Bread N' Butter Part VIII

This is Part VIII of the Bread N' Butter series: a look at Meckwell bidding in the last world championship when one of them had 10 to 17 balanced, either in opening position, or directly over an opponent's opening. We will consider balanced as any 4-3-3-3/4-4-3-2/5-3-3-2, plus any hand that Meckwell treated as balanced.

One of the nice features of the Just Sayin' blog (see Memphis Mojo link to the right) is that it sometimes features poker magazine covers with a player quote from that magazine issue. With Meckstroth the star of balanced hands in this match, here's the bridge equivalent, the cover of the ACBL Bulletin, February 2010:


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In the interview, when asked about prep for the world championships, Meckstroth replied:

I try to take the week before off to get my head in the right place for the upcoming battle. Eric has taught me some visualization techniques that seem to work pretty well…

In this match we will see Meckstroth visualize a couple of notrump openings that some others would not attempt. Perhaps it's because, as Meckstroth answered when asked what his strong points were:

I am completely fearless. I'm not afraid to look silly, which I have done many times.

Well he might occasionally look silly, but his fearless style has a 99% genius, 1% silly ratio based on results. As Taylor Swift sings in her title track Fearless, "I don't know how it gets better than this".

Meckstroth's was in action with a balanced hand on board 1:


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Meckstroth doubled the 1C opening, which could be as short as two (1D by East would promise 4) - given he has only 3-2 in the majors, this double must have been meant as value showing instead of pure takeout. Rodwell bid 1D, and the Meckwell partnership like to show support in these situations, Meckstroth here bidding 2D. West tried a takeout double, and got to 2S, making. At the other table, the same 2S, but this time played by North: the bidding started P-1D-P-1H;-P-2H, and now South doubled, and North bid 2S to find the 3-3 fit, for down 2 and a push. Neither South player in this match wanted to make the 1NT overcall.

On board 9, Meckstroth decided to treat his hand as balanced, a mild 3rd seat psyche - 1NT showed 14-16, but here he upgraded his 11 count! West led fifth best, the ten of clubs, and this was down 1. In the other room, the auction was P-P-2H-3C;-3H-Double-P-5C, and that was down 1 for 4 IMPs to Argentina.


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On board 10, Meckstroth treated us to a four card major suit overcall:


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This would almost be the perfect Lawrence example (from The Complete Book on Overcalls, a must-have book for any bridge library): great suit, length in opponents suit opened, competitive values. Rodwell made an overtrick in 1NT, good for 1 IMP compared to -100, 1NT by East down 2, at the other table, where South kept out of the bidding.

On board 11, Meckstroth decided to treat his 2-5-4-2 hand as balanced:


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2NT by Rodwell was Puppet Stayman, 3H showed five, and they got to 4H, making 5 (a spade lead allowed the spade jack to be set up for a club discard). In the other room, they also opened 1NT, but here North just raised to 3NT, down 1 for 11 IMPs to USA2.

On board 12, Meckstroth competed with a double, but didn't having anything more to say, letting the opponents play in 3D for two overtricks and +150.


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In the other room, a Flannery auction got the opponents into 3NT, doubled, for -800, and 12 IMPs to USA2. With Lebenshol over takeout doubles, 3C promised some values, and that was just enough to get into trouble.


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On board 15, Meckstroth opened the 11 point balanced hand, and next made a support double, but Meckwell picked a good spot to stay conservative, 2D still down 2, -200.


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In the other room not opening the South hand got them to game, after Hamman overcalled 3C opposite a passed Zia.


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This time 3NT was down 4 for -400, and 5 IMPS to USA2. Even with all those nice results, it was still Argentina prevailing 39-35, 16-14 in VPs.

Bread N' Butter Part VII

This is Part VII of the Bread N' Butter series: a look at Meckwell bidding in the last world championship when one of them had 10 to 17 balanced, either in opening position, or directly over an opponent's opening. We will consider balanced as any 4-3-3-3/4-4-3-2/5-3-3-2, plus any hand that Meckwell treated as balanced.

The big match of day 5 for USA2 was against Italy. There was a balanced hand on the first board:


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Meckstroth with a nice 10 count in second seat passed, but even though balanced, wasn't willing to sell out to a third seat 1NT. Double showed either both majors or a minor. Rodwell found out the hand type by bidding 2C, but this got doubled for takeout and the Italians were able to find a 2H contract for +140. This was a push as in the quieter room Zia, South, played in 1NT for +150.


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On board 5, Meckstroth opened 1NT, 14-16. Rodwell bid 2S, their range check and minor device, over which opener bid 2NT to show a minimum. 3C was to play, +110, losing 2 IMPS, as the auction in the other room was 1S-1NT (semi-forcing), and that was +180.

The last of the hands under review for us was board 8:


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Rodwell opened a 14-16 1NT, and Sementa doubled to show 4-3/3-4+ in the majors with values, or a very strong hand. Meckstroth passed, which asks partner to redouble, often a runout with two touching suits (Ss & Cs would be touching too). Here South started running first, bidding 2C, and Sementa introduced hearts. Meckstroth now bid 2S, which would represent only 4 as he would have shown spades on the first round with 5 or longer. It also showed competitive shape, and Rodwell was able to now bid 3D, making for +110. In the other room this was the bidding:


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Zia passed the value showing double, then retreated to 3H when 3D was doubled. This made for +140 and 6 IMPS to USA2, who won the match 29-4 in IMPs, 21-9 in victory points - more than twice as much victory points than IMPs for the Italians.

Bread N' Butter Part VI

This is Part VI of the Bread N' Butter series: a look at Meckwell bidding in the last world championship when one of them had 10 to 17 balanced, either in opening position, or directly over an opponent's opening. We will consider balanced as any 4-3-3-3/4-4-3-2/5-3-3-2, plus any hand that Meckwell treated as balanced.

