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Decline of Canape and other bidding history questions

#61 User is offline   pescetom 

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Posted 2019-September-03, 09:50

 MaxHayden, on 2019-September-03, 01:24, said:

Okay, so what early (50s-era) 5-card majors system used a non-forcing 1NT? I don't know of one. If they didn't, why did later bridge authors just bolt 5-card majors onto Goren without the other pieces that tended to go with them historically?


If you want a precise answer I suggest you post the same question to Barry Rigal and other historians on BridgeWinners. But Goren and others were playing "Standard American" in the late 1940s. Whenever that became 5-card majors based, it's hardly surprising that they retained a "normal" non-forcing 1NT response and non game forcing 2/1, just as Jais and Lebel did later in Europe. Kaplan Sheinwold was just too far ahead of its time to gain widespread acceptance.
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#62 User is offline   PrecisionL 

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Posted 2019-September-03, 14:07

Goren's 1980 book, Goren's Bridge Complete included for the first time 17 pages on 5-card majors written by Omar Sharif. Goren was not yet recommending 5-cd majors. However, in 1985, he joined the crowd with Goren's New Bridge Complete with verbiage on 5-cd majors and the forcing notrump response. The 1985 edition also had 25 pages on forcing club systems.
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#63 User is offline   MaxHayden 

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Posted 2019-September-03, 17:23

Okay. This thread is starting to go in circles. So let me try to refocus and wrap this up.

 pescetom, on 2019-September-03, 09:50, said:

If you want a precise answer I suggest you post the same question to Barry Rigal and other historians on BridgeWinners. But Goren and others were playing "Standard American" in the late 1940s. Whenever that became 5-card majors based, it's hardly surprising that they retained a "normal" non-forcing 1NT response and non game forcing 2/1, just as Jais and Lebel did later in Europe. Kaplan Sheinwold was just too far ahead of its time to gain widespread acceptance.


Okay. I didn't know that was the better place to ask that question. Thank you for the suggestion.

Should I just post a question to their intermediate forum? Or is there a better way to do it? I don't normally read their forums like I do here.

 hrothgar, on 2019-September-03, 03:05, said:

If you want people to critique your use of information theory then you need to present your calculations, not just make reference to the fact that you have done so...


I did a non-mathematical version above. I can do the math precisely if you guys really need it. But it seems to me that the problem is more that people keep lumping a bunch of different things together. So let's try to clear that up and then I'll do a sketch.

Goren (and Culbertson and ACOL) are all 4-card major systems. They have different rules for continuing the bidding (limiting vs forcing bids), but it is very hard to know the precise distribution and they do in fact have the problems that people keep attributing to canape.

There are "canape tendency" systems where normal bidding is (effectively) 5-card majors and reverses are canape. I don't understand why you'd want to do this. But multiple top-level systems have. And the Blue Team's version is super-complicated because it has a bunch of exceptions and special sequences. Internet folklore says that the point of "tendency" is to let you show strength better at the cost of distribution. I don't know if that's true or where it came from; tendency just shows up in the Italian systems. But whatever the reason, Blue Team is *not* Alberan's method.

Alberan's system is a pure canape system. The bidding solves exactly the same problem that 5-card majors does and for exactly the same reason. The bids you say are different but you are communicating the same information give or take a symmetry transformation.

So if you want to say that there's some flaw with Alberan's approach that 5-card majors doesn't have, then you'd have to show why he and everyone else missed it. Simply referencing what is popular doesn't work -- people once bid 4-card majors instead of the older strong club. And they swapped from limit raises (Culbertson) or forcing ones (Goren). I could go on. But the history of the game is rife with examples of this stuff.

So it's a facially bad argument to say, "it isn't popular and therefore doesn't work despite all of the theorists considering it to be just a different way to show 5-card majors."

OTOH, saying, "All of the theorists say that Alberan's canape is just a different way to show 5-card majors. Since the bids are more or less equivalent, there's no point in playing his version instead of the 5-card majors that we use. So no one bothers since it has no advantages and would leave you without the benefit of everyone else's bidding developments."

This is what people said above. And I think that's a completely sound reason for why it would have fallen out of use.

===

As for the information theory stuff, rhm is the one who cited two books that made very primitive (i.e. flawed) use of the idea.

