[glen]

In today's (Monday's) NABC bulletin, Spring NABC Bulletin #4
Bart Bramley talks about SCUM vs. NT (btw he could have also called it SCAM since the choice of vowel is optional).

This is:
Double: Two suits of the same shape: ♥s & ♣s or ♠s & ♦s
2♣: Two suits of the same color: ♥s & ♦s or ♠s & ♣s
2♦: Majors
2♥/♠: Natural
2NT: Minors

He uses this against all notrumps that begin with a decent 11 or better.

While some have described their two suited bids as '5-5', here we have:

Bramley said:

"I hate defending 1NT. I compete on some hands that would make many people blanch. My style is hyper-aggressive; I'll come in on 4-4 hands, especially if I don't like my lead position. If my hand contains a lot of tenaces that make it unattractive to lead from (against a 1NT opening), I'll trade my lead problem for a declaring problem."

So do you blanch at this style, or would it be effective, even against a 12-14 notrump?

[helene_t]

Seems ok. I think I would make a minor adjustment:

2♦: hearts or spades
2♥: majors
2♠: 5 spades and 4+ in a minor

The advantage of this is that with spades and a minor, you can differentiate between four and five spades. With a passed hand (which can't have a six-card major) you can play 2♥ as five hearts+four spades, 2♦ as four hearts and five spades.

[hrothgar]

We just concluded a fairly length thread titled "Battling the Weak Notrump" which had a fair amount of commentary regarding preferred methods and different theories about competition.

http://forums.bridge...opic=18221&st=0

I won't repeat all the comments I made in that thread, however, I will note that the system that Bramley describes as "SCUM" bears a lot of similarity to Lionel (my preferred method)

1. Both systems treat 4-4 patterns as two suited
2. Both systems are predicated on aggressively entering the auction
3. Both systems use 2♥ / 2♠ as natural, single suited patterns

There are obvious differences in the definition of X, 2♣, and 2♦. (I like the Lionel system better, which is probably why I play it) Even so, I'm quite comfortable with the style that Bramely advocates.

[MFA]

Not having a penalty double of a weak 1NT is terrible, absolutely unplayable.
Getting doubled is THE greatest downside of the weak notrump, so you must be able to double.

I have played weak notrump since approx. 1996, and I just love when opponents can't penalty double because of some silly convention.

[pbleighton]

"Not having a penalty double of a weak 1NT is terrible, absolutely unplayable.
Getting doubled is THE greatest downside of the weak notrump, so you must be able to double.

I have played weak notrump since approx. 1996, and I just love when opponents can't penalty double because of some silly convention."

Agree, except that burying your own fit is worse (or at least more common) than getting doubled for penalty, which is painful but not so common.

4-4 as two suited hands is fine against strong NT. I'm not sure I like this against weak NT, except to show both majors.

Peter

[hrothgar]

MFA, on Mar 12 2007, 04:52 PM, said:

Not having a penalty double of a weak 1NT is terrible, absolutely unplayable.
Getting doubled is THE greatest downside of the weak notrump, so you must be able to double.

I have played weak notrump since approx. 1996, and I just love when opponents can't penalty double because of some silly convention.

Of course this begs the entire question: "What is a penalty double?"

You seem to be differentiating between a penalty double and conventions. Presumably a penalty double is some big strong studly hand while a conventional double is used to announce a single suited hand or show a 4 card major with a longer minor or some such. I don't find this a useful distinction.

From my perspective, the most crucial issue is not what the double shows but

1. Whether double is used as a forcing bid
2. If double is non-forcing, how frequently can it be passed and is partner well positioned to make an intelligent decision about whether or not to pass

In short, while I agree that you want to be able to penalize the opponents after they open a weak NT, its unclear whether "penalty" doubles are the best tool to accomplish this end.

[Walddk]

I admire Bart Bramley as a fine player and an outstanding analyst, but I think his method against the opponents' 1NT has two significant flaws.

1. You can't penalise a weak NT (11-13 and 12-14 for example).

2. 2♦ for the majors is not ideal. The problem is that advancer can't ask for the longer major. I much prefer 2♣ for that purpose because you have 2♦ available to get to the right major when advancer has equal length.