Meckwell had no rest on day 4 as the last match of the day was against China, now a strong contender for the championship. On the first board of the match we see a Marty Bergen idea that should be more popular, as Justin Lall blogged about in Five Uncommon Conventions You Should Play:

http://justinlall.com/2009/04/05/five-uncommon-conventions-you-should-play/

Perhaps it is uncommon because most people are reluctant to turn over the reins of a 3NT contract to their partner? Here though for Meckwell, regardless of which player transfers, you have a world class declarer.


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Rodwell opened the flat 11 with 1D, and after the overcall, Meckstroth jumped to 3S to transfer to 3NT. China, in 3NT by North after a 2S cuebid by South, made an extra overtrick for 1 IMP.


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On board 19 Meckstroth had a 3-4-3-3 13 count, so he opened 1D, and bid hearts after Rodwell's negative double. Since his hand is completely flat, I'm surprised he competed to 3H when 2S came back around to him. Still being not vulnerable down two only cost -100, and that picked up 5 IMPs, as the South at the other table opened a weak notrump, doubled by Zia, West, for +300.


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On board 22 it was back to opening flat 11s, and the first of two times we would see the sequence 1D-2C;-2H in this match. Meckwell play that 1D-2C;-2H and 1D-2D;-2H shows the balanced hand for the 1D opening. Now responder can bid notrump themselves, or can bid 2S to transfer to 2NT. Thus they can judge whether the 2C or 2D response has given a little too much information to the opponents, and it should be dummy, or if the hand has value location that makes it best to declarer a notrump contract. Here Rodwell placed himself in 3NT, making for a push.

Board 23 was yet another flat 11 count opening 1D:


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It might appear that the 1NT rebid is 11-13, but it is actually 11-14, since the 1NT opening when vulnerable in 3rd seat is 15-17 (or upgraded 14s). Note that the South hand did not rebid 2S, as the 1NT rebid can have a singleton spade. If 1NT promised a balanced hand, always 2 or 3 spades, then the South hand would want to rebid spades as the suit can find early retirement in notrump by the opponents holding up the spade ace, assuming that the outside values can't produce an entry. Both tables had the same auction for a push.

Board 29 saw the 1D-2C;-2H start again:


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Here Meckstroth transferred to notrump with 2S, then placed Rodwell in 3NT. Both tables were down 2 in 3NT for a push.

The balanced hands had little to write home about in this match, one that USA2 won by 33-11, for 20-10 in victory points. USA2 were in a comfortable fourth overall spot, but there were many good teams chasing them.

Bread N' Butter Part V

This is Part V of the Bread N' Butter series: a look at Meckwell bidding in the last world championship when one of them had 10 to 17 balanced, either in opening position, or directly over an opponent's opening. We will consider balanced as any 4-3-3-3/4-4-3-2/5-3-3-2, plus any hand that Meckwell treated as balanced.

Part IV of this series was posted on September 21st, and since then we've looked at some theoretical concepts that can be examined as part of this series. For this and upcoming posts in this series, the postings will consider two potential modifications to the Meckwell style 1D opening:

1) Removing the unbalanced diamond hand types, and thus a 1D is a single hand type: 10/11-13 balanced or semi-balanced.
2) Adding 5-3-3-2s with a five card major, 11-13, into 1D, treating these as a balanced hand opening, and not a major suit opening.

With the news this past weekend that the Netherlands will host the 2011 World Championship (likely late October 2011, exact location not established yet), we will resume the series with the second match on Day 4 of the round robin against the dangerous Netherlands team.


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On board 4, Rodwell opened a flat 12 count, and next made a support double. After the three club fit bid (spades + clubs + values), note that Meckstroth's three heart bid is to play, and does not invite in any way. Bakkeren got to a decent game contract and Rodwell led the diamond ace, and then switched to a heart. After drawing trumps, declarer knocked out the diamond king, and then later took a ruffing finesse in diamonds, leading the diamond ten and hoping Rodwell had the jack. Instead Meckstroth had it and that was down one and 7 IMPs to USA2.


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On the next board Rodwell opened a flat 11 count in fourth seat, even though he was opposite a passed partner who would have opened any 11 count. However the 4-4 in the majors were nice, and opening 1D got them to 1H making 1 for a push.


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On board 8, Meckstroth opened the balanced 17 with 1C since 1NT for them in 3rd seat is only 15-17 when vulnerable. They landed in 3NT for a push, Rodwell's 1NT showing a game force with a spade stopper.


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On board 10, Meckstroth opened a flat one heart, and Meckwell had nothing more to say. If 1D would be the system opening (if 5-3-3-2s with a 5 card major are treated as balanced), the contract would likely be the same. In the other room, Zia as South overcalled one spade (their jump overcalls vulnerable are Intermediate), and this allowed East West to reach 3D making. 2S against Meckwell was down one for a push.

Board 11 had a balanced hand but due to a power outage just at the time there is no record of the bidding. Here is the hand from the other table, where they got to a five heart contract:


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This was an amazing hand, as Meckwell got to 6H, played by Rodwell, West. On a neutral lead, Rodwell drew trumps and stripped out the black suits, then led a diamond to the king. To beat this North just needs to duck this, and wait with his AJ of diamonds over the queen. Instead he took the king and returned a diamond. Now Rodwell had to guess whether North made a mistake or not. He assumed he didn't, and played the eight from dummy, covered by the nine, and down one losing 11 IMPs.

For further details see Ray Lee's write up and comments at:
http://ray.bridgeblogging.com/?p=205


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On board 15, in the other room Hamman, North, opened 1NT with a singleton king and played there, making. Against Meckwell, North opened one diamond, and Meckstroth overcalled one spade. Rodwell showed a spade fit and something in hearts (not much something here) a mixed raise (constructive values with four or longer trumps - thanks to David Morgan for this correction) with a three bid, and Meckstroth parked it in the part score, just making for 6 IMPs. With a game swing on the last board, USA2 had won 40-30, 17-13 in victory points.