His claim that canape gives less information is false. In most sequences it gives more. This isn't necessarily good or bad. (Bidding a careful slam that only goes down on a particular, very unusual lead is not going to work if you spell out which card that needs to be.)

Those books more or less say that each higher bid in the ladder should eliminate 50% of the remaining possible hands. If you had no competition to worry about, this *might* be kinda true. But you don't want to lump together raw hands; "Open 1 club with an odd number of black cards," and "Open 7NT on exactly 4321S 321H 321D 321C," both satisfy that criterion.

Similarly, it's not just about grouping hands by your score or even the differential; you care about the optimal contract: a 4S sacrifice and a 4S game don't actually need to be distinguished in theory. If your bidding system always gets you to 4S when it is the best outcome, the rest doesn't matter.

If it was just you and your partner, then the ideal bidding system would always maximize the variance reduction per bit of information the bidding conveyed; modulo making sure that you don't overshoot the correct bid. The books he's suggesting acknowledge this more or less, but they don't really account for it in a proper way. (You'd want to account for it with the same math that lets you use different cost/penalty functions for Bayesian estimators to trade-off type I and type II error; except you be trading off between expected points vs penalties.)

And since this is a competitive game, you actually have a more complex task: you want to minimize the variance that you and your partner have when estimating the correct contract. But you want to maximize the variance of the opponents. It's generally impossible to do both with crypto methods disallowed, so the trade-off depends on seating position, vulnerability, whose hand this really is, and a host of other factors.

So this is why "on paper" a 15-17 1NT opening is "right", but people get positive IMPs with a weak one. The same is true of a lot of other bids as well.

=====

Now that brings us to Alberan's canape system vs. 5-card majors.

Essentially, the rule is that if you bid the major second it has exactly five cards. (Rare things like 6-6 hands excepted.)

If you have a 4-4 fit, you discover it immediately and find a 5-3 fit on a rebid. So all you did was just swap these two sequences.

You end up with more information in canape on both auctions. With the 1M opening, you know that if opener has a minimum, it includes a 5-card minor and is unbalanced. If you have a super-fit because opener had 6+ in the major, you'll discover it on opener's rebid and he'll be able to easily deal with competition.

If he doesn't open a major, then you know that he doesn't have one except in one special circumstance. And in that circumstance, you'll end up in the same place in the bidding after opener's rebid on an uncontested auction and he'll be in a better position to deal with interference knowing that you have *at best* a 5-3 fit (as will you when he bids the major since you'll know if you have a fit at all and exactly what it is.)

With the other sequences, things are mostly a wash: With canape, you can find one 5-4 fit on responder's first bid and the other on opener's rebid. Both of these are slightly sooner, however you find out about 5-5 and other extreme fits a bit later.

If you are a rigorous adherent to the LoTT, then canape is slightly better. Otherwise, then I'm not seeing how the differences matter. You end up at the same bid. You give away slightly more information, for good and bad. And you can compete about as well. It changes who the captain is on some bids, and needs somewhat different conventions for a few situations. But on the all, it's just a matter of which fit you find first: 4-4s or 5-3s.

5-3 is less desirable. And given your cards, it's more likely to find a 4-4 fit than a 5-3 one. Canape finds the 4-4 faster and leaves the minor nebulous, so it makes the opening lead more challenging. It makes over-calling 1M slightly riskier because it means that the canape bidder will immediately know that you don't have a fit or that you have a really bad trump break. On the flip side, while canape lets you compete better in lots of auctions, in the close part-scores with dueling 5-3 fits, you are going to probably come out behind.

So this stuff cuts both ways. We can run the exact numbers if you really need me to, but I don't really see any basis for believing that this slight change of bidding emphasis is going to make any noticeable difference. (And per the discussion above, that's probably why no one is using it.)

P.S. Having written all of this out, it occurs the me that there is actually a way in which canape would be better or worse that we haven't considered.

If canape communicates the same information with fewer principles and conventions, then it would be superior in some sense. I.e. we should be looking at the information necessary to use the system itself. Alberan's canape was made to be an ACOL variant with the distributional precision of 5-card majors. He justified having to change major principles of the system on the grounds that doing that would result in fewer special sequences and artificial conventions.

AFAIK, no one has seriously tried to evaluate this claim. But now I want to figure it out.

