opening with 9 hcp is illegal anywhere in Germany right?

[mgoetze]

gwnn, on 2012-April-08, 05:09, said:

But opening with 9 hcp is illegal anywhere in Germany right?

Actually you are allowed to open rule of 18, so 9 HCP balanced is not allowed but 9 HCP with 5422 is allowed.

[dcrc2]

I like Psycho Suction at the 2-level, ie. (1♣) : 2x = single-suited in the suit bid, or some specified 5-5 two-suiter (not including the suit bid). The intention is similar to Phil's 2♥ = ♥ or ♠, but I prefer this way because I can't bring myself to bid anything other than 2♠ when I hold a 2♠ bid. Also the two-suiters are a good type to get into the auction.

[JLOGIC]

mgoetze, on 2012-April-08, 04:04, said:

It's just a brown sticker convention. That makes it legal to play in the KO phase of the Bermuda Bowl, or in 4th league in Germany...

Hmm really? I thought you couldn't even play it in the KO phase of the bermuda bowl heh, not sure why I thought that. Even if you can, that makes it barred almost always in WBF events.

[benlessard]

Agree with Justin, what I hate most is when they play natural over my strong club. I think that from 1H to 2S (remove 1Nt) natural is probably the best method.

X, 1D & 1Nt for 2 suiters should be enough.

[gnasher]

mgoetze, on 2012-April-08, 04:04, said:

It's just a brown sticker convention. That makes it legal to play in the KO phase of the Bermuda Bowl, or in 4th league in Germany...

Or either division of the English Premier League.

[Phil]

Thanks JLall.

I've felt the CRASH bids were there just to take up space between the one level overcalls that are necessary and the 2♦(and higher) multi bids which I like for precisely the reasons you state.

I suppose I can make a very easy switch to 1N = minors and 2♣ = majors. I'm not terribly concerned with using the double as anything, since it gives the opponents an extra bid.

[32519]

JLOGIC, on 2012-April-08, 02:44, said:

Basically, you are simply gambling a ton that you ***** them in the auction, because they will often know your shape. And what is the best way to ***** them? It's either to preempt to a high level with your first bid, OR TO MAKE A BID THAT ENABLES PARTNER TO PREEMPT TO A HIGH LEVEL. If opener has to make his first bid at a high level, that's great. But wait, playing these "either/or" bids not only means that the pass or correct bids give a way a ton of info about the shape, it also severely hampers your partners ability to preempt to a high level which is one of the main ways of achieving your dream of ***** them in the auction! I see you play crash, so over 2 suits of the same rank for instance, for your partner to preempt aggressively he needs a good fit in both a minor and a major, otherwise he has to be more cautious. If you could have just shown the majors, your partner would be free to jump immediately. Also, think about this stupid style of bidding super aggressively to begin with. What happens? Oh, partner can't really preempt THAT aggressively, even with 2 fits in possible suits, you might be 4-4 or have a 4 card suit overcall or something stupid. Better be cautious. Oh you had a real 5/5 this time? Too bad, unlucky! The get in every time style is very poor in that respect, it just runs counter to your goal of getting in their auctions a lot. If responder makes a GF bid and the next guy cant jump to at least the 3 level, their auction isn't hurt too much. They have forcing passes, cuebids, they are in a GF and can bid suits. Oh, yeah, they can double you too.

Your GOAL when you overcall over a strong club should be:

--Always to possibly play it. You are bidding to try and play the hand. This means a making partial or game, or obviously finding a good save.

If you DON'T play it your goal should be to:

-- Distruct their auction effectively, while not giving them too much info in the play if you fail at that goal (as you almost always will unless you find a big fit.

The most likely way to disrupt their auction effectively is to preempt them early. The best ways to do this are:

1) Overcall with a preempt obv, this hurts their auction immediately. Even something like 2S. Well, to overcall soemthing at the 2 level, you're much mroe likely to have a 1 suiter. One suiters have more safety for less. And no, artificial 2 bids are not good. For instance multi 2D overcall would be hopeless, you take away you biggest advantage by allowing LHO to double, to show some cards and then make another bid, he can make 2 bids at the 2 level often. You must overcall in a suit that you might have even if its a 2 suited bid (spades and a minor could work, psycho suction is much superior to suction because youre bidding your possible suit, etc).