Designing the 1C and 1D Openings

The mainstay of bridge bidding system design has been the mapping of certain sets of balanced and unbalanced hand types on to the 1C and 1D openings. Aside from variations of standard approaches, popular methods have included:

KS - 1m: natural unbalanced or 15-19 balanced with minor
Precision - 1C: unbalanced or balanced 16+, 1D: natural unbalanced 11-15
Modified Precision - 1C: unbalanced 16+ or balanced 17+, 1D: balanced 11-13 or unbalanced natural or 3Ds+5Cs
Polish - 1C: unbalanced natural 16+ or balanced 12-14 or any 18+ or 4-4-1-4 exactly 11+

Each of the implementations, in the widely-used systems and less popular ones, solves certain problems but also have their own trouble spots, as there are not enough bids to map the hand types out perfectly. Still that hasn't stopped system designers from that search for the Holy Grail of Bridge Systems: the best mapping of sets of hands to bids possible.

Let's look at how a system designer would attempt to fix the balanced/unbalanced mix in an opening bid. We will start with a 1C opening that shows either:

a) Balanced, 12-14 or 18-19 (for balanced you can assume standard 3+Cs, or a modern any balanced hand type)
b) Unbalanced, natural, 10/11-21.

We will assume that the designer is fortunate to have available both the 2C and 2D openings to shift hand types to, and that special methods are used for game forcing hands to make these openings available. The two hand types in the 1C opening can unwind quite well if the opponents don't interfere, so the designer looks at the issues in competitive sequences, and here we will look at 1C-2D(natural jump overcall), where the opponents have now consumed a level of bidding space.

After it goes 1C-2D-P-P;-?, opener with 18-19 balanced and some length in diamonds will not want to compete if responder is very weak but will want to bid if responder has 5-9 without a good bid over 2D. To eliminate this problem, the designer could decide to use Rosenkranz's Mexican 2D opening to show 18-19 balanced, leaving 1C showing:

a) Balanced, 12-14
b) Unbalanced, natural, 10/11-21.

A further look at the 1C-2D-? sequence shows that there are some awkward hands where responder has 5-10 with a five card major. When responder has this hand type, if opener has the 12-14 balanced, responder wants to play two of the major, but if responder bids two of major it is forcing, usually 10+. If two of the major is played not-forcing (in the method called negative free bids), then responder still can't bid two of the major on a 5-10 hand in case in runs into a minimum unbalanced natural 1C opener, with shortness in the major, in which case the partnership can be back in no-fit/not enough values land. The designer might decide to employ the 2C opening to solve this problem, moving unbalanced natural club openings with either singleton/void in a major or six or longer clubs and shapely, out of the 1C opening, leaving it to be:

a) Balanced, 12-14
b) Unbalanced, natural, 10/11-21, but if 10-15 no major suit singleton/void and not super shapely.

Now after 1C-2D(overcall)-2M(5+ card suit, less than an invite)-P;-?, opener passes if less than 15, and bids otherwise.

A further issue arises when balanced hands are combined with unbalanced natural one level openings - which hands will responder want to pass the opening. Say, after a 1C balanced or clubs opening, responder has:

S: 9876
H: 9875
D: 9874
C: 3

If responder passes this, it might be the very worst suit strain for the partnership when opener is balanced. Now give responder:

S: 3
H: 987
D: 9874
C: 98765

Here responder wants to pass if opener is balanced, but if opener is a maximum with long clubs, responder would like to show support with a weak hand, since there could be game opposite some maximums.

Either balanced or unbalanced minor suit openings produce this conundrum: responder only wants to pass with length in the suit opened, but that risks not showing support when opener is unbalanced. There is solution to this rarely seen in systems: flip the unbalanced minors!

Thus, using the 1C opening designed above, the 1D opening becomes:

a) Balanced, 12-14
b) Unbalanced, clubs, 10/11-21, but if 10-15 no major suit singleton/void and not super shapely.

Now responder, if weak with diamonds, will pass this, and since it is low it is likely as good as spot as any if opener is unbalanced. If responder doesn't have diamonds, then regardless of strength responder bids to locate a better spot.

The 1C opening can now show diamonds or balanced, and could be designed to be:
a) Balanced, 18-20
b) Unbalanced, diamonds, 10/11-21.

Again responder will only pass this if weak and with the suit opened, here clubs.

We will explore this class of system at a later time, but now, having established some theoretical intrigue with balanced hands, we will return next to the Bread N' Butter series, which looks at how Meckwell fared with their balanced hands in their latest world championship.

What's natural for balanced?

If you were teaching someone modern (five card majors) natural methods, what do you tell them to open this hand with?

S AQ54
H AQ3
D J76
C 432

How do you explain opening the worst suit playing natural methods? Do you explain it as the process of elimination?

- You don't have a five card major
- You're not strong enough for 1NT
- You don't have four diamonds
- Voila! You have a "natural" one club opening.

However the better way of explaining it is:
- We have balanced hands, and unbalanced hands
- We bid balanced hands following a "notrump ladder" depending on our point count.

It would help the process if we grouped our balanced hands of certain ranges into one bid, instead of distributing them across all four one level suit bids. Thus for teaching purposes it would be easier to have:

Balanced hands:
12-14: Open 1C and rebid 1NT or support partner
15-17: Open 1NT
18-19: Open 1C and rebid 2NT or support partner
20-21: Open 2NT
22-24: Open 2C and rebid 2NT or support partner
25-27: Open 2C and rebid 3NT or support partner

Unbalanced hands: open longest suit, highest ranking if equal length of longest (but 4-4-1-4 opens 1C and all other 4-4-4-1s open 1D), unless game force values, then open 2C and rebid longest suit.