If he's right, then there's an argument that ACOL players should be using his distribution showing rules instead of their current ones. If he's wrong, then that's the answer -- his system uses more natural bids without covering the corner cases that standard American covers with special understandings in the unusual bidding sequences.
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#64 User is online   hrothgar 

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Posted 2019-September-04, 05:31

 MaxHayden, on 2019-September-03, 17:23, said:


I did a non-mathematical version above. I can do the math precisely if you guys really need it.



The devil is in the details, so please indulge us by actually showing your work...
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#65 User is offline   MaxHayden 

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Posted 2019-September-04, 20:34

 hrothgar, on 2019-September-04, 05:31, said:

The devil is in the details, so please indulge us by actually showing your work...


I literally just did that. You asked me to do it. So I made a long post that did it. It says that I'm doing it right in that post.

If you think I'm wrong, show me where you disagree. Ya'll are the ones who wanted to invoke statistics and theory. So now that I've explained my reasoning, it's time to give me yours.

Otherwise, I don't see the point in continuing a conversation with someone who isn't interested in participating in one.
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#66 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2019-September-04, 20:49

The reason canape' did not gain wide use is simply because it is only really effective in a forcing club system, as the reverses in canape' are non-forcing, i.e., 1D-1N-2S. The advantage to canape' is finding the 4-4 major immediately while concealing distribution.
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#67 User is offline   awm 

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Posted 2019-September-04, 21:13

There seem to be some pretty serious problems with canape in competitive auctions. Say opener has some (5431) with singleton heart, and you hear the auction:

1X - 3 - Pass - Pass

You want opener to double with this shape and a bit extra; this is necessary in case responder has a penalty pass, and in any case bidding above 3 on a hand without extreme shape is quite risky. So suppose you get:

1X - 3 - Pass - Pass - Dbl - Pass

Playing standard methods, responder knows which is opener's five-card suit. He's basically one card from opener's distribution (he doesn't know which is the 4 and which is the 3 in opener's 5431). Of course opener doesn't HAVE to be (5431) but this is more or less the expected hand type in the auction given. So responder is pretty well placed to select a contract.

Playing canape, responder knows which is opener's FOUR-card suit. He's now two cards from opener's distribution (he doesn't know which is the 5 and which is the 3 in opener's expected 5431). This is a substantially worse position and makes it quite a bit harder to reach the right spot!

On a related note, suppose opener has a SIX-card spade suit. After 1-3 in standard methods, he can rely on partner to raise with three-card support. This is a huge help in deciding whether to bid game and also whether to balance after 1-3-Pass-Pass (in the last auction, you know partner either lacks three-card support or has a really lousy hand, so you are comfortable passing on most minimums). But again playing canape, after 1-3 partner will expect a FOUR card suit and therefore cannot be relied upon to raise with three-card support. So partner will pass on a lot of hands that would raise opposite five-card majors, and opener is put to a guess with his six-card suit and minimum.

Back in the old days, people didn't preempt to the three-level nearly so frequently so this was less of a concern... and a lot of doubles that modern players consider takeout were penalty anyway, so maybe a few of these auctions didn't exist.
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#68 User is offline   rhm 

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Posted 2019-September-05, 04:11

 awm, on 2019-September-04, 21:13, said:

There seem to be some pretty serious problems with canape in competitive auctions. Say opener has some (5431) with singleton heart, and you hear the auction:

1X - 3 - Pass - Pass

You want opener to double with this shape and a bit extra; this is necessary in case responder has a penalty pass, and in any case bidding above 3 on a hand without extreme shape is quite risky. So suppose you get:

1X - 3 - Pass - Pass - Dbl - Pass

Playing standard methods, responder knows which is opener's five-card suit. He's basically one card from opener's distribution (he doesn't know which is the 4 and which is the 3 in opener's 5431). Of course opener doesn't HAVE to be (5431) but this is more or less the expected hand type in the auction given. So responder is pretty well placed to select a contract.

Playing canape, responder knows which is opener's FOUR-card suit. He's now two cards from opener's distribution (he doesn't know which is the 5 and which is the 3 in opener's expected 5431). This is a substantially worse position and makes it quite a bit harder to reach the right spot!

