[MaxHayden]

I have some questions about the history of bidding systems. (That weren't answered by reading Wenble's _The Evolution of Bidding Systems_).

1) The history of Canape-style bidding.

I have copies of some Pierre Albarran books. The his version of canape is similar to ACOL but with a different (better) way of showing distribution. It looks like a reasonable alternative to 5-card majors.

But how did we go from there to the Italian systems? And why did professional players eventually drop canape entirely?

With so many competitive bidding situations and the demonstrable effectiveness of ambiguous/multi-way bids, I'd think that canape would be having a resurgence, especially at the highest levels of play.

So why isn't it?

2) Origin of SA's non-forcing 1NT response.

KS, RS, and the like all used a forcing 1NT in concert with 5-card majors. Goren himself says they go together; his 1985 New Bridge Complete is a simplified 2/1.

So where did SA get the idea of using 5-card majors with a non-forcing 1NT? (And why don't we just teach it the "correct" way?)

3) Good books/write-ups of more recent developments?

The book doesn't cover modern stuff in much depth, obviously. But it had enough to make me realize that I've been lax in keeping up.

Is there a good book cataloging recent conventions like Gazilli and Kickback? One that lets me explore and appreciate AMBRA without having to parse through system notes and back out the underlying reasoning from a table of bidding sequences?

Something that explains how SEF differs from standard American? (I keep hearing that they are similar, but that SEF makes some minor changes with significant payoffs.)

Thanks for the help!

[hrothgar]

From my perspective, I think that the decline of canape type bidding systems is primarily explained by network effects.

The more people that you have playing a bidding system, the more people are actively working to improve / enhance it.
Once 5 card majors started picking up steam, you had a really powerful feedback loop in place and ...

FWIW, I like four card majors based systems with a majors first opening style.
Sadly, I am not allowed to play methods like MOSCITO in the US...

[johnu]

MaxHayden, on 2019-August-25, 17:46, said:

I have some questions about the history of bidding systems. (That weren't answered by reading Wenble's _The Evolution of Bidding Systems_).

1) The history of Canape-style bidding.

I have copies of some Pierre Albarran books. The his version of canape is similar to ACOL but with a different (better) way of showing distribution. It looks like a reasonable alternative to 5-card majors.

But how did we go from there to the Italian systems? And why did professional players eventually drop canape entirely?

First, not that many top players ever played canape. There are still a few top level pairs that play systems that use canape (mostly Blue Team Club variant if I had to guess). You need more extensive agreements playing canape to work out suit lengths and find major suit fits, and sometimes you can't, so many former canape players have switched to 5 card major systems because it is easier to play and establish partnerships.

MaxHayden, on 2019-August-25, 17:46, said:

With so many competitive bidding situations and the demonstrable effectiveness of ambiguous/multi-way bids, I'd think that canape would be having a resurgence, especially at the highest levels of play.

So why isn't it?

Ambiguous bids can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage in competitive bidding and in uncontested auctions.

MaxHayden, on 2019-August-25, 17:46, said:

2) Origin of SA's non-forcing 1NT response.

KS, RS, and the like all used a forcing 1NT in concert with 5-card majors. Goren himself says they go together; his 1985 New Bridge Complete is a simplified 2/1.

So where did SA get the idea of using 5-card majors with a non-forcing 1NT? (And why don't we just teach it the "correct" way?)

By 1985, Goren had long since retired from playing and writing about bridge. His columns and any new books were ghost written by other bridge experts.

In any case, non-forcing 1NT started back in the days when 4 card majors were the popular system. In the ACBL part of the world, most bridge teachers teach some sort of 5 card majors with forcing 1NT (although semi-forcing may be gaining momentum).

MaxHayden, on 2019-August-25, 17:46, said:

3) Good books/write-ups of more recent developments?

The book doesn't cover modern stuff in much depth, obviously. But it had enough to make me realize that I've been lax in keeping up.