Key is to distinguish the approaches for balanced hands and for unbalanced hands. The remaining issue is then how to handle the openings that combine both balanced and unbalanced sets of hands, and that's a decisive factor in any system design that we'll look at next.

Opening 17-19 balanced

The problem of what to open with 17-19 balanced was solved by Ron Klinger in The Power System: Five Bids To Winning Bridge. However the price of his 17-20 1NT opening was the loss of using 1NT to open the far more frequent 15-17, 14-16, or 12-14 balanced hands, and that has proven too high a cost for everybody.

Aside from that and some not-allowed-everywhere ideas, like the strong one heart opening discussed in previous blog posts, this leaves these four opening options: 1C, 1D, 2C, and 2D.

Opening 1D with 17-19 balanced has problems, even though it is used by a number of good partnerships. The sequence 1D-1NT wrong sides the most likely strain, having the weak hand play notrump. In addition the range of the 1D-1NT response is an issue - if it is not forcing, it is either something to be passed, like 3-5, and a waste of a bid, or something that is an invite opposite 17-19, such as 5-7, and not used much, and stronger responding hands pose a problem. If 1D-1NT starts at a higher range, then one has to either pass with a weaker hand, when 1D can be a poor spot, or make some suit bid without much values. Often the structures with 1D containing 17-19 balanced have to resort to responding 1M sometimes with just 3 in M, and that imposes follow-up complexity. It's not a pretty sight.

Opening 2C or 2D with 17 balanced doesn't work, since many of the opponents will be playing 1NT as 15-17, and thus when responder is weak the opponents will often be playing 1NT, instead of the 2NT forced by the two level opening. However 2D as 18-19, or 2C as 18-19, 18-20 or 18-21 are all workable, although my studies show that poor 18s can be too light, such as 4-3-3-3s, and there is a risk undertaken in opening these at the two levels. The 2C opening works better than 2D, since 2C provides room for transfers to either major, allowing for two level signoffs, and finding for 4-4 major fits on the way to 2NT. The cost of using 2C instead of 2D is that stronger game forcing hands have to open something other than 2C (such as 2D), often with bidding room and/or entanglement issues. In the style that I prefer, following the ideas of Kokish, a game force opening is only made with real game forcing playing value, and thus is not that frequent. In that case I don't mind exiling the game forces to a worse bidding location, in order that the 18+ balanced hands are well treated. However if your style is currently to use the 2C opening on many close-to-game-force hands, then you are better off either playing 2D as 18-19 balanced, or using BRASS to put the 18-19s into your 2C opening.

All that is to say, with 17-19 balanced your best opening is 1C. It allows the partnership to get to 1NT when responder is weak. It provides room for transfers where permitted, or other major fit methods as wanted. The downside is you have to have some decent structure here. The current standard approach of 1m (can be 18-19 balanced with the minor)-1M(can be light);-?, and having opener rebid either 2NT (18-19 balanced without 4 in M) and 4M(raise with 18-19) is flawed when light responses are possible, and if light responses are not possible, the partnership can languish in one of a minor when 1NT is the landing spot.

The other flaw in opening 1C with 17-19 is whether or not it is combined with much weak hand types, such as 11-13 balanced or minimum openings with unbalanced club hands. If the minimum for the 1C opening is much like standard, then mild competitive bidding by the opponents can pose problems. Say it goes 1C-2S(overcall)-? Or 1C-2S(overcall)-P-P;-?. On the first sequence responder would like to compete on most 6-9s, if opener is 17-19 balanced, but if opener can be a standard minimum, responder must pass most 6-9s to keep the partnership from getting to 2NT or 3 level on not much values. On the second sequence, if responder is passing 2S with most 6-9s, opener would like to show the extras of 17-19, but if opener bids and responder is quite weak this again risks a 2NT or 3 level contract on insufficient values.

For this reason, the big club approach is a better way of treating 17-19 balanced, since after 1C-2S(overcall)-?, responder knows opener has 16/17+, and can compete with game interest. However as discussed in the last post, using the big club can result in less than optimal treatments of unbalanced hands with no five card major. One thing to consider if playing in ACBL events, is if the 1C opening promises at least 15, then transfers and other artificial methods can be played over the 1C opening.

If you don't want to open 18-19 balanced on the one level, the best option is to play 1NT as a healthy 15 to 18-, and then have a 2C or 2D opening for decent 18s and all 19s and poor 20s balanced. The concern here is that the range for minimum balanced hands becomes about 4 points, about decent 11s to poor 15s, a little too wide. Some experts believe that it is not effective to open 11s and bad 12s balanced - for example while Meckwell will open any 11, their world championship teammates have on their respective convention cards "Avoid opening bad BAL hands 1st/2nd". If one starts opening balanced hands at not too bad 12s, then 1NT as 15 to 18- works well. A lot depends on style here as opposed to there being any absolute rights and wrongs. One reason for the Bread N' Butter series is to look at how opening those flat 11 counts fares - do light & flat openings form a key factor in success?

Next up - when balanced and unbalanced live together.

Unbalanced minor suit openings

In a system framework, consider openings that show an unbalanced hand with no five card or longer major. For these openings try ranking the following five criteria:

1) Showing a specific 4 card major with the opening bid
2) Having room to investigate for major suit fits
3) Preempting the opponents
4) Showing the longest minor with the opening bid
5) Immediately showing extra values or limiting hand.

Here's my countdown ranking, from least important to most important:

5) Immediately showing extra values or limiting hand

If the unbalanced hand opening was wide ranging, it would be easy to show extra values later whether or not the opponents compete. Thus immediately showing extra values or limiting the hand doesn't help a lot.

4) Preempting the opponents

Unless one can jam the bidding at the four level or higher, preempting will not work often, as the opponents can freely introduce major suits or double to get into the bidding.