On a related note, suppose opener has a SIX-card spade suit. After 1-3 in standard methods, he can rely on partner to raise with three-card support. This is a huge help in deciding whether to bid game and also whether to balance after 1-3-Pass-Pass (in the last auction, you know partner either lacks three-card support or has a really lousy hand, so you are comfortable passing on most minimums). But again playing canape, after 1-3 partner will expect a FOUR card suit and therefore cannot be relied upon to raise with three-card support. So partner will pass on a lot of hands that would raise opposite five-card majors, and opener is put to a guess with his six-card suit and minimum.

Back in the old days, people didn't preempt to the three-level nearly so frequently so this was less of a concern... and a lot of doubles that modern players consider takeout were penalty anyway, so maybe a few of these auctions didn't exist.

These are good examples why it matters whether you get information on the first or in later rounds of the bidding.
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#69 User is online   hrothgar 

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Posted 2019-September-05, 06:31

 MaxHayden, on 2019-September-04, 20:34, said:

I literally just did that. You asked me to do it. So I made a long post that did it. It says that I'm doing it right in that post.

If you think I'm wrong, show me where you disagree. Ya'll are the ones who wanted to invoke statistics and theory. So now that I've explained my reasoning, it's time to give me yours.

Otherwise, I don't see the point in continuing a conversation with someone who isn't interested in participating in one.


At the most basic level, I think that discussions involving Information Theory start by defining channel capacity and proceed from there.
What you are doing is using a term very imprecisely in an attempt to give credence to your arguments.
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#70 User is offline   MaxHayden 

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Posted 2019-September-05, 21:25

 awm, on 2019-September-04, 21:13, said:

There seem to be some pretty serious problems with canape in competitive auctions. Say opener has some (5431) with singleton heart, and you hear the auction:

1X - 3 - Pass - Pass

You want opener to double with this shape and a bit extra; this is necessary in case responder has a penalty pass, and in any case bidding above 3 on a hand without extreme shape is quite risky. So suppose you get:

1X - 3 - Pass - Pass - Dbl - Pass

Playing standard methods, responder knows which is opener's five-card suit. He's basically one card from opener's distribution (he doesn't know which is the 4 and which is the 3 in opener's 5431). Of course opener doesn't HAVE to be (5431) but this is more or less the expected hand type in the auction given. So responder is pretty well placed to select a contract.

Playing canape, responder knows which is opener's FOUR-card suit. He's now two cards from opener's distribution (he doesn't know which is the 5 and which is the 3 in opener's expected 5431). This is a substantially worse position and makes it quite a bit harder to reach the right spot!

On a related note, suppose opener has a SIX-card spade suit. After 1-3 in standard methods, he can rely on partner to raise with three-card support. This is a huge help in deciding whether to bid game and also whether to balance after 1-3-Pass-Pass (in the last auction, you know partner either lacks three-card support or has a really lousy hand, so you are comfortable passing on most minimums). But again playing canape, after 1-3 partner will expect a FOUR card suit and therefore cannot be relied upon to raise with three-card support. So partner will pass on a lot of hands that would raise opposite five-card majors, and opener is put to a guess with his six-card suit and minimum.

Back in the old days, people didn't preempt to the three-level nearly so frequently so this was less of a concern... and a lot of doubles that modern players consider takeout were penalty anyway, so maybe a few of these auctions didn't exist.


This is helpful. Thanks.

At least for Alberan's system, whether you are opening a major or a minor matters.

In the 1m - 3 auction, you know that your partner either has exactly 5 spades or has no 4 card major and is unbalanced in the minors. So you can bid spades with at least three and something in one of the minors. Partner will raise or correct. Or you could double without spades and let partner pick a minor or pass.

If partner opens 1, then things are more complicated.

So I'm not sure if it's a matter of sending the wrong information or a matter of not having good conventions for modern situations. Either way, you've done a good job of explaining the problem.


 hrothgar, on 2019-September-05, 06:31, said:

At the most basic level, I think that discussions involving Information Theory start by defining channel capacity and proceed from there.
What you are doing is using a term very imprecisely in an attempt to give credence to your arguments.


We all know the number of possible bidding sequences, the number of possible hands, and the number of final contracts. You can take all of this log-base2 and do all of the computations that you want. But you have moved the goal posts multiple times by now. So I'm quite sure that you'll move them again. So there's no point in continuing.
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#71 User is offline   MaxHayden 

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Posted 2019-September-14, 15:32

Has anyone read Ken Rexford's _Modified Italian Canape System_? (Thanks to the person who suggested it.)