Roland

[kenberg]

helene_t, on Mar 12 2007, 08:15 AM, said:

Seems ok. I think I would make a minor adjustment:

2♦: hearts or spades
2♥: majors
2♠: 5 spades and 4+ in a minor

The advantage of this is that with spades and a minor, you can differentiate between four and five spades. With a passed hand (which can't have a six-card major) you can play 2♥ as five hearts+four spades, 2♦ as four hearts and five spades.

I have been told that this would not be acceptable in the online acbl game because, are you ready for this, 2D does not show at least one definite suit. Apparently in the General Convention Chart it is OK to use a Cappalletti 2C to show a single unknown suit but not OK for 2D to show a single unknown major. There are stupider things in bridge and in life but right now I can't think of any.


Of course I could be wrong about this but I don't think I am.


Ken

[pclayton]

kenberg, on Mar 12 2007, 07:46 AM, said:

helene_t, on Mar 12 2007, 08:15 AM, said:

Seems ok. I think I would make a minor adjustment:

2♦: hearts or spades
2♥: majors
2♠: 5 spades and 4+ in a minor

The advantage of this is that with spades and a minor, you can differentiate between four and five spades. With a passed hand (which can't have a six-card major) you can play 2♥ as five hearts+four spades, 2♦ as four hearts and five spades.

I have been told that this would not be acceptable in the online acbl game because, are you ready for this, 2D does not show at least one definite suit. Apparently in the General Convention Chart it is OK to use a Cappalletti 2C to show a single unknown suit but not OK for 2D to show a single unknown major. There are stupider things in bridge and in life but right now I can't think of any.


Of course I could be wrong about this but I don't think I am.


Ken

Yeah; double and 2♣ can be anything under the sun. This is sensible I think, because you can still play systems on over 2♣ and they can't screw you up too much.

I'd just assume play Suction as what Bramley is suggesting. He can't show minor single suiters at all, and I agree with Roland that 2♦ as the majors is sub-optimal.

[MFA]

pbleighton, on Mar 12 2007, 09:12 AM, said:

Agree, except that burying your own fit is worse (or at least more common) than getting doubled for penalty, which is painful but not so common.

Yes, you are probably right, in isolation it might cost you more to bury your fit with a weak NT opening than the occasional big penalty. However I see this as a trade-off for getting fast to 1NT and leave your opponents guessing about leads and competitive moves.

Being able to show some fancy two-suiter with double surely does not compensate for the lack of a penalty double of the weak notrump.

Quote

So do you blanch at this style...

Yes, I do. I really don't like 4-4 overcalls after 1NT, and absent the occasional success that style doesn't seem to work for my opponents either.
Well, a very chunky 4-4 in the majors might be ok, but it would really be the exception.

[pclayton]

pbleighton, on Mar 12 2007, 06:12 AM, said:

4-4 as two suited hands is fine against strong NT. I'm not sure I like this against weak NT, except to show both majors.

Peter

Actually, I think the opposite. With 4-4 against a strong NT, my disruptive value is limited, and even if we buy it, there's the worry of a stack. If I have extra values with a 4-4, I'd just assume defend. Shape rules.

Against a weak NT, we need to find our fit, and a tool to show a moderate 4-4 is useful, as long as you can safely do so.

In another thread, I mentioned that I wouldn't want to give up a penalty double against a weak NT, and I still don't, even if its a studly, macho bid. I would mention that in practice, you don't get a lot of penalties against a weak NT, but it does happen. What a penalty double is good at is immediately claiming ownership of the deal from the perspective of the 4th hand. Sometimes this means we knock them off, but sometimes it means that we can gauge our possibilities of game better.

"We double, they run, we wiggle, then we probe". I think this is better than "we wiggle, then we probe, then we probe some more".

[MFA]

hrothgar, on Mar 12 2007, 10:40 AM, said:

In short, while I agree that you want to be able to penalize the opponents after they open a weak NT, its unclear whether "penalty" doubles are the best tool to accomplish this end.

While I find your view of the double as a convention or not as fine, I don't understand your conclusion: "unclear".

Surely having a "strong hand double" will catch the opponents much more often than first requiring 2nd hand to have some specific shapes to be able to double and then 4th hand to divine a pass when it's right. This setup won't happen very often.