3) Showing a specific 4 card major with the opening bid

If negative doubles were banned this might be important since 4-4 fits could be lost if the opponents mildly interfered. However with negative doubles most 4-4 fits can be tracked down, or if the opponents really jam the bidding, then there are often bad splits that make a 4-4 fit contract not easy at all. On some hands immediately showing a 4 card major will work well, and thus it has some efficacy.

2) Showing the longest minor with the opening bid

If the opponents jam the bidding, knowing opener's longest minor will be a key factor, since if there is a good fit one wants to show support. However if the opponents do not interfere, opener will be able to show the longest minor later.

1) Having room to investigate for major suit fits

In order to know where to play, one needs to investigate for major suit fits, and one needs to have sufficient room to check for 4-4, 5-3, and 6-2, or better fits. While the opponents can jam the bidding to hinder fit finding, if the bidding starts off low, the opponents with constructive or better values will often stay low too, making non-jump overcalls or a takeout double.

Here's a couple of problem hands for some systems:

S: AJ53
H: 6
D: J53
C: AQ964

This hand opens 1D in some big club frameworks. The opening is limited, but that's not important. There's sufficient room to find a major suit fit, and that's good. However opener has not shown the longest minor with the opening bid.

In a Polish club system, this would open 2C. Again, limited but not important. There is now less room to find a major suit fit (e.g. is 2C-2M played as forcing or not), the most important criteria. Opener showed the longest minor which can work well in competitive auctions.

Given a choice between the big club or Polish club frameworks, we would prefer the big club since the 1D opening has more room to find major suit fits.

S: AJ5
H: 642
D: 8
C: AQT964

This hand opens 2C in both big club and Polish frameworks. The key problem is the opening eats bidding space, here hurting the ability to find 5-3 or better major fits. In some structures the bidding will go 2C-2D(ask);-3C showing a minimum with no four card major, and now responder must either pass or push to 3NT or beyond. If one plays 2C-2M as either forcing, or showing just a five card major, then weak hands with a 6 card major have risk in bidding 2C-2M, since opener can bid again. In standard one has sequences like 1C-1M;-2C-2M to the best spot.

In a big club system, when 1C is opened with an unbalanced hand with no five card major, one is not well positioned by just showing the extra values. If it goes 1C-1D(negative);-?, you have to play the 1M rebid as showing 4 or longer, since 1C-1D;-2m can lose 4-4 major suit fits found in standard by 1m-1M using light responses. If the opponents jam the auction, if opener next shows the minor suit, there is a risk of not finding any major suit fit. The big club is far from ideal for unbalanced minor suit hands, though works well with strong balanced hands.

Using the above criteria, an example of an ideal opening is in a system where the 1D opening is unbalanced, 4/5+ Ds, and is wide ranging. However in the last post it was discussed how balanced weak notrump hands are best opened 1D instead of 1C (if just opening one of the minors on this hand type). Thus we have a system design conflict: 1D works well as an unbalanced natural wide ranging opening, and 1D works well as a limited balanced opening - in the next post I'll look at another factor for us to consider.

Weak Notrump: 1C or 1D Opening?

If you had to open either 1C or 1D with all your weak notrumps, which one should it be?

Opening 1C gives plenty of room to unwind, play transfers where allowed, and investigate for 4-4 and 5-3 major fits below 1NT. However the 1C opening gives that same room to the opponents, where they can naturally bid all four suits, such as:

Double: takeout and/or value showing, and now 1D by advancer can be waiting/negative
1D/H/S, 2C: natural
2D: Both majors

Opening 1D with all your weak notrumps takes away bidding space for both our side and the opponents. Who wins?

The lack of bidding room means sometimes our side will end up in two of a major on a seven card fit (e.g. 1D-1M;-1NT-2M when opener has just 2 in M) - however that is only marginally bad as two of major can work better than 1NT on a whole set of hands. It removes the ability to play transfers, and has responder playing 1NT on the auction 1D-1NT, but a weak notrump hand doesn't have enough values to necessarily be the best one to be declarer of most contracts.

However the reduced bidding room really hurts the opponents, as they are unable to bid all suits naturally and have a bid of 2C or 2D for both majors. In addition, if they double 1D, advancer (partner of the doubler) has to bid 1NT, 2C or higher if no major.

Due to this competitive aspect, it is my opinion that opening 1D with all weak notrump hands is the better approach. In addition, I've come to believe that the big club split for balanced hands of 1NT 14-16 and 1D 11-13 is likely optimal in bidding design. When the Bread N' Butter series continues, let's see if that rings true.

The Unbalanced Major

Yesterday, one of Canada's top players, Allan Graves, commented on a posting from November - since that's an older posting and a long one, where readers could miss the "1 comment" marker at the end of two miles of system frameworks, I've reposted it here:

I recommend the unbalanced major point of view and simply use 1C as weak NT or clubs with transfer responses, 1D as natural usually unbalanced with 5 plus, 1NT 14+ to 17 frequently with 5332 major, 2D 18 -19 bal, not 5 card major.
This leaves Major opener as usually not 5332 11-17 unless third or fourth seat , a competely natural diamond and 1C 11 + natural unbalanced or a weak NT including 5332 major.
I think this separation of hand types is the cleanest and recommend Nilsson's article in the November Bridge World . Please email me allangraves _AT_ me _DOT_ com if you have system ideas etc. around this structure.

In a draft of the comment, Allan notes:

- Nilsson … is highly regarded Swedish international with impressive resume of performances
- transfer responses as per Swedish methods
- 2D 18-19 balanced per Lauria Versace
- This is a simple yet very powerful approach for non big clubbers.

For replying to Allan, you can email him, or you can comment on this posting, or email me at bridgequestion@gmail.com with your system ideas and permission to post, and I'll post your email as a blog post here.

--- ---

My reply.

