L&E Minutes for Feb 2008

So, this post is the second instalment of my not-so-regular feature discussing what's going on with our L&E. The latest meeting is particularly interesting for me because the main thing they discussed was the issue I've ranted about more than anything else on this blog. (You know what I mean.) The minutes are on the EBU's website here.

There were some other things of interest. In particular, there is the very important job of explaining to the EBU membership what the changes are in the new Lawbook. The job has been given to DWS and Mike Amos. This is promising. I wish them luck!

It also looks like there may be some new stuff allowed at Level 4.

But let's cut to the chase.

It's fantastic that they are now discussing the problems with alerting of doubles. There seems to be a genuine enthusiasm to do something about it. Even though they failed to make significant progress at the meeting, it seems that the issue is still very much on the agenda.

The concern now is that, while they have spent plenty of time discussing what to do, they haven't yet come up with a viable, specific proposal. And there really isn't much time left if they are trying to do this by August 1st (given that it would have to be properly advertised).

But what was really disappointing - and the reason I actually felt the need to post about this - was what happened to the idea of alerting only "highly unusual" doubles. This idea is probably not optimal, but it would be workable if done properly, and it's surely miles better than what we have at the moment. And yet it was sabotaged.

David Burn had produded a paper on this idea. And the paper was pretty good. I agreed with more or less all of the points he made, and in a couple of places I felt he really hit the proverbial nail on the head. The problem was, the paper was manifestly not about alerting only highly unusual doubles. And I don't mean just in the wording - he changed from defining "unusual" to defining "expected", which ought to end up with much the same thing - I mean that the effect of his suggestions didn't have anything to do with alerting only unusual doubles.

He gives as an example:

1D : (Pass) : 1H : (1S) , Double.

which he defines as "expected" to be penalties - thus a take-out double would be alertable. The problem is, a take-out double is not unexpected. If a pair plays this double as take-out they will not believe they are doing anything "highly unusual" - because they aren't. The whole point of the idea of alerting only highly unusual doubles is that it will only affect the (minority of) players who play weird methods. Once you start defining perfectly normal methods to be alertable this is no longer the case. Mr Burn writes, "The idea is that players will alert the doubles their opponents need to know about without actually having to read the list at all, let alone memorise it." I couldn't agree more with that philosophy. But you can't achieve this if you arbitrarily define some perfectly normal agreements as being alertable.

It seems that Mr Burn fell into the trap of wanting just one agreement to be "expected" in any given situation. But in examples like the one above, a double might be take-out or penalty or value-showing: none of these things would be unexpected. So if you were actually going to base your rules on the idea of only alerting very unusual doubles, none of those things would be alertable. Indeed I would say that trying to have just one expected agreement is the mistake which causes all the problems in the current rules. This is precisely what we need to get rid of!

My point is that alerting only highly unusual doubles is a workable approach, but it isn't what the L&E was presented with. So they may have dismissed the idea of alerting highly unusual doubles on the basis of a paper which had nothing to do with alerting only highly unusual doubles. That would be a pity.

I'm certainly not saying that this would have been the best approach. There are two alternative approaches that I think are better: the first is the one on my webpage, and the second was actually mentioned at the meeting, attributed to Sally Bugden:

Mrs Bugden suggested that a possible way forward would be to not alert take out or penalty doubles ...

This really would be an excellent basis for a regulation. The problem is that it is not a "finished product", so my fear is that it could go the same way as the idea of alerting only highly unusual doubles. The main issue to be sorted out is that sometimes a take-out or penalty double can be extremely unusual. This doesn't invalidate the general rule; it just means you need to consider whether it is worth having a very small number of specific exceptions (like we have for alerting above 3NT at the moment). For example, a double of a natural suit opening bid is expected to be for take-out: in this situation a penalty double might catch people out if it was not alerted. A complete proposal would have this as an exception. It would also need to sort out what happened for doubles of artificial bids, and other techincal points. My worry is that without a complete proposal, people would see issues like this and dismiss the idea.

Systemic Opening Pass (part 2)

Following on from the previous post, let's assume we are playing a system which uses a natural 2C opener, and have agreed to pass hands of minimum opening strength with 1=4=3=5 or 4=1=3=5 shape.

