This. Bidding No Trump with extreme shortness in partner’s suit is often a hallmark of very bad bidding judgment.
There’s one player at playok.com who plays the dummy like a genius, but knows nothing about bidding. He jumps in NT with a singleton, etc. I gently said “You are an outstanding player. Read a textbook on bidding and you’ll be a champion!” But he wasn’t interested.
Before I found my present partner (who’s an excellent cardplayer … and was probably expert at some version of Precision Club … 40 years ago) I used to partner with that guy. He’d say “OK, just be quiet!” First hand he opens Four Clubs. I passed. I’d forgotten that opening Four Clubs was Gerber. :smack: I’ve not brought myself to play with him again. :o
I didn’t either. I’m on the verge of breaking the partnership as we’re simply not communicating. This partner has done things like open 1D and when I responded 1S (showing four, which might have been the 2, 3, 4, and 5) raised to 2S on a 3 card suit.
Bridge clubs up and down the country filled with players like that. Bidding changes and evolves - not just systems, but styles of play. The play of the hand has barely changed from Reese’s day. You can crush a club pairs game playing Stone age Acol if you’re sharp with the cards.
Find it quite humbling, actually, that these OG players can still do relatively well. It shows what a deep game we’re all playing, and how overwhelmingly important the basics of card play and defence are. ISTM you need to get to quite a high level before you start beating pairs because your system is better than theirs.
Partner should have opened 1NT, having S:AJx H:xx D:AQJxx C:Qxx. Partner instead opened 1D with 5 diamonds and thus should have just repeated diamonds. On the hand you moot, the rebid would have been 2C. You do not show 4 card support when you only have 3 cards.
Here is well thought out treatise on why 3 card raises may work out well - link
4-3 fits historically are called “Moysian” after Alphonse “Sonny” Moyse who thought they were often superior to other possible contracts.
You need a strong partner who can play the cards, I wouldn’t dream of attempting a Moysian with a weak card player opposite me. I also know that when I’m in a Moysian, trumps break 5-1 about half the time, defying the odds.
You may be from the “Home of the haggis”, but K364 is from the home of the (mostly) strong not trump. Actually, AJX xx AQJxx Qxx is not a bad 15-17 1NT anyway.
Raising does not show 4 card support unless you specifically agree it does, but that is probably a minority view these days.
I raise with a 3-card suit when I have a small outside doubleton (worse than Qx). Levin/ Weinsten (Meckwell’s teammates) raise on 3 when worse than 10x. 3 card raises are not to be spurned. I lost in the final of a tournament KO in part because partner did not raise me with 3 and we missed game, whereas the pair at the other table (including a mutliple-time national champion) did raise.
And just today my partner opened 1D and raised my 1H to 2 with Kx Axx A109xxx Qx. We breezed into 6H for 83% that should have been 7H for 100% but I am an idiot.
Completely agree. And it can be right even if partner rebids his 5-card suit. I recently opened a minot and rebid 1NT over partner’s 1S with singeton queen. Partner rebid 2S with AJ10xx. That combination plays for one loser 62% of the time. Most people who would never rebid 1NT with a singleton queen would have no problem doing so with xx, yet xx opposite AJ10xx plays for one loser only about 30% of the time.
Making a non-jump in NT isn’t the same as jumping in NT, or insisting on NT at a high level. And a singleton honor is of only modest help if partner is entryless – especially if the singleton is the Ace!
Nowadays, I don’t take a partner at playok(*) unless they write in English and agree to, at a minimum, Stayman. Many who claim to play SAYC don’t know SAYC very well but at least don’t open 4C Gerber. (For a while I insisted on “NEVER ask for Aces” – half the potential partners then think I’m an idiot; the other half will eventually compromise on “Gerber OONT”.)
But a large plurality of playok’ers have a “system” in which 4c (Gerber) is the ONLY forcing opening and the ONLY forcing bid in any auction! One partner opened 4C with two aces and a void. I responded 4D; he rebid 4H. Pass, I say, thinking he’d given up on heart slam since I had no Aces. WRONG! Hearts was his void. :smack: Despite missing two aces he was using Progressive Gerber to ask for Kings.
I still encourage y’all to join us at playok. The interface is MUCH better than BridgeBase, IMO. If you can’t find a familiar partner, just click back to your Rant on SDMB tab and wait for next time! The occasional cheat or spoilsport annoys, but there’s no money or masterpoints at stake, so who cares? (Timezones may be a problem. Most of the players are in Europe so, as I type right now, there are only 100 players logged in.)
Not really selling it here septimus Gerber as the only forcing opening - c’mon now, that ain’t bridge.
BBO has more than its fair share of hopeless, rude players, mind. I only really play with robots online, though, which is the attraction of BBO. Their Gib robot system is impressive - not without weaknesses, and capable of some absolutely torturous bids, but overall it’s a great tool to practice with.
I also only play with robots. While I have played on BBO for several years, I have recently played on FunBridge also. I like their interface and they have one great feature that BBO doesn’t: you can define the system and carding you play. I can play in an EBU event playing 2/1 and the robots at my table will do likewise, but at others they may be playing Acol.
The very first bidding system partner and I played in our very first club duplicate game—back when LBJ was President—was a silly system of my own devising called LSD System. (It never caught on so I don’t think you can discover my secret identity with Google! :smack: ) After that I played variously Standard American, Acol, Roth-Stone, Kaplan-Sheinwold, a version of Precision Club(*), Neapolitan Blue Team Club, and, IIRC, for a while a system where Pass was the only forcing opening call — that might have been the system that once yielded 77% in a Regional Midnight side game. But never the Opening Gerber system in vogue at PlayOK.
This was the year before the Truscott-Wei Precision Club came into being. It must have been an idea whose time had come since at that time a few of my fellow bridge bums were also developing bidding systems based on the same major points that later became known as “Precision.”
I played a 20-board teams match against a pair playing Forcing Pass back in 1982. The system was popular in Poland at that time, I believe. It was the most mentally intense bridge session I have ever played - when you have no clue what any of your opponents’ calls mean.
That’s the easy part. What do you do next? Example: you cannot make a takeout double of opponent’s pass. When every opening call is different from what you are used to, and opponents usually bid something (as they must with less than opening values), then except when you can open first in hand, every auction is alien to you.
Let me just check I have understood this correctly - the system is that if you want to force to game, your opening bid is pass, and otherwise, you must bid something else? I can see how that would be entertaining, and also why it’s not played at the top level :).
Not forcing to game. It is the only opening one-level bid (technically, call) that partner cannot pass. I do not know about higher opening bids.
I did some research and these systems are now banned pretty much everywhere. They can be played in the Bermuda Bowl and Venice Cup (world championships), and that’s about it. I can’t believe that many top players would go to the trouble of establishing a system, with all the work they put in to agreeing everything, just for one tournament that they might not qualify for.
And no, I was not playing in the Bermuda Bowl in 1982.
Strong pass systems are very effective AFAIK, but run into problems with systemic restrictions as Amarone says. If the ACBL is banning the multi at a lot of tournaments, then a strong pass system hasn’t a prayer.
It’s actually a very contentious subject - the bridge authorities (ACBL, EBU etc) are responsible to their membership, and it is unequivocally the case that Mavis and Agnes ain’t got time for a forcing pass system. So highly unusual methods are banned at all but the highest levels of play. But these systems represent innovation in the game, so the regulatory bodies are actually telling the best players that there’s no place for new ideas because it’s too much aggravation. Hardly a policy commensurate with a mind sport.
Gerber as the only forcing opening - c’mon now, that ain’t bridge.