Anyway, too much talk of penalties (and this is largely my fault ).
Against strong notrump you can view your interference completely as a part score battle. We don't have a game unless there is a big fit, and then we'll ususally find out.

This approach doesn't work against weak NT. We have many games on sheer power, so we must find out. The penalty double is a great tool in that department, since it announces strength.

[hrothgar]

MFA, on Mar 12 2007, 08:02 PM, said:

Quote

Surely having a "strong hand double" will catch the opponents much more often than first requiring 2nd hand to have some specific shapes to be able to double and then 4th hand to divine a pass when it's right. This setup won't happen very often.

Needless to say, I disagree. You'll certainly be well positioned if and when one of your "penalty" doubles crops up. However, the more specific you make your double, the more rare its going to be. If you'd like, please provide a fairly concise description of the hand types that qualify for a "penalty" double. I can run a sim to estimate its frequency. (The same goes for Roland or anyone else)

Quote

Anyway, too much talk of penalties (and this is largely my fault ).
Against strong notrump you can view your interference completely as a part score battle. We don't have a game unless there is a big fit, and then we'll ususally find out.

This approach doesn't work against weak NT. We have many games on sheer power, so we must find out. The penalty double is a great tool in that department, since it announces strength.

I'm going to repeat some data that I originally posted in the original thread suggesting that you rarely have a game based on power, even opposite a 10 - 12 HCP 1NT opening.

I ran a VERY simple sim in which I assigned North a 3 HCP range (10 - 12), (11-13), (12-14), ... (16-18)

I then calculated the frequency with which North/South held 24+ HCP, as well as the frequency with which East/West held 24+ HCP. I didn't bother with any kind of single dummy or double dummy analysis for the resulting contracts. I simply looked at the HCP strength of the hands.

A couple points stood out:

1. Even if the opponents open a 10 - 12 HCP 1NT, the odds that the defending partnership is going to get dealt a 24+ HCP hand are very slim (less than 15%). Regardless of what range NT they're opening, defensive methods shouldn't focus on exploring for game. Alternatively, if do want to bid "constructively", you need methods that will focus on something other than HCPs. You need to explore double fits, running suits, or some such... (Personally, I don't think that the precise set of methods will be nearly as important as making sure that both members of the partnership agree about the meaning of different bids)

2. There is a significant dynamic balancing "exposure" - the likelihood that you're going to go for a significant penalty - versus disrupting their ability to accurately explore for game. Individual partnerships will need to make their own decision regarding the risk that the opponents are going to make game. I will suggest that the NT opener's vulnerability probably needs to be taken in to account.


“10-12”
23.05
14.72

“11-13”
27.87
10.63

“12-14”
33.32
7.18

“13-15”
39.32
4.52

“14-16”
45.7
2.51

“15-17”
52.7
0.1

“16-18”
59.85
0

[Flame]

officeglen, on Mar 12 2007, 07:52 AM, said:

2♣: Two suits of the same color: ♥s & ♦s or ♠s & ♣s

How will you continue over this 2♣ ???
This seems very strange and unplayable atleast when vul.

[MFA]

hrothgar, on Mar 12 2007, 12:18 PM, said:

Quote

Surely having a "strong hand double" will catch the opponents much more often than first requiring 2nd hand to have some specific shapes to be able to double and then 4th hand to divine a pass when it's right. This setup won't happen very often.

Needless to say, I disagree. You'll certainly be well positioned if and when one of your "penalty" doubles crops up. However, the more specific you make your double, the more rare its going to be. If you'd like, please provide a fairly concise description of the hand types that qualify for a "penalty" double. I can run a sim to estimate its frequency.

Ok. What about any 14+?
Most 14s and 15s would double, and some 13s too. So any 14+ should be a fair approx.

Quote

1. Even if the opponents open a 10 - 12 HCP 1NT, the odds that the defending partnership is going to get dealt a 24+ HCP hand are very slim (less than 15%).

Slim?
14,72% is not slim at all. View it this way, your analysis suggests that you are only a 14 to 23 dog of any game being your way. That is 40% of all the games. And this is just the "high card games" - the distributionally based ones make this even closer.

I think your (by the way excellent) analysis supports my view.