Is there a good book cataloging recent conventions like Gazilli and Kickback? One that lets me explore and appreciate AMBRA without having to parse through system notes and back out the underlying reasoning from a table of bidding sequences?

You can google any specific bridge convention. Many conventions have multiple variations to any particular convention, so you will probably have to check several links.

One site that has brief descriptions for many bridge conventions is Bridge Guys

[FelicityR]

MaxHayden, on 2019-August-25, 17:46, said:

I have copies of some Pierre Albarran books. The his version of canape is similar to ACOL but with a different (better) way of showing distribution. It looks like a reasonable alternative to 5-card majors...

Canape and Acol are completely separate systems, and whilst the similarity of bidding 4 card majors on an opening bid is shared, in Acol you should always bid length before strength so a longer suit should always be bid first, not be hidden.

Acol is a neat system, but that too has gone the way of opening on a five card major for many partnerships.

Perhaps, and I am only completely guessing here, why Canape has disappeared is due to the more aggressive forms of competitive bidding based on The Law of Total Tricks. (Hiding and then bidding a second suit in an uncontested auction is different to trying to bid it where the opponents have intervened and raised pre-emptively.)

[TylerE]

johnu, on 2019-August-25, 20:27, said:

First, not that many top players ever played canape.

I think most bridge historians would disagree here.

Blue Team Club was a Canape system.

[MaxHayden]

FelicityR, on 2019-August-25, 21:21, said:

Canape and Acol are completely separate systems, and whilst the similarity of bidding 4 card majors on an opening bid is shared, in Acol you should always bid length before strength so a longer suit should always be bid first, not be hidden.

Acol is a neat system, but that too has gone the way of opening on a five card major for many partnerships.

Perhaps, and I am only completely guessing here, why Canape has disappeared is due to the more aggressive forms of competitive bidding based on The Law of Total Tricks. (Hiding and then bidding a second suit in an uncontested auction is different to trying to bid it where the opponents have intervened and raised pre-emptively.)

Well, Alberan cites ACOL as inspiration and says that it is clearly better than what they do in the US because of limit raises and such. So they can't be completely separate because he's basing his thing on theirs.

If anything the LOTT (and the widespread misunderstanding and misuse) would argue for Canapé since it makes it harder for your opponents to use it to interfere.

johnu, on 2019-August-25, 20:27, said:

First, not that many top players ever played canape. There are still a few top level pairs that play systems that use canape (mostly Blue Team Club variant if I had to guess). You need more extensive agreements playing canape to work out suit lengths and find major suit fits, and sometimes you can't, so many former canape players have switched to 5 card major systems because it is easier to play and establish partnerships.

Can you give me an example? It seems like the two systems are equivalent in a very strict way -- equal expressive power but different (opposite) problematic areas.

Quote

By 1985, Goren had long since retired from playing and writing about bridge. His columns and any new books were ghost written by other bridge experts.

In any case, non-forcing 1NT started back in the days when 4 card majors were the popular system. In the ACBL part of the world, most bridge teachers teach some sort of 5 card majors with forcing 1NT (although semi-forcing may be gaining momentum).

It seems to me that most books in ACBL land teach that 2/1 is 10+ and 1NT is 6-10. So even if that's not what people are teaching today, my question stands. This was a thing people did, but I don't know where it came from or why. (See Bill Root's book for an example.)

My point about the Goren thing is to show how widespread the agreement on the connection was. And yet, tons and tons of books were written teaching "5-card majors" with a bunch of older treatments from Goren's 4 card major system. And for what purpose? If you are teaching a new player, why teach them that double raises are forcing when you know you'll come back later to tell them invitational, same with the 1NT forcing response, 2/1 GF, etc.

I don't get how "standard American" came into existence as a thing. No system that was widely documented used that combination of features. So how did they end up being the standard to begin with?

What is the point of *not* just teaching the bare bones of what people use? Or at least what they were using until people came along and taught them to use some combination that didn't exist or even make sense.