2) Overcall at the 1 level, enabling partner to at least raise, but hopefully to make a big jump immediately if you hit a big fit. Even if you have a spade and club 2 suiter, overcalling spades is not that bad, if you're going to make a big splash it's probably in spades and if you have a save or a make somewhere you're unlikely to win in clubs, spades is far more important (goign to my theory that majors is the only important 2 suiter over 1C). Yes, obviously some bid that showed both suits exactly would be better. But I would submit that if I have 5 spades and 5 clubs and my option is to DOUBLE as a crash bid, or bid 1S, 1S is far better. 1S at least enables partner to jump raise if he has a good fit whereas crash means he has to have a good fit in 2 suits. It also is far more preemptive than X or 1D, it's funny that crashers want to disrupt and 2 of their 3 bids are X and 1D, those are much easier for strong clubbers to deal with.

Also it's worth noting that even 1S is a pretty effective preempt even if your partner can just raise to 2S.

All of these things argue for natural bids, not either/or bids and not 2 suited bids, and that is just on top of the main point that we do not want to tell them so much about shape every single time when we are unlikely to declare the hand! They also argue for not bidding super aggro and just bidding normally at the 1 level, because WHEN you bid, you want your partner to be able to bid very aggressively. You can argue whether you should be preempting aggressively, this is more random and has a lot more upside but you will just get doubled a lot. IMO this is the same thing, people just preempt too much. Yes maybe novice strong clubbers don't know what to do over 1C 3S X(GF no bid) p ? with xxx AJx AKJx Axx but any good player is just going to pass and let you play it, so good luck to you if you have a retarded hand. Yes, 3S is a very effective preempt, but if you are bidding it too often they can counter it by just defending 3S X when they have game going points and no super long suit. And that is a common battle these days. But that is a totally different argument about best style for preempting over a strong club, it's way different than best methods and style on 1 level bids imo.

Also Remember that even overcalling a preempt like 2S with 6 spades gives them far less info about the shape than 2 suited bids.

This post is going on and on, but I would say that you should devise your system/methods for playing against people who are competent. Even if they are incompetent, they might have no idea what they're doing in their uncontested auctions anyways that you are risking a lot to gain not a ton. I admit there is a class of players who knows their auctions very well if you don't bid, but has very poor judgement in competitive auctions. For instance, I used to play against some relay guys and I would always bid, because they were hopeless at bridge but they knew their relays 100 %. But that is just exploiting their particular weaknesses, it should not be your general strategy. When people play vs meckwell, they often freak out and think they're getting fixed or something if they let them have an uncontested 1C auction. That couldn't be farther from the truth, yes they are in a +EV spot vs natural, but sometimes natural works better, usually it doesn't matter at all it's just a normal whatever contract. Let's say 90 % of the time it doesn't matter what system you play in an uncontested auction, you're just going to get to the same spot. In those auctions, do I want to risk going for a number for no reason, or even worse, do I want to tell meckwell a ton about the shape and let them pick me clean in the play? And for what gain, because I'm going to screw meckwell really hard by overcalling 1D CRASH and then my partner can bust out 3D, pass or correct? What percentage of the time do you think that stops natures course of them playing a routine game or something? It is just a really bad strategy and this conventional wisdom comes out of some fear of strong clubbers having a strong club auction like you will always get burned, combined with how inept bad strong clubbers are at dealing with competition, combined with people not considering the implications of the play after these auctions, only the bidding.

Justin

The amount of time you spend in these forums as a top international player is hugely appreciated. Anything you possibly gain must be tiny compared to the knowledge you are sharing with others. Last year you were “Poster of the Year” winner and it is easy to see why. Inevitably you cut through all the fancy crap and get down to addressing the nuts and bolts of why one approach is better than another (just as you have done here). Based on the things you have said in this thread I intend resorting back to what was suggested on page 1 (post 6), with some minor adjustments.