The ETM Gold system was based on these types of ideas, especially influenced by Swedish and Italian approaches. Put simply it is:

1C: Natural or weak balanced (can have a five card major).
1D: 5Ds & unbalanced hand, or 4=4=4=1 exactly, or 1=4=4=4 exactly with extras (15+), or with 4Ds & 5Cs and 17+. Forcing.
1H/S: Natural, 5+ major, never a 5-3-3-2.
1NT: 14/15-17 balanced, can have a five card major.
2C: 17/18-21 balanced, can have a five card major.
2D: Any game force, can be 24/25+ balanced.

First, note that one has to park the 4=4=4=1 (4-4-4-1 exactly) shape somewhere. Thus 1D unbalanced includes that hand type. In addition I moved some unbalanced and extras with just 4Ds into 1D to take advantage of the bidding room available there.

For the 2C/2D split, I went with a modified Bocchi-Duboin approach instead of Lauria-Versace. In the Bocchi-Duboin methods, 2C was 18-19 balanced, while 2D was 23+ balanced or any game force. I increased the range of 2C since it had sufficient room to unwind a wider balanced range. The 2D opening eats bidding space, but true game forces, even balanced, or relatively infrequent compared to 18-21 balanced - in bidding design one can send a rarer hand type to Siberia in order to keep the rest nice and cozy besides the wood stove of low level bidding.

Several years later I invented Brass, which combines the 2C and 2D hand types into just 2C, freeing up 2D for other duties. Using Brass, 2C would be 18-19/22+ balanced or any game force. One option is to then play 2D as mini-Roman but never short in diamonds (11-14, a three suiter not short in Ds), and thus the 1D opening is always 5+Ds if less than 15, and the 1C opening will have 5+Cs if minimum and a singleton/void in a major.

For transfers over 1C, I did not include that in the base version of ETM Gold, as it is not ACBL GCC legal. Instead I went with a modified version of Kokish's Montreal Relay, since older rock n' roll is ACBL allowed. In the Gold Premium methods transfers over 1C is in one of the modules: Premium 1C Response Structure Including Transfers, starting on page 160 of the ETM Gold notes.

Wide Canape Openings

Happy New Decade everybody - this year will be the tenth anniversary of BridgeMatters, though this blog itself is just a few years old. For a New Year's resolution, this year will see many mini-posts appearing on the blog, following the Twitter approach (not yet that many bridge folk tweeting) of short bursts of ideas, news, and updates. Now there will still be long posts for slow blog loading and rapid skim reading, such as a resumption of the Bread N' Butter series, but sometimes instead of the meat n' potatoes, or bread, there will be just a small biscuit of a post.

Say for your one spade opening, currently 5+ spades, 11-21 high card points, you switch to a canape approach where the opening shows 4 or 6+ spades, 11-21 high card points. Still the same point range, but now there's a problem. In standard, opener's rebid after responder's 1NT is wide ranging (e.g. 1S-1NT;-2C), about 11 to a bad 18. This can be troublesome, but responder with a doubleton (or longer) in opener's major can bid two of opener's major, which gives opener the opportunity to bid again, and if responder passes opener's second suit with a singleton/void, sometimes even if there were sufficient points for game the contract would just be marginal due to living in the land of misfits.

In a Canape approach with standard point ranges, opener's rebid of two of a new suit (e.g. 1S-1NT;-2C) shows the longer suit, but the range still needs to be about 11 to a bad 18 to avoid jump rebids without sufficient points and no known fit. However unlike Standard responder can't bid again without taking opener beyond two of his/her longest suit, yet passing risks missing good games. For this reason, most Canape implementations are big club based, in order to limit opener's two level rebid to 11 to 15 points. The other approach is to use transfer openings, such as opening 1D or 1H to show 4Ss, or 4+Ss. I don't believe that natural wide ranging Canape major suit openings will ever be workable, although they would be fun to play for a new decade.

Freeing up the one level for two hand types

Success factors/priorities for a system:

- Separation of balanced (bal) and unbalanced (unbal) hand types below 18
- Opening showing 4Ss unbal
- Openings showing 5+Ss or 5+Hs
- Openings showing a minor suit unbal, can be combined with a big hand type

This requires two opening suit bids at the one level to be freed up, one to show 4Ss unbal, and the other the balanced hand outside of the 1NT range.

Here's a mid-chart example:

1C: 4+Ds, 10+, unbal, fewer than 4Ss OR 17+ Cs or 18+ Any
1D: 4Ss, 10-17, unbal, often longer second suit OR 16-17 7+Cs
1H: 15-17 bal
1S: 5+Ss, unbal, 10-17
1NT: 12-14 bal
2C: 6+Cs or 5Cs+4Hs, fewer than 4Ss, unbal, 10-16
2D: 5+Hs, fewer than 4Ss, singleton if just 5Hs, 15-17
2H: 5+Hs, fewer than 4Ss, singleton if just 5Hs, 10-14

Since the ACBL has further restricted mid-chart (senior citizens more comfortable, younger players less fun or less younger players), the 1D opening cannot be a pure 4S bid anymore - here we add the 16-17 7Cs option to make it a "catch-all" that does not promise any particular suit.

1H and 2D are 15-17 artificial, since 15+ artificial openings are allowed, but 14s would not be upgradable into these openings. The shapes 2-5-4-2 and 2-5-2-4 exactly would have to be treated as balanced, as the 2D and 2H openings promise a singleton if just 5Hs. The 1C(two-way)-1D(negative);-P (minimum, Ds unbal) sequence is the way scientists get to the standard 1D all pass.

Here's a super chart:

1C: 4+Ds, 10+, unbal, fewer than 4Ss OR 17+ Cs or 18+ Any
1D: 11-14 bal
1H: 4Ss, 10-17, often longer second suit
1S: 5+Ss, unbal, 10-17
1NT: 14/15-17 bal
2C: 6+Cs or 5Cs+4Hs, fewer than 4Ss, unbal, 10-16
2D: 5+Hs, fewer than 4Ss, singleton if just 5Hs, 14-17
2H: 5+Hs, fewer than 4Ss, singleton if just 5Hs, 10-13

The 2H and 2D openings will hurt sometimes, taking up too much of our bidding space, but the opening makes it easier to get to 4H without the opponents reaching 4S, a common irritating circumstance.