Quote

You can google any specific bridge convention. Many conventions have multiple variations to any particular convention, so you will probably have to check several links.

You miss my point. There are books that do this and discuss the gory details of what you have to agree to. Compare an entry in Root's convention book (or similar) with what you find online. I'm looking for something like the former but with modern ideas instead.

[johnu]

TylerE, on 2019-August-25, 22:15, said:

I think most bridge historians would disagree here.

Blue Team Club was a Canape system.

I've played Blue Team Club for years and still do with one partner, and know quite a bit about the history of the system. Yes, there were a number of pairs besides Forquet-Garozzo (and a few other Blue Team members) that played Blue Team or the predecessor Neapolitan Club.

A couple of pairs from the Dallas Aces played a version of Blue Team, a few other American pairs also played a version, several pairs from Europe played Blue Team. Still, that's a very small number of top players who played Blue Team compared to the thousands of top international players over the past 60 years. The number of Blue Team players never approached anything close to gaining critical mass as a popular system.

So I stand by my statement that not many top players played Blue Team.

Even the Blue Team switched to Precision Club which uses 5 card majors in the 1970's.

[Stephen Tu]

Quote

So where did SA get the idea of using 5-card majors with a non-forcing 1NT? (And why don't we just teach it the "correct" way?)

SA evolved from Goren, which was 4 cd majors, strong NT, non-forcing 1nt response to 1M. Goren and SA were basically synonymous. It evolved into SA with 5 cd majors and somehow got frozen into what we teach beginners today. Change in bridge is glacial; after all it is a game played by mostly all old people, old people doing the teaching, and there is tendency to just teach the way you were taught ...

Forcing NT was introduced with Roth-Stone in the 50s, which gradually evolved with stronger 2/1 requirements into what 2/1 is today.

So just think of SA with 5cd major NF nt as the 75 year old still surviving beginner system with 2/1 as its 45 year old descendant.

Finally not until maybe this decade some people like Larry Cohen have started advocating just teaching 2/1 from the get go. Which is probably right for duplicate beginners.

[johnu]

MaxHayden, on 2019-August-25, 22:44, said:

Quote

First, not that many top players ever played canape. There are still a few top level pairs that play systems that use canape (mostly Blue Team Club variant if I had to guess). You need more extensive agreements playing canape to work out suit lengths and find major suit fits, and sometimes you can't, so many former canape players have switched to 5 card major systems because it is easier to play and establish partnerships.

Can you give me an example? It seems like the two systems are equivalent in a very strict way -- equal expressive power but different (opposite) problematic areas.

I can't address French canape because I never played it, but here are a couple of examples where "standard" Blue Team canape has problems.

---

In plain vanilla Blue Team canape, 1♠ is the system opening bid with either 4 spades and 5+ hearts, or 5+ spades and 4+ hearts (not strong enough to reverse). What suit should responder take preference with 2 spades and 2 hearts without a minor suit that can be bid at the 3 level? If you guess wrong, you can end up in a 4-2 fit instead of a 5-2 fit.

In 5 card majors, you know opener has 5 spades and 4+ hearts so you should have no problem to take a preference to spades with 2-2 in the majors. At least you are in a 5-2 fit.

---

In Blue Team canape, 1♠ can be one of 3 hand types

1) Single suited spade hand (5+ spades)
2) 5+ spades with a shorter or equal length side suit (non reverse strength)
3) 4 spades with a longer side suit (possible 5-6)

What do you bid as responder with 3 card spade support. If you support spades and opener has 4 spades, you are in a 4-3 fit. If partner only has 4 spades, do they play you for 3 or 4 card spade support? With a 4-3 fit, you may belong in a different denomination contract, and since you usually need more HCP to make a 4-3 fit compared to 4-4, may be too high.

Playing 5 card majors, opener knows they have at least an 8 card spade fit and can make an informed decision about future bids.

