[paulg]

I've been playing short club, unbalanced diamond for over twenty years, so I am a little biased.

But having put quite a lot of work into our transfer responses, both in and out of competition, I feel that we get a better return on our investment if we open 1♣ as often as possible.

[smerriman]

jillybean, on 2024-March-16, 22:38, said:

The easy, or perhaps not, question first.

So given the easy question somewhat derailed the thread, was there a second question?

[jillybean]

smerriman, on 2024-March-18, 16:15, said:

So given the easy question somewhat derailed the thread, was there a second question?

Good question. The second question was about disclosure but the question has been answered as the thread has progressed.

P_Marlowe, on 2024-March-18, 12:38, said:

if you vary it depending on mood / sun and moon, well it is a slippery road with regards to full disclosure.

And here's me thinking it was only precision players and old people playing "short club"

[sfi]

paulg, on 2024-March-18, 13:55, said:

I've been playing short club, unbalanced diamond for over twenty years, so I am a little biased.

But having put quite a lot of work into our transfer responses, both in and out of competition, I feel that we get a better return on our investment if we open 1♣ as often as possible.

I first played this with 10 minutes total system discussion. 8 minutes in we agreed on transfer responses. Just the preparation you want.

After two and a half days playing in a national event, I came to the same conclusion - if you treat 1C as "clubs or balanced" you will get much more value for money from the system.

[mycroft]

What defences do people use against the "clubs or balanced" - before the transfer response comes in? And are they at all effective? And would it matter if they were National level players or just yer average As?

David's comment about "in the ACBL" is basically two things:

• If it's QN, then it requires a Pre-Alert. Every round.
  
• If it's QN (on the Open/+ Chart, where T/Walsh is allowed), then the only restrictions on defences are the "can't psych an Artificial overcall" and "can't be Purely Destructive").

Now, Experts have been telling me since at least 2007(*) that "there's no real defence that bothers us", but a) they're biased, b) at least in the ACBL, until 2017 there haven't been many games it was allowed in, so not worth investing in a defence (at least if you're also not universally playing Bracket 1 KOs), and c) the reason I know the date was the absolute Panic one of said Experts got into when somebody did have a strange defence at a World Championship against their "Sure it could be 19 high and we bid our shortest suit, but it's Clearly Natural!" 1♣ opener.

So, with either Fourecksian (or Morporkian, or...) or 4 years of Open chart experience, it would be interesting to hear. Yes, I do have (and kind of like, though never have played) the Grunt Defence (from the last time I asked, for use against Montreal Relay)...

(*) Yes, I got Shanghai's year wrong in my head. Fixed, now that someone's dredged the old BBO thread.

[P_Marlowe]

You could treat 1C "bal. or clubs" as a Polish 1C opening.
Playing against Polish, we treat 1C as a weak NT, playing our weak NT defence,
"bal. or clubs" would be treated as natural.

I dont think the expected club length, and the expected HCP strength differs much
between those two. But we encounter "bal. or clubs" rarely, so we dont update our
defensive agreements, we dont encounter Polish as well very often..

Dont tell me, where you would put me, National Level or Average As.

[pescetom]

DavidKok, on 2024-March-18, 12:17, said:

Going from 'better minor' to '1♦ is 4+' does not matter in the slightest. You only moved the 4=4=3=2 hand type around, which you shouldn't be catering to anyway. On paper it might seem like a change, but percentage wise you've changed next to nothing.

FWIW I do not agree in the slightest.
Apart from the fact that not all interpretations of 'better minor' differ only in the way to open 4=4=3=2, the ability of both players to trust that a diamonds raise is at least 4-4 can be important, particularly in a competitive auction or when 3NT is no option but no major fit appears. There are multiple inferences available from ♦4+, both when the opening is 1♦ and when it is 1♣.

[smerriman]

pescetom, on 2024-March-19, 13:25, said:

FWIW I do not agree in the slightest.
Apart from the fact that not all interpretations of 'better minor' differ only in the way to open 4=4=3=2, the ability of both players to trust that a diamonds raise is at least 4-4 can be important, particularly in a competitive auction or when 3NT is no option but no major fit appears. There are multiple inferences available from ♦4+, both when the opening is 1♦ and when it is 1♣.