The reason we might pass 1=4=3=5 hands was explained in the previous post. Hands with 4=1=3=5 shape are very similar: in particular, the singleton heart gives us a way to get back into the auction later if opponents bid hearts. The 4=1=3=5 shape is not quite so good for passing as 1=4=3=5, but the problems with finding an opening bid are the same. (In a standard "natural" system, on the other hand, it would be ridiculous to pass 4=1=3=5 hands with opening strength: there is no problem with either the opening bid or the rebid.)

Now, if a pass can be made on up to 13 HCP, we need to make some changes to the methods we use as a passed hand. In particular, there is a problem if partner opens 1-of-a-suit in third or fourth seat. Here we have the values for game unless partner has made a tactical light opening, but using traditional methods it is difficult to see how we can bid the hand. A natural 2C would normally be played as non-forcing by a passed hand, and in some circumstances a 2C response might even be played as artificial (Drury).

Since the "strong" hand types have such specific shapes, I think the solution is to use a specific response to show these hands. For example, over a 1S opening we could use a jump to 2NT to show the 1=4=3=5 type with 11-13 HCP. Normally most jumps by a passed hand are used to show hands with support for partner, but these do not come up particularly often, and with both opponents passing there is no particular need to have lots of bids which show support. So it makes a lot of sense to use some of the jumps for a new purpose.

If it is the opponents who open the bidding, there is not so much need for specifically-designed methods. If they bid one of our long suits there is no need to come into the bidding at all. If they bid our short suit, on the other hand, it is quite safe to come into the bidding even at relatively high levels, since a take-out double describes the hand very well. A take-out double does not necessarily show the "opening pass" type of hand - it could just be a normal maximum pass with ideal shape - but partner will be aware of the possibility.

The systemic pass on minimum 1=4=3=5 and 4=1=3=5 shapes makes a big difference to the 2C opening bid. The traditional Precision 2C opening shows either 6 clubs or 5 clubs and a 4-card major. Playing a systemic opening pass we can guarantee that if the hand does have only 5 clubs, it will be at the maximum end of the range. This is because, for weaker hands:

• With 1=4=3=5 or 4=1=3=5 we can pass;
• With 2=4=2=5 or 4=2=2=5 we can pretend the hand is balanced;
• With a hand short in diamonds we have an alternative opening bid available: a three-suited opening bid in traditional Precision, or a 1C opening in Polish Club.

When responding to a 2C opening this information is very helpful: it means we can investigate game with an invitational hand knowing that if opener does not have the values for game, he will always have a six-card club suit for us to fall back on. Whereas in standard Precision we might play an uncomfortable 2NT contract after 2C : 2D , 2M : 2NT, if minimum 5-4 hands are passed this sequence should probably be played as forcing, which in turn makes life easier for responder when he holds a strong hand.

Playing this agreement means that a 2C opening bid will only very rarely have precisely 5 clubs. Ideally we would like 2C to absolutely guarantee a 6-card suit. Some versions of Precision do this by putting the other hands into 1D, but a systemic pass is a very good alternative for the minimum hands. A more extreme version of the systemic opening pass would pass all hands in range for 2C if the shape was right, but now you get to the point where partner will want to allow for the strong type when deciding whether to open the bidding; once this happens you are not really playing a standard system any more. Of course, there is not necessarily anything wrong with unusual systems, and it would be amusing to see how a genuine two-way pass system would fare, for example:

Pass = 0-10 HCP any shape, or 11-16 HCP unbalanced with 4+ clubs and a 4-card major
1C = 11-13 HCP balanced / 44(41), or any hand with 17+ HCP
1D = 5+ diamonds, 11-16 HCP
1H = 5+ hearts, 11-16 HCP
1S = 5+ spades, 11-16 HCP
1NT = 14-16 HCP balanced / 44(41)
2C = 5+ clubs, no 4-card major, 11-16 HCP

Partner would be expected to open in 3rd or 4th seat with any 9+ HCP. Perhaps this sort of thing should not be taken too seriously, but it might be worryingly playable. (Except that it's almost certainly illegal, of course.)

Systemic Opening Pass

Suppose we hold this hand as dealer, playing Polish Club:

S 8
H KQ73
D AQ7
C JT653

What do we do? The normal opening bid with this shape is 2C, but the club suit doesn't really look good enough for that. Alternatively we could consider opening 1C, but then partner will expect a balanced hand, not a small singleton in spades.

I believe that by far the best option is to pass this hand.