[FelicityR]

MaxHayden, on 2019-August-25, 22:44, said:

Well, Alberan cites ACOL as inspiration and says that it is clearly better than what they do in the US because of limit raises and such. So they can't be completely separate because he's basing his thing on theirs.

The Kaplan-Sheinwold system has some similarities with Acol too. Both Canape and Kaplan-Sheinwold became nascent in the 1950s, whereas Acol had been around from the 1930s, but as with all systems has undergone change and modification over the years.

Goren's original Standard American system in the 1950s - if I remember correctly - advocated forcing raises as opposed to limit raises, but over time Standard American adopted limit raises too, a feature of Acol and Kaplan-Sheinwold.

So, yes, Acol was an inspiration on a theoretical level to other bridge players who adopted and developed their own systems, but opening shorter suits as opposed to longer suits is definitely a Canape thing.

Quite a few Acol players now use the Walsh (and Transfer Walsh) conventions that are a type of Canape add-on, but these are bids made by responder not opener.

And yes, there is fluidity and inspired-thinking between using and transferring knowledge between the many bridge systems that are in use today.

[dsLawsd]

One important book on the history is a favorite of mine:
Morehead on Bidding. He was a great theorist in his own right.

Also, beginning with Schenken, players liked to develop their own systems. After the Italians came along the various forms of Precision or Relay became more popular and effective in bidding slams.

Jeff Rubens at The Bridge World might know the reason canape fell by the wayside.

If I had to learn today, I might pick the very natural and easy to remember Polish Club system which is quite flexible.

A fascinating question and subject kind sir!

[Cyberyeti]

The EBU discouraged canape by changing the rules as to what you could include. I used to play a strange homebrew canape system which was inadvertently outlawed (I asked Max Bavin at the time and he said that it was not deliberate, he just never considered anybody would do what we were doing). Interestingly for one of the problem hands above we DIDN'T canape with both majors.

[VJ]

The Canapé Inversé was my first bidding system. I switched as few people played it, and also as i found there major flaws compared to more natural and artificial systems that I played subsequently.

If I dare say, you may get a difference between SEF and SAYC as well as many recommended improvements to boost your scores by reading my books.
- A first one is available on amazon, but is unfortunately in French as it addresses the SEF French system: SEF: Poisons et antidotes by myself (John N. Nève de Mévergnies): https://www.amazon.c...66618962&sr=8-1
- A second one will be available Q4 this year: SAYC: Poisons & Antidotes.
- Both books are the first ones in a series and make you evaluate your current bidding system vs. the reference bidding system with and without the recommended improvements.

Hope this can help

[pescetom]

Canape' is declining but still quite common in Italy, it varies by zone but you can expect to find about a quarter of the field playing some canape' based system during regional level events. Most of those playing it have also tried 4 or 5-card majors and if you ask why they insist with canape' they invariably reply "because it's simpler". As an opponent playing 2/1, I am wary of these pairs because although they aren't particularly good at finding the right contract they often stop us finding it too, and meeting a canape' pair on the wrong hand can be a matchpoint disaster.
As to why it declined at international level, my impression (based on comments of Forquet and other Blue Team members) is that they had come to realise that responding with controls was a luxury they could no longer afford and that Precision was living up to it's name. Maybe the introduction of screens made some of that ambiguity less attractive too

[TomSawyer4]

Since no one else mentioned it, Rubber Bridge houses normally require that everyone play the same system. That way everything is about the play of the hand, and no one gets a perceived advantage by adopting another bidding system.
Since the 1970's Rubber Bridge Standard has been 5 card majors, sound preempts, strong 2's, strong NT's, 4 ace blackwood, gerber, forcing jump raises, non-forcing 1NT response.
All rubber bridge players know this standard inside out.
While there is little cross-over between Rubber Bridge and Duplicate, there is still enough that it has helped to maintain the standard.
There is also a huge advantage to being able to show up at a tournament without a partner and sit down and play without having to discus bidding.