It uses a canape closer to the original, and addresses a lot of the objections people above have to the original Italian ones. He also spends time talking about competitive auctions in ways that seem relevant to this discussion.

He makes some good arguments that it still works.

Agree or disagree, my key take-away is that canape is more about negative inference and our current methods are more about positive information.

That fits with the "lack of popularity" idea quite well -- it's a lot harder to teach a new player how to reason about what their partner *didn't* say and to make inferences about probable hand distributions accordingly.
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#72 User is offline   blackshoe 

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Posted 2019-September-14, 17:51

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#73 User is offline   PrecisionL 

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Posted 2024-June-25, 10:49

 Cyberyeti, on 2019-August-26, 03:49, said:

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.


Long time strong club and canape player here. I also previously bid with both majors the old fashion-way, long suit first.

For over one year now, I have been bidding both majors in the canape style and have not encountered playing in a 4-2 fit.

4 + 5 is no problem, open 1. 5 + 4, open 1 if the spades are KQxxx or better. Partner tends to show 4 over a 1 opening and responder will show 4 on most one bid hands. If interference, responder's takeout double promises 3 to allow for the canape.
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#74 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2024-June-26, 02:58

 MaxHayden, on 2019-September-14, 15:32, said:

Has anyone read Ken Rexford's _Modified Italian Canape System_? (Thanks to the person who suggested it.)

I bought Ken's book (wonder if he's still around. He used to post on this forum but so did a lot of other people who disappeared). I didn't particularly like his system of canape, which is a fairly pure system of canape as opposed to the Blue Team Club canape which is definitely more complicated, but handles the split between normal and strong opening non 1 hands better IMHO.
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#75 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2024-June-26, 03:09

 PrecisionL, on 2024-June-25, 10:49, said:

Long time strong club and canape player here. I also previously bid with both majors the old fashion-way, long suit first.

For over one year now, I have been bidding both majors in the canape style and have not encountered playing in a 4-2 fit.

If you haven't played in a 4-2 fit, then you haven't played your system long enough. Another problem is when responder is 3-3 in your suits, and would like to invite if you have a 5 card major, but not if you have a 4 card major. There are ways to minimize the ambiguity in suit length, but it requires discussion and some complexity.

I don't like opening 1 with 5 spades and 4 hearts in a minimum hand. I assume your auction would go



How do you distinguish between a minimum hand and a reverse (but less than a strong club hand)?
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#76 User is online   DavidKok 

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Posted 2024-June-26, 04:04

 johnu, on 2024-June-26, 02:58, said:

I bought Ken's book (wonder if he's still around. He used to post on this forum but so did a lot of other people who disappeared). I didn't particularly like his system of canape, which is a fairly pure system of canape as opposed to the Blue Team Club canape which is definitely more complicated, but handles the split between normal and strong opening non 1 hands better IMHO.
I've read the book and taken inspiration from it for my own take on strong club canapé, which Helene and I currently play. In particular Ken's takes on competitive auctions have been instrumental in helping me figure out how and why I wan't to play the canapé aspect (minimise it, or majors-first, or true canapé). I am continuously positively surprised by the results, life is so simple and easy with this system.

 johnu, on 2024-June-26, 03:09, said:

If you haven't played in a 4-2 fit, then you haven't played your system long enough. Another problem is when responder is 3-3 in your suits, and would like to invite if you have a 5 card major, but not if you have a 4 card major. There are ways to minimize the ambiguity in suit length, but it requires discussion and some complexity.

I don't like opening 1 with 5 spades and 4 hearts in a minimum hand. I assume your auction would go



How do you distinguish between a minimum hand and a reverse (but less than a strong club hand)?
The version I am playing with Helene, which I think is quite close to the version Larry is playing, has no length ambiguity on this auction (we do have some, on 1M-1X; 2 exactly, but nowhere else). There are several (big) mistakes traditional canapé systems make, and in my opinion one of them is placing emphasis on strength and suit quality over shape. With 11-15 hands you bid your shape and let partner do the thinking, with a few exceptions for very nice maximum hands, or when invited to take a view.