Thanks a million.

[Trinidad]

gnasher, on 2012-April-08, 16:59, said:

Or either division of the English Premier League.

... or my local bridge club.

Rik

[gnasher]

JLOGIC, on 2012-April-08, 02:44, said:

Your GOAL when you overcall over a strong club should be:

--Always to possibly play it. You are bidding to try and play the hand. This means a making partial or game, or obviously finding a good save.

If you DON'T play it your goal should be to:

-- Distruct their auction effectively, while not giving them too much info in the play if you fail at that goal (as you almost always will unless you find a big fit.

I think that when one preempts the second goal is the main one - you want them to get too high or too low, or play in the wrong strain. If they let you play the hand in a partscore it generally means they're happy for you to do so; if you save that means you're playing for the smaller minus rather than playing for a plus; and if your side is in the game zone you might be better of not preempting.

Do you diasagree with that, or are you saying that strong club auctions are different from other auctions, or with your first goal were you thinking mainly of one-level overcalls?

Quote

This post is going on and on

It's OK, really, we don't mind.


One other question: how much harder (it at all) is it for the opening side if it goes

1♣ (2[SP)

rather than

1♣ (1[SP) something (2[SP])

I've seen people say that the key with preempting over a strong club is to get the bidding to a high level by the time it gets back to opener, but intuitively it seems to me that it's more important to take away responder's space, as responder's hand is less well-defined than opener's.

[JLOGIC]

gnasher, on 2012-April-09, 03:16, said:

One other question: how much harder (it at all) is it for the opening side if it goes

1♣ (2[SP)

rather than

1♣ (1[SP) something (2[SP])

I've seen people say that the key with preempting over a strong club is to get the bidding to a high level by the time it gets back to opener, but intuitively it seems to me that it's more important to take away responder's space, as responder's hand is less well-defined than opener's.

The first is better, but not that much so. Let's use my methods over each bid which are pretty simple standard to analyze it. Over 1C 2S, I play any bid is GF. Over 1C 1S, Double is 6-7 (maybe a good 5), and pass is 0-5, and a bid is GF.

Over 1C 2S p p X I play lebensohl. Over 1C 1S X 2S, I play bidding is GF, X is takeout (over that 2N is not leb). Opener can pass and expect a reopening X if he has some spade length, then make a NF bid.

So, if responder has 6-7, he gets to show it immediately which is useful, maybe he can stop in a partial after 1C 1S X 2S p p something, whereas 1C 2S p p bid he'd have to bid a game with 6-7 almost always. If it goes 1C 2S p p X, it is largely the same with use of lebensohl, a little bit worse. If responder is going to make a GF, then 1C 2S is better, especially if responder is going to bid hearts. For example, notice how much better 1C 1S 2H 2S p p or 1C 1S 2H 2S bid is than 1C 2S 3H p is. But still, opener can bid 3N or raise or cue with no stopper or a slam try. You have gained by bidding 2S, maybe opener has 2 hearts and a spade stopper and has to guess between 3N or 4H, and maybe he will guess wrong, and maybe it will matter. But that's still a parlay, usually the normal spot will be reached, and an abnormal spot may be inferior but will often work out just as well. If responder is going to bid a minor, it's not a huge difference between 1C 2S 3C and 1C 1S 2C 2S. It's different but theres still a lot of room (facilitated by a 3S cue also being available).

So yes, 2S is better, but you now run the risk of getting doubled in it if you bid it too often. Is that worth the trade off? You won't get doubled that often, but even thuogh you are gaining sometimes by bidding 2S immediately, it does not usually matter.