I disagree with your disagreement Even when playing the 'standard' method of opening 1♦ with 4432, your partner basically *does* fully trust that you have 4 diamonds. They should never be bidding differently out of fear that this may be one of the rare cases where you have 3 (and it makes a difference, which makes it considerably rarer).

If they are, that's something that needs fixing - and for these types of players, changing to a short club may well make things worse (since they'll experience even more problems with how to handle 1♣ bids).

[sfi]

mycroft, on 2024-March-19, 10:39, said:

What defences do people use against the "clubs or balanced" - before the transfer response comes in?

Basically, just play as per normal. Double = major-oriented takeout works just fine. Use 2C on the next round as your strong cue, and diamond bids are natural but doubler's diamond length can be suspect.

You also need a way to show clubs eventually. There are two common approaches:

• 2C = Michaels, 2D = natural (weak or intermediate as per your style), 3C = natural constructive (like a good 6-card overcall)
  
• 2C = natural overcall, 2D = Michaels, 3C = natural preemptive

I have partners with preferences for each, so I play both. Can't say I've seen much reason to choose between them yet.

[pescetom]

smerriman, on 2024-March-19, 14:47, said:

I disagree with your disagreement Even when playing the 'standard' method of opening 1♦ with 4432, your partner basically *does* fully trust that you have 4 diamonds. They should never be bidding differently out of fear that this may be one of the rare cases where you have 3 (and it makes a difference, which makes it considerably rarer).

Partner trusts that you raised with 4, but do you trust that he opened with 4? Without this you are handicapped when the diamonds fit is the best or only denomination to bid in, for one reason or another.

But there are multiple side benefits from a 4+D too. For instance, you can comfortably respond 1D to 1C with mainly clubs, knowing that if partner raises to 2D then he has 5+ clubs and 3C may be a neat place to play. Although I guess that would be true for a minimalist interpretation of 'better minor' (always 4+D except 4=4=3=2) too.

[DavidKok]

mycroft, on 2024-March-19, 10:39, said:

What defences do people use against the "clubs or balanced" - before the transfer response comes in? And are they at all effective? And would it matter if they were National level players or just yer average As?

It is really difficult to handle a natural 2♦ overcall, or a natural 2♣ overcall to a lesser degree. I think natural systems are really good here. For some unclear reason a lot of people are taking to playing one or both of these bids as two-suiters, so thankfully I don't have to worry too much about it.

I think the Dutch previously played (1♣)-2♥ as a multi (a weak jump overcall in hearts or spades). As far as I know this mostly has shock value, but maybe there's technical merit. If I remember correctly this was part of a larger structure of artificial or multi-meaning overcalls. I've seen discussion on this on these forums in the past but have forgotten both the name and the treatment.

Personally I think over such a nebulous opening it pays to stretch the takeout doubles (even) more than normal. Most hands with approximately opening strength and (43) in the majors should qualify, even if the minors are an unfortunate 2♦4♣. In other words, over a nebulous opening bid I'd like double to not be classical takeout, but also allow for many (semi)balanced hands with support or tolerance for both majors.

[smerriman]

pescetom, on 2024-March-19, 15:43, said:

Partner trusts that you raised with 4, but do you trust that he opened with 4? Without this you are handicapped when the diamonds fit is the best or only denomination to bid in, for one reason or another.

Yes, that's precisely the case I was meaning. You bid as if they have 4, which they do virtually always; you don't think "oh, there's a very tiny chance they only have 3, so I had better give up on a diamond fit".

[mikeh]

DavidKok, on 2024-March-19, 17:04, said:

It is really difficult to handle a natural 2♦ overcall, or a natural 2♣ overcall to a lesser degree. I think natural systems are really good here. For some unclear reason a lot of people are taking to playing one or both of these bids as two-suiters, so thankfully I don't have to worry too much about it.

I think the Dutch previously played (1♣)-2♥ as a multi (a weak jump overcall in hearts or spades). As far as I know this mostly has shock value, but maybe there's technical merit. If I remember correctly this was part of a larger structure of artificial or multi-meaning overcalls. I've seen discussion on this on these forums in the past but have forgotten both the name and the treatment.