Now, certainly, this hand is better in terms of playing strength than a typical balanced 12-count which is an automatic opening bid. But when deciding whether to open the bidding it isn't all about strength. In particular it is perfectly appropriate to consider how well our system deals with the hand. Hands with this 1=4=3=5 shape are particularly bad for systems with a natural 2C opening, so there is no need to open them on minimum values. With only 12 HCPs, passing is not an unbearable risk.

As well as being a bad hand type for opening the bidding, there are also some reasons to think that passing will work quite well. This is essentially because of the singleton spade. The singleton improves the prospects for a pass in two ways:

1. We are not so worried about the hand being passed out - firstly because the other players at the table are more likely to open if they have length is spades, and secondly because there is a good chance that if the deal is passed out, it actually "belonged" to the opponents in a spade contract.
2. If the opponents do bid spades, this hand has a good way back into the auction via a take-out double.

So if you were ever going to consider passing a hand with opening strength, a 1=4=3=5 shape is the best candidate. Indeed the same is probably true in a natural system, though there the problem is not so much in finding an opening bid, as finding a rebid after 1C : 1S.

Having observed that it can work out well to pass, we could just use this as an occasional alternative on borderline hands. But it becomes much more interesting if it is an agreed part of the system. The systemic opening pass works like this:

• We identify some specific shapes where passing seems to work well with minimum opening strength. (Let's say just 1=4=3=5 and 4=1=3=5.)
• We agree that pass is allowed with these shapes on a little more strength than normal - say up to 13 HCP.
• Now when a passed hand shows this sort of shape, partner will be aware that it can be relatively strong.
• We can also define some specific bids which show these hand types as a passed hand.

Although partner will be aware of the possibility of a stronger hand, it would be a mistake to let this affect things like our style of opening the bidding in third seat. The relevant hand types are very rare. The whole point is that we would expect passing to work well even without partner doing anything differently - at least until the passed hand gets a chance to clarify what he has. So on the first round at least, partner should just bid as normal.

Once the partnership's methods are designed to cater for these hands being passed, the pass becomes even more attractive. So we could pass hands with these shapes even when the club suit is not so bad, perhaps even with a hand like this:

S AJ96
H 5
D 753
C AQJ63

Note that these hands are still relatively bad for opening a natural 2C, because of the difficulty in investigating whether we belong in spades.

In the next post I'll go through some more implications of this agreement.

Interference over Natural Suit Openings

There is an old debate about whether a new suit by responder (e.g. 1S : (2C) : 2H) should be forcing or not. Either method is very useful when the appropriate hand type comes up - and causes difficult problems when you pick up a hand of the opposite type. If forced to choose one or the other throughout, I would prefer to play a new suit as forcing (which is standard in most parts of the world). Though non-forcing free bids do look very attractive when the suit is a major that can be shown at the 2-level.

But there is no need to choose. By using artificial tricks such as transfers we can usually show both hand types at an appropriate level. Unfortunately, different situations require different gadgets. Below are the methods I'm currently using for 2-level interference over 1D/1H/1S openings, which demonstrate all the various ideas that might be used.

1. Over a 2C overcall.

Here we use switch: that is, of the two unbid suits, a bid in one of them shows length in the other one. So:

Over 1D : (2C), 2H shows spades and 2S shows hearts.
Over 1H : (2C), 2D shows spades and 2S shows diamonds.
Over 1S : (2C), 2D shows hearts and 2H shows diamonds.

This essentially gives us both a forcing and a non-forcing bid in the higher-ranking suit, while not raising the level on the lower-ranking suit.

Note that the "switch" relies on both unbid suits being at the same level. So if you are fond of this method you could use it over spade overcalls as well, and also over 1S : (2H) and suchlike. But we actually do different things there.

2. Over 1M : (2D)

Here we free up some space by giving 2NT an artificial meaning. This allows for the following structure:

A bid of 2 of the other major is natural and not forcing.
2NT shows clubs.
3C shows the other major (stronger than the NFB).

3. Over 1D : (2M)

Again it makes sense to use 2NT as a transfer to clubs here. Unfortunately this time there is a real shortage of space, since while we would like to use 3C to show the other major, it would also be nice to have a way to show a good diamond raise below 3D. We can't realistically do both.

I currently play 3C as the diamond raise, so over 1D : (2S) we have to play 3H the traditional way, natural and forcing. Over 1D : (2H) we have 2S as a NFB and 3H showing a stronger hand with spades.