And this goes back to my point, there is another thing to consider, how often can responder raise to 3S? Bidding 3S when you have some safety is the nuts, it creates problems. If you are bidding 2S wildly, repsonder cannot raise to 3S as often. In standard bidding methods, most hands that bid 1C 1S something 2S would raise a 2S overcall to 3. If you bid 2S too much, this means you might have to bid 3S on classical 2S bids, and that is quite risky since you are really offering yourself up at the 3 level. The 3 level for strong clubbers is like the 5 level in normal auctions, that is the point you start getting doubled successfully on high cards without trump stacks, especially if you are bidding it too often. If you are overcalling 2 so often to the point that you have to bid 3 on normal 2 bids, you will have high risk and high reward. Or if you just bid 2 a lot, you will suffer from partner not being able to make the critical raise sometimes, 2S is not where the money is at in disrupting their auction, it has some gain but the 3 level is really good, even if responder has taken a bid.

And, if you are bidding 2 wildly, I don't think it's going to be that infrequent that you get doubled and get a poor result compared to how often you mess up their auction AND profit from it. It is less hard to trap pass when your partner opens a strong club compared to normal since you know your partner has a good hand.

As an extension to your question, lets consider how difficult it is if responder is going to bid 3S whether you overcall a standard 1S bid, or a hyper aggressive style 2S bid.

Over 1C 1S X 3S or 1C 1S p 3S vs 1C 2S p 3S, this is the best case for the 2S bid, since responder got to show his 6-7 or 0-5, and in the 2nd auction, he is 0-7 either way. However, it's not a huge difference, no suits have been bid and it's a tough auction either way. Generally opener will still play his partner for about 5 and bid (similar to the standard rule of handling normal preempts). If responder was going to make a GF bid, it is irrelevant whether 1S or 2S was bid. Either way, there are a lot of problems, finding 5-3 heart fits, finding out about stoppers, etc etc. 3S is the nuts. The one thing they have going for you is that if you are out of line the opps can double you pretty easily (again, not an exact science, they will go wrong a fair amount to). It might be different if pairs played bidding shows a semi positive and X is an art GF over a 1 level bid, and the reverse over 2S, I have no idea.

If you can preempt to the THREE level immediately, that messes responder up a lot, but like I said they will also just double you since theyre messed up, so it's high risk high/reward. I don't think it's a huge difference whether you preempt to the 2 level immediately or if responder gets to raise to the 2 level, even though it is a difference.

[JLOGIC]

gnasher, on 2012-April-09, 03:16, said:

I think that when one preempts the second goal is the main one - you want them to get too high or too low, or play in the wrong strain. If they let you play the hand in a partscore it generally means they're happy for you to do so; if you save that means you're playing for the smaller minus rather than playing for a plus; and if your side is in the game zone you might be better of not preempting.

Do you diasagree with that, or are you saying that strong club auctions are different from other auctions, or with your first goal were you thinking mainly of one-level overcalls?

Since the first bid shows points, the weakness of the system is that they haven't shown suits. Consequently, if you preempt I would hope to get them to the wrong strain rather than the wrong suit moreso than usual (or if it's a slam hand, the wrong strain). You are right, sometimes you will force them too high when they could have stopped by preempting, but I don't think it should be a primary goal. I mean, once 16+ is shown, if responder has 8+ he will force to game. If the bid is low enough, responder can probably show his points too, or later bid lebensohl/some other clarifying type bid. If the preempt is high enough, sometimes you force them too high since they have to guess about points, the same as any preempt.

But yes, I was thinking about overcalling a non preempt I think. Your main goal with a non preempt should be to declare, or enable partner to preempt effectively, and I think many of these artificial systems go against that goal. When you preempt, your goal should be to preempt them, whether it happens to be more the wrong strain than the wrong suit than an auction that starts by bidding a suit is irrelevant.

Preempts and 1 level overcalls are def different beasts.

[hrothgar]

JLOGIC, on 2012-April-09, 04:25, said:

Since the first bid shows points, the weakness of the system is that they haven't shown suits. Consequently, if you preempt I would hope to get them to the wrong strain rather than the wrong suit moreso than usual (or if it's a slam hand, the wrong strain).

If you have a moment, curious what you think of the following:

http://www.bridgebas...059#entry212059