MOB Wars

Bridge pro Curtis Cheek, recovering from a life threatening bout with H1N1 just after this summer's world championships, was quoted in this week's San Diego bulletins (Wednesday 2nd):

Cheek was in the hospital for about one month. After they withdrew the drugs that kept him in a coma, it took another week for him to come out of it. He was in a dream-like state and thought he was in Washington DC. He says he would think he was having a normal conversation but was saying things that didn't make sense. "I would wake up and say "The mafia are coming, bid your majors first," he says.

Before I continue I want to wish Cheek, a really great guy, a full recovery as soon as possible.

MAFIA is a term used in some bridge bidding systems, and it means Majors First Always - and his quote does make sense to system designers: "the MAFIA systems are coming: bid your majors first".

Blending a majors oriented approach with a focus on balanced hand types as discussed in the last post, I produced a new plug-n-play system, MOB Club:

http://www.bridgematters.com/mobclub.pdf

1C: 10-16 with a four card major, unbalanced, or 17+ (not a five card major vulnerable unless near GF)
1D: balanced or 14-16 with Ds, unbalanced and no four card major
1H/S: five card major, unbalanced, limited to 16 not vulnerable
1NT: variable
2C: 10-16, no four card major, 6+Cs or 5Cs 11-13 with 4Ds
2D: 10-13, no four card major, 6+Ds or 5Ds 11-13 with 4Cs

MOB is Major or Big, and the one club opening shows either 10-16 unbalanced with a four card major (exactly), or various 17+ hand types. The fundamental concept is that with a five card major unbalanced you open it, and with a four card major unbalanced, open 1C, and then bid the major (usually over 1D). Not vulnerable the major suit openings are limited to 10-16, to allow bounces to game even with considerable strength, much like with a big club system. The major openings structure has Sazzilli, Simplified Gazzilli, which takes advantage that the major opening is never a 5-3-3-2 balanced hand type.

Majors hands that are 5-3-3-2 are always treated as a balanced hand type first - one could call this BOM - Balanced Over Majors - approach. Thus when one diamond is opened and is balanced, it can have a five card major, unlikely the 1D nebulous opening in big club systems like Meckwell Lite.

The MOB one diamond opening is mostly balanced - a balanced hand less than 17 not in the 1NT opening range. The system uses a variable notrump (since 10 to 13s are nasty weapons not vulnerable), and thus the balanced range for 1D changes.

However the 1D opening is not purely balanced, as discussed in the last post. Instead it is combined with diamonds, extras, unbalanced, and no four card or longer major. The purpose of adding this hand type in is first to use the many suit rebids possible for opener - if the opening is just balanced opener will just rebid notrump or support responder's suit. In addition in competition the balanced hand type can keep quiet, while the unbalanced hand with extras can compete to show shape and values. Moving the unbalanced hand type into 1D allows the 2D opening to be limited, in a Fantunes style, but here the 2D denies a four card major, which allows responder to quickly place the contract, first choice being to pass on many hands.

MOB achieves high definition openings for 1D and higher by having a nebulous, or messy, 1C opening. Moving the nebulous opening to the lowest opening possible gives plenty of room to unwind the hand types, while restricting the 10-16 hands in the 1C opening to a specific set of hands keeps the bidding manageable if it gets competitive. Certainly the opponents can jam the 1C opening by bidding aggressively over it, but they risk missing their own fits, and games and slams, if they don't bid constructively, since the 1C opening doesn't promise strength like in a big club system. If the opponents do bid constructively over the 1C opening, their bidding will often assist opener and responder in determining their own fit and values.

It would be easy to modify MOB to bring it closer to SOB (Spades or Big).

1C: 10-16 with 4Ss, unbalanced, or 17+
1D: balanced or 14-16 with Ds, unbalanced and no four card major
1H: 4+Hs unbalanced, not 4-4 majors, limited to 16, often just 4Hs if 10-13
1S: 5+Ss, unbalanced, limited to 16
1NT: variable
2C: 10-16, no four card major, 6+Cs or 5Cs 11-13 with 4Ds
2D: 10-13, no four card major, 6+Ds or 5Ds 11-13 with 4Cs
2H: 10-13, 5+Hs, fewer than 4Ss

Here the one heart opening loses a bit of definition (can just be 4Hs now), but that makes the 1C opening precise in the 10-16 range. No system is perfect - as a designer one is always going to have to park some hand types into an opening that one would prefer not to - such are the compromises that produce the variety of bidding systems.

A Balanced Viewpoint

Ulf Nilsson writing in the November issue of The Bridge World (instead of his bridge blog http://viewsfromthebridgetable.blogspot.com/ ) makes the strong case for treating 5-3-3-2s with a five card major as balanced as the primary feature, and not the major suit. That means incorporating these hand types into the openings for the balanced hands in the appropriate range, something that the ETM Gold system used as a key lynchpin of the system.

Say one has 11-12 high card points, 5-3-3-2, and a five card major. System design could include these possible options:

Pass
Open 1 of a suit, in the most natural way possible given the system (i.e. if playing five card majors, only open 1M with five)
Open 1 of a suit, in the most natural way possible given the system except open 1C if 4-4-3-2 exactly
Open best minor even if 5cM
Open 1C except if 4-5Ds, then open 1C
Open 1D except 1M if five card major
Open 1D
Open 1C except 1M if five card major
Open 1C
Open 1NT except 1M if five card major
Open 1NT
(this is not an exclusive list - for example there are systems that open 2M with 5-3-3-2s, and we will see others below)

If you were just looking at the balanced hands themselves, then natural is best - get the suit bid puts one in the best competitive advantage. However as Nilsson begins in the article:

Responder's knowledge of opener's hand-type is far more useful than any other immediate distributional message opener can send. Why? Because optimal bidding methods vary substantially opposite balanced and unbalanced holdings. … Effective competitive strategy also varies, because balanced hand are generally more defensive in nature than unbalanced hands.