4. Over 1M : (2OM)

This is where transfers really come into their own. Again starting from 2NT we can play

2NT shows clubs
3C shows diamonds
3D is a raise. (When we have two artificial raises available below 3M, as with 1S : (2H) : 3D/3H, we use them to distinguish between 3- and 4-card support.)

Exactly the same transfers work if opponents bid 2M Michaels over our 1M opening.

The Monkey Option

Congratulations to the 94 EBU members who managed to vote for

"2-level suit openings should all be alerted"

in the EBU's online survey.

I would like to think that they were making some ironic statement about the deficiencies in the EBU's polling methods.

Half-Astro

This is a simple defence to 1NT that I've been playing recently. It's my own invention, though given how simple it is, it would be surprising if no-one had tried it before. It works like this:

2C = both majors
2D = spades and a minor
2H/2S/3C/3D = natural

Double is normally for penalties. (A possible variation by a passed hand, or perhaps against a strong NT opening, is to play double as showing hearts and a minor.) And a 2NT bid would probably show the minors, though there are other possibilities for this as well.

The advantage compared to other Astro variants is that it is easier to play. In particular, overcaller's partner is is a better position when one of the two-suited bids comes up. For example, we can compare it to "Asptro" where 2C shows hearts and another suit and 2D shows spades and another suit, showing the weaker suit with both majors. Asptro is good at finding the right major to play in when overcaller has both majors (unlike "Astro" or "Aspro"). The problem is that for both 2C and 2D there are three different possibilities for the second suit, and it is not always easy to cater for all three. It is particularly difficult over 2D, where overcaller's partner can be faced with problems like these:

• Holding 3 spades and 3 or 4 hearts, and no interest in game. Here we want to play in 2H if overcaller has hearts. But bidding 2H invites partner to bid 3 of his minor if he has a 5-card minor. This may not be what we want: we would often prefer to play in 2S in that case (for example with 3=3=5=2 shape).
• Holding a decent hand with 4+ good hearts, where we are interested in game if partner has hearts as his second suit but want to stop in a part-score otherwise. This is impossible to handle because if we bid 2H (or 2S) then partner will pass when he has hearts, which is not what we want.

Playing Half-Astro there are not so many hand-types to worry about: instead of three possible two-suiters in each bid, we have only one (for 2C) or two (for 2D). And after either of these bids, overcaller's partner can use the next step to ask which suit is longer.

Of course, what Half-Astro does not have is a way to show hearts and a minor. With these hands we have to bid naturally (or pass if we do not have a suit good enough to overcall). But this is not such a huge disadvantage, since showing two-suited hands without spades is less important - sometimes when we could find a heart fit opponents might be able to bid spades over it.

I play this defence because it is effective and yet very simple. You could agree it with a new partner and expect not to have any mishaps. It's one of the very few conventions I've come up with which has been taken up by people who aren't my partners!

Polish Club: Responding to 1C

Since I posted the link to the Polish Club system notes last week a few of us have been practising bidding on BBO. Some parts of the notes have been clarified, and we've made some slight changes to the auctions after 1C : 1D , 1M. I expect there will be a few more details changed while we get used to playing the system. The latest version is on the webpage.

This post is about the response structure that we've chosen to use.

The responses are built around a 1D negative; 1H and 1S are natural with 6+ HCP. This is not the only possible way of doing things, but it is by far the simplest, and it's not obviously worse than anything else. When playing Polish Club, a 1D negative is very useful so that all the other responses can promise enough strength for game when opener has the strong hand. With more natural systems many people have started to use transfer responses to 1C, but if these were incorporated into Polish Club you would have to worry about how to show a strong hand while leaving open the possibility of playing in a part-score. While it is interesting to investigate how you might get this to work, I don't feel it offers any improvement on the simple negative. Another possibility is to keep the 1D negative but invert 1H and 1S; this seems to be more trouble than it's worth, forcing the bidding to 2S when opener has clubs and spades, which is worse than forcing to 2H when he has clubs and hearts.

So, our 1D, 1H and 1S responses are essentially the same as in most Polish Club variants. The other responses are perhaps a little more unusual.

