[awm]

pilun, on 2026-April-15, 01:55, said:

There are two basic ways to develop a symmetric system.
One is to look at your current strong club method and drop symmetric on it.
The other way is take the structure and devise a suite of openings that mesh best with it.

This is clearly true! The issue is that there's a reason almost every system played at the top level is arranged in a particular way (five-card majors, weak balanced hands grouped exclusively with minor-oriented openings, most often into a single opening bid). This arrangement has proven the most effective for natural bidding (which is what most people are using). It leaves you better placed in competition, better placed when you need to scramble for the right partial, and so forth. Note that four-card majors predate five-card majors by many years, and canape methods dominated bridge for over a decade in the 1960s and 1970s, and yet both of these approaches have virtually disappeared from top-level bridge.

By rearranging your openings to better mesh with relays, you're rejecting this approach. You're going to see losses on the "natural bidding" hands (yes there can also be wins and random swings, but in general the structure everyone is using for natural bidding is... better for natural bidding than your rearrangement that was made primarily to support relays). The problem is that even though you play relays, the natural bidding hands are going to outnumber the relay hands by a significant margin (any time opponents compete, and realistically any time that opener's parter doesn't have the values for an immediate game force, given that your "invitational" relays don't seem to have much going for them).

Of course, you could argue that relays are such a huge win that having them outweighs the frequent small losses from the natural sequences, and that might be reasonable if rearranging your openings was the only way to add relays to your system. But that just isn't true, there are multiple pairs at the top levels (as well as multiple players in these forums) who have attached relays to a more standard opening structure.

[foobar]

pilun, on 2026-April-15, 01:55, said:

My knowledge of Nysrtrom/Upmark might be out of date. Looking at a WBF card, they had
1M : 2♣ as GFR, with 1NT semi-forcing, to cater for invites. Same with Auby-Ebenius.
Need some way to handle those invites.

There are two basic ways to develop a symmetric system.
One is to look at your current strong club method and drop symmetric on it.
The other way is take the structure and devise a suite of openings that mesh best with it.

awm put it across very well regarding the second point, and I too would advocate layering relays on top of "natural major openings". The 1m openings must deviate perforce, but the most common hand in 1♦ opening is the weak NT (11-13), so that leaves us reasonably placed to survive competition. Also, in uncontested auctions sequences like 1♦ - 1M - 2m convey far more information than an equivalent standard sequence (and way better vis-a-vis Precision 1♦).

For the 1st, my adaptation of Nystrom-Upmark uses 1N as the GFR, which lines up with 2♣, 2♥ and 2N for standard symmetric SL sequences, and leaves 2♦ / 2♠ free for other hand types (balanced in my case). Note that same pattern (2♦ / 2♠ is used as a balanced hand response over 1♣), so it's symmetric as well.

[pilun]

awm, on 2026-April-15, 03:14, said:

This is clearly true! The issue is that there's a reason almost every system played at the top level is arranged in a particular way (five-card majors, weak balanced hands grouped exclusively with minor-oriented openings, most often into a single opening bid). This arrangement has proven the most effective for natural bidding (which is what most people are using). It leaves you better placed in competition, better placed when you need to scramble for the right partial, and so forth. Note that four-card majors predate five-card majors by many years, and canape methods dominated bridge for over a decade in the 1960s and 1970s, and yet both of these approaches have virtually disappeared from top-level bridge.

By rearranging your openings to better mesh with relays, you're rejecting this approach. You're going to see losses on the "natural bidding" hands (yes there can also be wins and random swings, but in general the structure everyone is using for natural bidding is... better for natural bidding than your rearrangement that was made primarily to support relays). The problem is that even though you play relays, the natural bidding hands are going to outnumber the relay hands by a significant margin (any time opponents compete, and realistically any time that opener's parter doesn't have the values for an immediate game force, given that your "invitational" relays don't seem to have much going for them).

Of course, you could argue that relays are such a huge win that having them outweighs the frequent small losses from the natural sequences, and that might be reasonable if rearranging your openings was the only way to add relays to your system. But that just isn't true, there are multiple pairs at the top levels (as well as multiple players in these forums) who have attached relays to a more standard opening structure.

Curiously, the first relay system I played was FPR.
Pass = 13+, 1♣/♦ submarine, 1♥ 0-7 fert.

Is that approach any good? Is it the way bidding theory should head?
We'll never know. Unless, maybe give some AIs the rules of bridge and a billion hands. See what they come up with.

[awm]

pilun, on 2026-April-15, 23:42, said:

Curiously, the first relay system I played was FPR.
Pass = 13+, 1♣/♦ submarine, 1♥ 0-7 fert.

Is that approach any good? Is it the way bidding theory should head?
We'll never know. Unless, maybe give some AIs the rules of bridge and a billion hands. See what they come up with.

It's true that it's hard to tell because you're not allowed to play it in many places, and this also reduces the opportunities for opponents to develop defences to it. Personally I'm not convinced -- it seems like you will be way behind the field on the 13+ hands when opponents bid (which will be often) and while there's some advantage to opening the 8-12 hands at the one level, you're doing it in a way that doesn't really maximise the useful information (showing only four with possible canape, retaining balanced hands in the opening, etc). The one thing I really don't know is to what extent the 1♥ fert is a win or loss; it will likely come out way ahead against opponents who aren't well prepared (which given the rarity of the methods will be the vast majority of opponents) and this might rescue the system as a whole.

My suspicion is that the main advantage of this system when compared to something similar to what you play now will be if the fert is a big win, and most proponents of forcing pass methods at least claim that the fert is not the primary reason they want to play the system.

[foobar]

pilun, on 2026-April-15, 23:42, said:

Curiously, the first relay system I played was FPR.
Pass = 13+, 1♣/♦ submarine, 1♥ 0-7 fert.

Is that approach any good? Is it the way bidding theory should head?
We'll never know. Unless, maybe give some AIs the rules of bridge and a billion hands. See what they come up with.

Looks like we have a shared history of bootstrapping on relay systems . It was called Tresboof, and we unleashed it during lunch time bridge at work (yes, those were the days).

In retrospect, it was definitely not very well designed, and the 13+ pass seems ridiculous. It's a true relay lover's dream though, with perfectly symmetric responses for both opener and responder (3rd seat), with room for variable captaincy.