On your example hand we do not distinguish between a minimum and a maximum limited opening, though the range is not that wide. 1 is 16+ unbal or 17+ bal, and the opening range for 1 is a nominal 11-15, so this shows 5(+), 4(+), 11-15. Partner will know about our two longest suits and the degree of fit in both suits, and can usually decide how well the hand is working with values in the 10-11 range. It would be nice to have a 3-card invite below 2M facing a five card major opening in standard systems, but many people do without (I do, in standard) and this system is ahead for hand evaluation (but behind for concealing information) compared to that by showing the secondary suit as well. There is also a mild negative inference from failing to jump to 3 (maximum 6-4). So far we haven't had issues on this start.

I've written about my system before in greater detail, so my apologies for jumping on this again. I'm just really interested in this approach, and I'm very happy to play this with my regular partner and get good results. Most of all I am continuously surprised how easy it is to win by making the systemic bids - most of it feels effortless.
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#77 User is offline   PrecisionL 

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Posted 2024-June-26, 16:19

 johnu, on 2024-June-26, 03:09, said:

If you haven't played in a 4-2 fit, then you haven't played your system long enough. Another problem is when responder is 3-3 in your suits, and would like to invite if you have a 5 card major, but not if you have a 4 card major. There are ways to minimize the ambiguity in suit length, but it requires discussion and some complexity.

I don't like opening 1 with 5 spades and 4 hearts in a minimum hand. I assume your auction would go



How do you distinguish between a minimum hand and a reverse (but less than a strong club hand)?


The strength of the 5-cd suit determines if we bid that suit 2nd, not the strength of the hand (assuming 7-losers or less) so that partner can pass with xx support. Partner refrains from raising the first suit without good 3-cd support and a singleton.

We have been playing canape with both majors for 3 years plus now. Occasionally we play in a 4-3 fit when the field is in NT. Sometimes in pairs it is avg+ and sometimes avg-. Rarely top or bottom.
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#78 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2024-June-28, 00:54

 PrecisionL, on 2024-June-26, 16:19, said:

The strength of the 5-cd suit determines if we bid that suit 2nd, not the strength of the hand (assuming 7-losers or less) so that partner can pass with xx support. Partner refrains from raising the first suit without good 3-cd support and a singleton.

We have been playing canape with both majors for 3 years plus now. Occasionally we play in a 4-3 fit when the field is in NT. Sometimes in pairs it is avg+ and sometimes avg-. Rarely top or bottom.

So with a bad 5 card spade suit, does it go



with 5 spades and 4 hearts? With 2-2 or 3-3, responder is on a guess to make the right preference, and with 3-2, responder is on a guess to make a game try opposite a 5 card suit, which may only be a 4 card suit in which you may not want to make a try at all.
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#79 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2024-June-28, 01:02

 DavidKok, on 2024-June-26, 04:04, said:

On your example hand we do not distinguish between a minimum and a maximum limited opening, though the range is not that wide. 1 is 16+ unbal or 17+ bal


Blue Team Club is a point stronger, so that makes a difference, although the difference between an unbalanced 15 and an unbalanced 16 (or for that matter, balanced) isn't a huge difference. There is a huge difference between an 11 (or maybe 10? on some hands) and 15.
How do you handle 5-5 major suit hands?
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#80 User is online   DavidKok 

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Posted 2024-June-28, 01:09

 johnu, on 2024-June-28, 01:02, said:

Blue Team Club is a point stronger, so that makes a difference, although the difference between an unbalanced 15 and an unbalanced 16 (or for that matter, balanced) isn't a huge difference. There is a huge difference between an 11 (or maybe 10? on some hands) and 15.
How do you handle 5-5 major suit hands?
I deliberately moved away from the Blue Club requirements for 1, I thought it put too much pressure on their limited openings and was incompatible with my favoured notrump ladder of 11-13, 14-16, 17-19, 20+. Of course there will be nearly no difference between a 'minimum 1 opening' and 'maximum limited opening' no matter where you draw the dividing line. We do allow for upgrading nice 15-counts into 1, though it's somewhat rare. As already mentioned the shape information in my experience helps responder decide when to pass and when to make a game try on these auctions, since they know which of their points are working.
With a 5-5 major we initially treat it as a 5-4, and we get to pick which suit counts as four (we open the weaker one, defaulting to spades if it's close). If we get a third round bid we can complete the shape description.
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