[DavidKok]

mike777, on 2025-October-20, 07:59, said:

DavidKok, on 2025-October-20, 03:18, said:

Personally I loathe lead-directing bids, and view them to a great extent as excuse in the post mortem. Yes, they can definitely work. Yes, they are popular and widespread. Yes, there are even situations where I will play them. But there is so much bad in with the good. They often don't work even when they come up, and the opportunity cost is tremendous. I draw parallels to stopper based bidding, or suit quality requirements. I am convinced that my lifetime return on these notions is soundly negative. If only nobody had ever taught me of these concepts I would be a stronger player.

Wow please elaborate. If I understand your post, stopper-based bidding or suit quality requirements are soundly negative concepts?

I need to be precise here, as it's a nuanced topic. The bottom line is correct though. Of all the lead-directing bids I've seen (both literally and in system notes), I think the net gains of them is negative. The same goes for all stopper-showing and stopper-asking bids. And the same goes for all bids that come with suit quality requirements.
Now this is obviously a very general statement. There are situations where it makes sense to include any of these. But it always comes with an opportunity cost. If an overcall or light third seat action is lead-directing, it is less informative about shape (either because we now have to pass hands with the same shape that aren't as suitable for having partner lead into, or because we might cheat on a shape requirement to get a good suit in). And less informative about ODR - do I want partner to compete?¹
If I allocate part of my bidding system to stopper showing - say, after a 4SGF auction, or an inverted minor auction - I don't have as much space to resolve shape. This makes it more difficult to find slams, find winning 5m contracts, or even just to evaluate the hand.
With suit quality requirements on a bid, I now need a second option for a hand with the same shape and the same strength but with different honour concentration. My systems can't support this, there's no space. My favourite example is opening 1M with 5M332 in range with a good suit (which, ironically, might be exactly backwards? You only score the weak cards if they are trumps, but the strong suit will run in NT. But I digress). I don't have a sensible rebid if I cheat on the shape on many sequences, including most competitive ones. And I don't want to design my system to show the hand that way either - the cost is too high.

For now I'll keep it brief and leave it here. I think the costs of making a bid have multiple purposes - show shape but also request a lead, for example - are often overlooked. Currently I'm trying to bid my hand type and shape, and assist partner as much as I can on the competitive auctions. I find that this task alone locks in basically all of my sequences. I can't afford the luxury of doing something else - what the system is already doing is too important.

¹I'm particularly harsh on bidding for the lead as it's such a parlay bet: we need partner to be on lead, we need the announced lead to actually be best, we need partner to not have found the lead naturally without our bid and we need the opponents to bid to a poor spot despite us just announcing the lead to the world. I find it more important to bid for the contract - I want to compete and I want to put on the pressure. And when the dust settles, partner leads what they think is best - taking my bidding into account, but not giving it significant weight as a command.

[DavidKok]

Now for the full picture I should clarify, I think: I do play lead directing bids, stopper asking and showing bids, and have bids with suit quality requirements in my system. Just fewer than most, and I probably use them even less often than you might guess from my system card. I think these tools are occasionally good, and often bad. Finding when they are bad is, in my opinion, a worthwhile way to free up precious bids and utilise them for something more important. Don't get it confused, I'm not saying that these bids are bad always. Just more often than not, which is bad enough for me.

[jillybean]

bump

DavidKok, on 2025-October-20, 11:33, said:

If I allocate part of my bidding system to stopper showing - say, after a 4SGF auction, or an inverted minor auction - I don't have as much space to resolve shape. This makes it more difficult to find slams, find winning 5m contracts, or even just to evaluate the hand.

I'm interested in a better system than "stopper showing" after 1m:2m
I was playing 1m:2m does not deny a 4cM for a while until other forum posters convinced me this was an inferior approach. If I am using this method and bidding a 4cM in ahead of 1m:2m how do I ever resolve shape? Does it matter, what is your system ?

[DavidKok]

As always there's a tradeoff between effectiveness and complexity. I recommend bidding your shape, and making bids of 3m a non-forcing sign of holding a minimum on the auction thus far (by either side). Going past 3m is forcing to game, suit bids below 3m are forcing but not necessarily forcing to game. The main source of confusion is which 2NT bids are forcing and which are not forcing, and while I have my preferences I think it's fine to come up with your own rule here as well.
The discussion on inverted minor structures has previously been had in quite some detail on this forum, I think those threads contain detailed continuation structures if you're curious.

My personal preference is for something more complicated, to go with my unbalanced diamond and balanced club approach. I think the complicated scheme is also an improvement with more standard openings. However, it is probably more effort than what you're looking for.