Against a 15-17NT you are only 0,1% to have 24+. THAT's slim.
Against a 12-14NT you are 7,18%. That's not slim either. Say we interfere with a weak NT one time in 3. Then we have a game on sheer power some 20% of the time when we bid! Add all the distributional ones on few hcp! We simply can not miss out on most of these!

[skjaeran]

Flame, on Mar 12 2007, 06:57 PM, said:

officeglen, on Mar 12 2007, 07:52 AM, said:

2♣: Two suits of the same color: ♥s & ♦s or ♠s & ♣s

How will you continue over this 2♣ ???
This seems very strange and unplayable atleast when vul.

You employ the Multi principle.
That is, you make a preference as high as you can in the alternative that's worst for you.

That is, if the red suit's are "bad" from your perspective and the blacks are better or even great, you give preference to your best (longest) red suit. Partner will pass or bid ♠'s at the same level, unless he's got extra strenght and/or shape. If you make a 2♠ reply, partner will know that you can play at the 3-level (or higher) if he's got the red suits.

If your hand is great, you bid 2NT, to ask partner which suits he's got. This shows game interest, so partner will bid cheaply with a minimum and make a stronger move if he's got a good hand.

[awm]

I agree that penalty doubles are useful. Here are some statistics along the lines of hrothgar's:

A priori, we have 24+ points on only 23.48% of hands. While the opponents opening a weak notrump reduces this probability, it's not necessarily by that much (especially for the 10-12 and 11-13 varieties).

For a 10-12 notrump, the bidder behind opener has 15+ points on 11% of hands. On these hands, the non-opening side has 24+ points 42% of the time.

For a 11-13 notrump, the numbers are 9.4% and 34.1% respectively.

For a 12-14 notrump, 7.8% and 26.4% respectively.

Note that these strong hands do come up. While they are not super-frequent, they are more frequent than, for example, hands with 8+ points and 6+ spades (3.4% of hands over a 12-14 or 3.7% over a 10-12) and not even that much less frequent than 8+ points and 5+ spades (11.6% of hands over a 12-14 or 12.4% over a 10-12). Also, the strong hands directly behind 1NT opener account for around a quarter of the "games on power" we're trying not to miss (strong balancing hands will account for roughly another quarter), and this ignores the potential of defending doubled for 200, 300, or 500 on a hand where we hold only 22-23 high and the opening side has no particularly good fit.

[Al_U_Card]

When I played the weak NT (10-12) we used double to show the balanced 10-12 hcp hand......with systems on! (Just like WE had bid 1 NT. It worked out great! I used CANT over other strength NT openers but any method that gets the shape/strength of your hand out there when you want it to is fine.

[hrothgar]

awm, on Mar 12 2007, 09:55 PM, said:

I agree that penalty doubles are useful. Here are some statistics along the lines of hrothgar's:

A priori, we have 24+ points on only 23.48% of hands. While the opponents opening a weak notrump reduces this probability, it's not necessarily by that much (especially for the 10-12 and 11-13 varieties).

For a 10-12 notrump, the bidder behind opener has 15+ points on 11% of hands. On these hands, the non-opening side has 24+ points 42% of the time.

For a 11-13 notrump, the numbers are 9.4% and 34.1% respectively.

For a 12-14 notrump, 7.8% and 26.4% respectively.

Note that these strong hands do come up. While they are not super-frequent, they are more frequent than, for example, hands with 8+ points and 6+ spades (3.4% of hands over a 12-14 or 3.7% over a 10-12) and not even that much less frequent than 8+ points and 5+ spades (11.6% of hands over a 12-14 or 12.4% over a 10-12). Also, the strong hands directly behind 1NT opener account for around a quarter of the "games on power" we're trying not to miss (strong balancing hands will account for roughly another quarter), and this ignores the potential of defending doubled for 200, 300, or 500 on a hand where we hold only 22-23 high and the opening side has no particularly good fit.

I'm attaching a more complete description of the percentages following a 12 - 14 HCP 1NT opening. (Please note, with the exception of some rounding issues, this data all agrees with the figures that AWM provided)

The first data set describes the chance that any one player has "X" HCPs following a 12 - 14 HCP 1NT opening in first seat. The second data set provides the East's West's combined HCP strength following North's first seat 1NT opening. The first column is the HCP, the second is the number of observations, the third is the frequency, and the 4th is the cumulative frequency.