[mikeh]

I have been a student of bidding methods for many years, with a particular interest in the early days of bridge. Almost all of my 'historical' books are from before 1940, and include many books from before contract bridge. As for more modern methods, I began playing in the early 1970's and at one pint had a complete set of Bridge Worlds dating back to the late 1930's. So I think I have a fair idea of what was being played by the top players, over the years.

Canape was never played by any significant number of NA experts. I think Hamman-Wolff may have played it a bit, during their time experimenting with the Italian methods, but I can't recall any other pair using it.

As for why it has faded away, I think that 5 card majors became too successful to ignore: both in what became 2/1 and in Big Club methods, starting with Precision. I don't think it was due to 'popularity' as such: top pairs play what works for them regardless of how popular it is.

Any top player, say one who plays a very complex method in his or her main partnership, can readily play a more mainstream method with another partner. The fact is that 5 card majors proved to be superior in high-level bridge.

One possible factor is that canapé methods are vulnerable to competition, especially but not only preemption. Back in the (limited) heyday of canapé, attitudes towards competitive bidding were, by today's standards, extremely conservative. That meant that if one opened the bidding, there was a far greater chance than would be today that one would have an uncontested auction, and have room to show the canapé nature of one's hand.

With increased competition, it became increasingly necessary to announce one's long suit, especially if a major, as soon as possible.

As for ambiguous bids, while there are some examples of such as opening bids, they are usually at least semi-destructive in intent (see: multi).

Most ambiguous actions are in competition, after the opps have opened: see, especially, defences to strong artificial openings or strong notrumps.

This is because, when the hand likely belongs to the opps, sowing confusion is generally a good idea, while in purely constructive auctions, one wants to exchange as much information as possible, to enable accurate bidding (actually 'as much necessary information as possible....too much information can assist the defence more than the offence: see the use of 1N 2S as range ask/clubs, to conceal opener's major suits when responder has no interest in a major)

[johnu]

pescetom, on 2019-August-26, 07:10, said:

As to why it (canape) declined at international level, my impression (based on comments of Forquet and other Blue Team members) is that they had come to realise that responding with controls was a luxury they could no longer afford and that Precision was living up to it's name. Maybe the introduction of screens made some of that ambiguity less attractive too

As far as showing controls after 1♣ goes, it would have been pretty easy to continue playing canape in non 1♣ auctions and switch to "natural" Precision responses after 1♣.

The introduction of screens might have made ambiguous canape sequences remain ambiguous, but they had already switched to Precision before the year of the foot soldier incident.

FWIW, I remember reading that they got financial considerations from the inventor of Precision, CC Wei, to switch to Precision.

[johnu]

dsLawsd, on 2019-August-26, 03:27, said:

Also, beginning with Schenken, players liked to develop their own systems. After the Italians came along the various forms of Precision or Relay became more popular and effective in bidding slams.

You can go back to the beginnings of bridge when the inventor of bridge Harold Vanderbilt developed the Vanderbilt Club in 1929, the 1st strong club system.

[pescetom]

johnu, on 2019-August-26, 15:25, said:

You can go back to the beginnings of bridge when the inventor of bridge Harold Vanderbilt developed the Vanderbilt Club in 1929, the 1st strong club system.

An instructive recent discussion on Bridge winners places the origin of canape' in the US at about the same time (long before Alberan popularised it).

[MaxHayden]

johnu, on 2019-August-26, 00:58, said:

I can't address French canape because I never played it, but here are a couple of examples where "standard" Blue Team canape has problems.

---

In plain vanilla Blue Team canape, 1♠ is the system opening bid with either 4 spades and 5+ hearts, or 5+ spades and 4+ hearts (not strong enough to reverse). What suit should responder take preference with 2 spades and 2 hearts without a minor suit that can be bid at the 3 level? If you guess wrong, you can end up in a 4-2 fit instead of a 5-2 fit.