In WJ05, the 2C response is forcing (with at least invitational strength), and weaker hands with clubs have to start with 1D. We prefer to bid an immediate 2C on the hands which want to play in 2C when partner has a weak NT. So 2C shows about 6-10 HCP with a 5+ suit. This works particularly well if the opponents interfere: then we are pleased to have got the club suit in immediately, whereas if we had started with 1D we would be worried about missing a club fit and do not have a strong enough hand to compete at high levels without help from opener. Even if the auction is uncontested, the 2C response is an excellent way to start when opener has a strong hand, because responder has shown a suit and limited his hand, and opener's rebids are all very easy, forcing to game with 18+.

Of course we have to find somewhere else to put the strong hands with clubs, and we use the 2H and 2S responses for this. These bids are not particularly useful as natural bids. In WJ they are natural and show strong hands, but this does not come up very often, and if opener has a weak NT (as usually happens) we have so much space available after 1C : 1M , 1NT that there is no problem showing the strong hands there. In a natural system I like to use 1C : 2M as weakish (maybe 4-8 HCP), but the main advantage of this is that 1C : 1M , 2C : 2M can then be an invitational hand (rather than having to jump to 3M). This is not needed in Polish Club because the 2C rebid promises extra strength. Using 1C : 2M to show an even weaker hand would just pre-empt partner in the very likely event that he has the strong type. So none of the normal, natural meanings for 2M make much sense in my opinion. This, then, is the perfect place to put some strong hands with a minor suit. In fact we use 2H to show precisely 5 clubs and 2S to show 6 or more.

Next we need to think about the 1NT response. It's actually rather difficult to find a suitable meaning for 1NT. Here are two possibilities that we considered:

• 7-10(11) HCP balanced, no 4-card major. This has the advantage of preventing LHO from bidding a major at the 1-level. It's also a good start to the auction if opponents do compete. On the other hand, playing 1NT this way means that the sequence 1C : 1D , 1M : 1NT is underused and gives away too much information to the opponents (they could deduce that they have half the deck).
• Showing 5+ diamonds (6+ diamonds if less than a game force). This would probably be used in conjuction with a 2D response showing 5 diamonds and 4 clubs. This has the advantage that all unbalanced hands with positive values can show their longest suit immediately over 1C, putting us in an excellent position in competitive auctions. The problem with using 1NT this way is that if the partnership has the values for game, it has probably wrong-sided the potential 3NT contract. We like to play methods where responder can show shortage when he has an unbalanced hand, but it is not so good to point out this weakness to the defence if this hand is going to be declarer.

In the end we have chosen to do neither of those things: our 1NT response is natural and shows invitational values opposite the weak type (a good 10 or 11 HCP). This is one of those bids which is a bit infrequent but is great when it comes up; it avoids having to go to 2NT to make an invite. In fact we might use this bid even on some hands with a 4-card major. We can compare this to the 1NT response in WJ05, which shows 9-11 HCP. This seems an odd choice: it is not a genuine invite, and if you allow opener to bid 2NT on a maximum weak NT you might play an unnecessary 2NT with 14 opposite 9. If you're happy bidding 1C : 1D , 1M : 1NT on an 8-count, it seems much more sensible to do this on 9-10 as well, so that 1C : 1NT can be a real invite.

Our 2D response shows 6-10 HCP with 6+ diamonds, similar to the 2C response showing clubs. This means that our 2-level responses look rather similar to those in some Swedish Club systems (2C/2D natural and not forcing, 2H/2S show strong minor-oriented hands). However, we cannot bid 2D on hands with a bad 5-card diamond suit because we frequently have shortage in diamonds for our 1C opening. So hands with 5 diamonds in this range have to go through the negative instead - these hands will either be balanced or have 4+ clubs, since we would bid 1M with a 4-card major. We also have to start with the negative on strong hands with primary diamonds.

Our 1D "negative" in fact has four possibilities:

• 0-6 HCP, any shape.
• Up to 10 HCP with no 4-card major: balanced or 5D-4C.
• Game force with 5+ diamonds, or invitational with 6+ diamonds.
• Balanced game force with no 4-card major, not wanting to be declarer in no-trumps.

As with most Polish Club variants, this means that if the auction begins 1C : 1D , 1M both partners could still have a very wide range of hands. But it is very easy to sort things out: responder bids 1NT if he wants to play there opposite a weak NT type, and now opener can make a very descriptive rebid if he has a stronger hand. We use responder's 2C and 2D rebids artificially: 2C shows the strong hand with diamonds, and 2D shows the 5D-4C type with 6-10 HCP. We do not need to worry too much about interference in this auction because both opponents have passed at least once already.