From my perspective, the crucial issue is the following:

Lets assume that a penalty double or a power double or whatever shows 15+ HCP. As we've already noted, this occurs about 7.8% of the time. In contrast, an 11+ HCP hands shows up almost five times as often (~34.2%) of the time. If you goal is trying to extract penalies you don't want to be waiting for a rock crusher. You want to nail the opps when the NT opener is sandwiched between a couple of intermediate strength hands. This is going to be a lot more frequent. Its also a lot more difficult for declarer to score any tricks.

Finally, I ran a couple more sims studying how frequenty you're double in direct seat playing SCUM and Lionel.

Scum = 7.5%
Lionel = 7.6%

Note that the absolute frequency of these doubles is (essentially) the same as that of the 15+ HCP double that MFA suggested for a "penalty" double. While the 11+ HCP hands are much more frequent, both Lionel and Scum have pretty specific shape requirements for the direct seat double. Our strength is less well defined, but our shape is much better defined. Like anything else, there's a trade off.



0 9890 0.0048 0.0048
1 21320 0.0103 0.0151
2 36373 0.0176 0.0328
3 65877 0.0319 0.0647
4 100972 0.0490 0.1137
5 133977 0.0650 0.1786
6 165611 0.0803 0.2589
7 196858 0.0955 0.3544
8 210909 0.1023 0.4567
9 212319 0.1030 0.5596
10 202472 0.0982 0.6578
11 181149 0.0878 0.7456
12 151914 0.0737 0.8193
13 121108 0.0587 0.8780
14 90521 0.0439 0.9219
15 62859 0.0305 0.9524
16 42054 0.0204 0.9728
17 25936 0.0126 0.9854
18 14982 0.0073 0.9926
19 8135 0.0039 0.9966
20 4051 0.0020 0.9985
21 1832 0.0009 0.9994
22 770 0.0004 0.9998
23 299 0.0001 0.9999
24 89 0.0000 1.0000
25 24 0.0000 1.0000
26 3 0.0000 1.0000
27 1 0.0000 1.0000
28 0 0.0000 1.0000




0 0 0.0000 0.0000
1 5 0.0000 0.0000
2 19 0.0000 0.0000
3 80 0.0000 0.0001
4 261 0.0001 0.0002
5 669 0.0003 0.0005
6 1672 0.0008 0.0013
7 3873 0.0019 0.0032
8 7566 0.0037 0.0069
9 14139 0.0069 0.0137
10 25086 0.0122 0.0259
11 40195 0.0195 0.0454
12 60997 0.0296 0.0749
13 87581 0.0425 0.1174
14 117828 0.0571 0.1745
15 148529 0.0720 0.2466
16 177736 0.0862 0.3328
17 200340 0.0971 0.4299
18 209902 0.1018 0.5317
19 211032 0.1023 0.6340
20 195819 0.0950 0.7290
21 169903 0.0824 0.8113
22 137191 0.0665 0.8779
23 103781 0.0503 0.9282
24 69976 0.0339 0.9621
25 41896 0.0203 0.9824
26 22536 0.0109 0.9934
27 10433 0.0051 0.9984
28 3260 0.0016 1.0000

[Flame]

skaeran, on Mar 12 2007, 01:38 PM, said:

Flame, on Mar 12 2007, 06:57 PM, said:

officeglen, on Mar 12 2007, 07:52 AM, said:

2♣: Two suits of the same color: ♥s & ♦s or ♠s & ♣s

How will you continue over this 2♣ ???
This seems very strange and unplayable atleast when vul.

You employ the Multi principle.
That is, you make a preference as high as you can in the alternative that's worst for you.

That is, if the red suit's are "bad" from your perspective and the blacks are better or even great, you give preference to your best (longest) red suit. Partner will pass or bid ♠'s at the same level, unless he's got extra strenght and/or shape. If you make a 2♠ reply, partner will know that you can play at the 3-level (or higher) if he's got the red suits.

If your hand is great, you bid 2NT, to ask partner which suits he's got. This shows game interest, so partner will bid cheaply with a minimum and make a stronger move if he's got a good hand.

Thanks, i was just confused because after the double you can play in 2!C and 2!D while after the 2!C you cant play in 2!C.