In 5 card majors, you know opener has 5 spades and 4+ hearts so you should have no problem to take a preference to spades with 2-2 in the majors. At least you are in a 5-2 fit.

Isn't this the converse of the problem that Flanery exists to solve?

Quote

---

In Blue Team canape, 1♠ can be one of 3 hand types

1) Single suited spade hand (5+ spades)
2) 5+ spades with a shorter or equal length side suit (non reverse strength)
3) 4 spades with a longer side suit (possible 5-6)

The original French version's rule is that if a major is 4 cards, you open it before showing a longer suit. If the major is 5 or more cards, it is named second unless it is the only suit.

So 1S means either exactly 4 spades with a 5 card or longer side suit. OR 6+ spades. I.e. specifically *not* 5.

And if you are playing with a 12-14 no-trump, then you also know that partner either has extra strength or a singleton or void.

Quote

What do you bid as responder with 3 card spade support. If you support spades and opener has 4 spades, you are in a 4-3 fit. If partner only has 4 spades, do they play you for 3 or 4 card spade support? With a 4-3 fit, you may belong in a different denomination contract, and since you usually need more HCP to make a 4-3 fit compared to 4-4, may be too high.

Playing 5 card majors, opener knows they have at least an 8 card spade fit and can make an informed decision about future bids.

The competitive bidding rules have to be adjusted as well. In standard, what happens if you open 1 club and get over-called 3 diamond? It's the same issue, it just crops up in a different place. And negative doubles and the like can deal with them just the same.

The two situations are about equally as likely and worth equally as many points. That's what I meant when I said that the systems were equivalent in a strict way. (Which could be the issue -- if they are strictly equivalent, there's no benefit to using the less popular one.)

We could go through a bunch of cases if we had sets of example hands. But you know the over-caller has 6+ clubs and limited HCP. So you can make a reasonable inference from your distribution to figure out what is probable for your partner and 4th seat.

If you have a lot of clubs, you know that the over-caller has a misfit and would bid accordingly.

If you don't, then you probably have diamonds-hearts, a negative double would communicate that. And partner will be able to find a fit in either or he'll repeat the spades to tell you it's a single suited hand which you can then raise to game if you have the values. Or if his 5-card side suit was clubs, then he'll leave the double in place and you'll play for penalties.

You could probably do some adjustments with Blue Team Club's no-trump structure and opening bids to get a similar result. (Because the real problem is that the ambiguous nature of their 1NT bid has resulted in inferences about 1S being convoluted.)

TomSawyer4, on 2019-August-26, 09:09, said:

Since no one else mentioned it, Rubber Bridge houses normally require that everyone play the same system. That way everything is about the play of the hand, and no one gets a perceived advantage by adopting another bidding system.
Since the 1970's Rubber Bridge Standard has been 5 card majors, sound preempts, strong 2's, strong NT's, 4 ace blackwood, gerber, forcing jump raises, non-forcing 1NT response.
All rubber bridge players know this standard inside out.
While there is little cross-over between Rubber Bridge and Duplicate, there is still enough that it has helped to maintain the standard.
There is also a huge advantage to being able to show up at a tournament without a partner and sit down and play without having to discus bidding.

Is this the system in Bill Root's common sense bidding? Or is it documented somewhere else?

VJ, on 2019-August-26, 03:59, said:

The Canapé Inversé was my first bidding system. I switched as few people played it, and also as i found there major flaws compared to more natural and artificial systems that I played subsequently.

Thanks for the book suggestions. I'm curious as to what those major flaws were.

I'm starting to think that hrothgar may be right and that it's just network effects.

dsLawsd, on 2019-August-26, 03:27, said:

If I had to learn today, I might pick the very natural and easy to remember Polish Club system which is quite flexible.

Really? I've look at some write-ups and it seems like it's much more involved than just teaching precision.

Is there something I'm missing?