Personally I think over such a nebulous opening it pays to stretch the takeout doubles (even) more than normal. Most hands with approximately opening strength and (43) in the majors should qualify, even if the minors are an unfortunate 2♦4♣. In other words, over a nebulous opening bid I'd like double to not be classical takeout, but also allow for many (semi)balanced hands with support or tolerance for both majors.

I wonder whether (1C) 2H as either major is legal?

Some 20 years ago, I played a multi 2H opening…a weak two in a major. Lauria, I think, invented it, and Kokish wrote that he had failed to devise a good defence to it!

We were allowed to play it in the local club…this was before much online bridge and we were trying to practice….and we leaned over backwards to help our opps. Iirc, I think our matchpoint scores when it came up were on the order of 90%!

The WBF outlawed it but before that happened, it came up in our team trials, against one of the stronger pairs. I opened 2H at favourable with six spades. Partner passed with his weak hand (we’d found that passing was almost always best when responder had no game interest) and the opps were fixed. Cold for 650 but realistically unable to get into the auction…down 6 undoubled.

It was enormous fun to play, but I’m glad nobody ever played it against me and I fully support it being made illegal. It seems to me that it’s not quite as powerful as an overcall, but I’d still hate to play against it.

[paulg]

mikeh, on 2024-March-19, 19:55, said:

I wonder whether (1C) 2H as either major is legal?

It is legal over an artificial 1♣ opener, such as a strong club or Polish Club, but these days most authorities have bowed to American pressure to classify a short, non-forcing one club, as natural.

This means that it is a Brown Sticker convention in WBF events, which means it is not permitted unless you are in the Bermuda Bowl quarter-finals. It is also a Brown Sticker in EBL events, which means it is permitted in some events like the European Team Championships. You can also play it in the top two Scottish events, but not others, and you cannot play it in England or Wales.

I cannot believe it is legal in the ACBL but have not looked it up.

[DavidKok]

I think under ACBL rules this multi 2♥ overcall is legal at the Open level. You are not allowed to play it over a Natural suit opening bid, but the 2+ 1♣ is quasi-natural.

[mw64ahw]

I've not played 1♣-1R-1NT as 17-19 yet, but does anyone play this as including a 5-card Major? It seems this would work well with the version of 5-card Stayman that I play leaving only the balanced 11-13 in the 1M openings.
Also assuming partner doesn't re-transfer what use do you put the shown Major bid to without both Majors?

[paulg]

DavidKok, on 2024-March-20, 11:49, said:

I think under ACBL rules this multi 2♥ overcall is legal at the Open level. You are not allowed to play it over a Natural suit opening bid, but the 2+ 1♣ is quasi-natural.

I think you are right.

I doubt anyone will suddenly start using this in Louisville, but there could be an explosion in Toronto!

The Italians like to play a Multi 2♦ overcall over 1♣ when it is permitted, but the Brown Sticker classification makes it less attractive.

[paulg]

mw64ahw, on 2024-March-20, 22:42, said:

I've not played 1♣-1R-1NT as 17-19 yet, but does anyone play this as including a 5-card Major? It seems this would work well with the version of 5-card Stayman that I play leaving only the balanced 11-13 in the 1M openings.
Also assuming partner doesn't re-transfer what use do you put the shown Major bid to without both Majors?

I think Auken-Welland do this, so you could check out some of the vugraph records. You could also message ulven who promotes this idea and plays at the highest levels.

[Douglas43]

Has anyone carried out a simulation to see what percentage of unbalanced 1♣ include a club suit of 4+ cards?
I've been content with treating it as including 4+ clubs until proven otherwise and bidding as normal, except that I do occasionally make a one-level overcall on a good 4 card suit against a prepared club. It's simple, no memory strain and I've seldom been left ruing my inability to compete in clubs.
Paul

[nullve]

mw64ahw, on 2024-March-20, 22:42, said:

I've not played 1♣-1R-1NT as 17-19 yet, but does anyone play this as including a 5-card Major?

Yes, and it should be standard IMO.