This implies, as the article discusses, that one wants to achieve separation of hand types in the opening framework. In other words including balanced hands in a natural suit opening contaminates it from a competitive aspect. For example it goes 1D-1S(overcall)-Double(you)-2S;-P-P-? - if opener can be balanced, the decision to bid again is quite different than if you know 1D is unbalanced.

Systems where both 1NT and a specific one level suit opening were reserved for balanced hands have been rare. Granovetter-Rubin toyed with an unpublished system a few years ago (seen practiced online), and more recently a system was discussed with 1C and 1D openings showing specific majors, and 1H was balanced in a certain range, while 1NT handled another balanced range, talked about on David Collier's blog here:

http://dcrcbridge.blogspot.com/2009/11/whats-so-bad-about-transfer-openings.html

Now let's look at this candidate system:

1C: 11-13 or 17-19 bal
1D: unbal Cs or Ds
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
Rest: standardish

Now 1C is pretty cool, while 1D will have troubled waters in competitive situations, such as 1D-3S(overcall)-?.

Note that for the system frameworks in this post, hands with a six card minor, and no singleton or void, will be considered balanced (abbreviated "bal", and "unbal" for unbalanced). Likewise 5-4-2-2s with a five card minor will be considered balanced in all frameworks.

Starting with the candidate system, redesign can move some of the unbal C hands into a 2C opening, using a trick to get a wide range: if the 2C opening promises 6-4+ or 7+Cs, then it can be played as wide ranging for two reasons. First it is almost always safe for responder to ask opener's hand type since opener will have good playing value. Second, the high-card point range of the opening will be limited since the high card point range between a preemptive hand and a game force is less on shapely hands (e.g. it takes less points to make a game forcing hand when there is a lot of shape). In addition let's shift the singleton diamond hands with 4 to 6 Cs into 1C, since these will be close to balanced hand types.

This results in:

1C: 11-13 or 17-19 or 22-24 bal , or 4-6 Cs unbal with singleton D
1D: 3+Ds, unbal, either Ds or longer Cs
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-18, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: Any game force
2NT: 20-21 bal

Taking a Polish base, one could move the Ds hands into 1C, and the balanced hands to 1D:

1C: 3+Ds, unbal, either Ds or longer Cs, or 22+ bal or any game force
1D: 11-13 or 17-19 bal
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-18, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2NT: 20-21 bal

That 1C opening produces the neat sequence 1C(variety)-1D(negative);-P, which is not legal under the ACBL GCC, which requires the artificial 1D response to be forcing.

Modifying a big club, five card major base:

1C: 15+ unbal or 17+ bal
1D: 11-13 bal or 11-14 4-4-1-4 or 4-4-4-1 exactly
1M: 5+, unbal, 10-14
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-14, 5+Cs
2D: 10-14, 5+Ds
2NT: 20-21 bal

Taking the 4 card majors out of the 2C and 2D openings (and the 4-4-4-1s out of 1D):

1C: 15+ unbal or 17+ bal
1D: 11-13 bal
1M: 4+, unbal, 10-14
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-14, 5+Cs, no 4cM
2D: 10-14, 5+Ds, no 4cM
2NT: 20-21 bal

In the above framework and some of the others below, one could want to play 1NT 10-13 when not vulnerable in 1st, 2nd or 3rd, and then have 14-16 open whatever 11-13 opens when vulnerable.

Utilizing the 2M openings:

1C: 15+ unbal or 17+ bal
1D: 11-13 bal
1M: 4+, unbal, 10-14, only 6 or longer in M if 4+ in other major
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-14, 5+Cs, no 4cM
2D: 10-14, 5+Ds, no 4cM
2H: 10-14, 6+Hs, not 4Ss
2S: 10-14, 6+Ss, not 4Hs
2NT: 20-21 bal

Coalescing some of the above:

1C: 3 to 6 in each minor, unbal, or 22+ bal or any game force
1D: 11-13 or 17-19 bal or 11-20 singleton/void m with 4-5 in other minor
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-18, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: 10-18, 6+Ds and if only 6Ds then a four card major
2NT: 20-21 bal

Making 1D, 2C and 2D more limited, at the price of more stuff piled into the trunk of the 1C opening:

1C: 3 to 6 in each minor, unbal, or 17+ bal or 18+ any
1D: 11-13 bal or 11-17 singleton/void m with 4-5 in other minor
1M: 5+, unbal, 10-17
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-17, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: 10-17, 6+Ds and if only 6Ds then a four card major

Limiting 1D only:

1C: 3 to 6 in each minor, unbal, or 19+ unbal with a minor or 22+ bal or any game force
1D: 11-13 or 17-19 bal or 11-18 singleton/void m with 4-5 in other minor
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-18, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: 10-18, 6+Ds and if only 6Ds then a four card major
2NT: 20-21 bal

Interchanging the 1C and 1D:

1C: 11-13 or 17-19 bal or 11-18 singleton/void m with 4-5 in other minor
1D: 3 to 6 in each minor, unbal, or 19+ unbal with a minor or 22+ bal or any game force
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-18, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: 10-18, 6+Ds and if only 6Ds then a four card major
2NT: 20-21 bal

Using 1C as the balanced outside-of-the-1NT-range bid:

1C: 11-13 or 17+ bal or 11+ singleton/void m with 4-5 in other minor
1D: 3 to 6 in each minor, unbal, or any unbal 18+
1M: 5+, unbal, 10-17
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-17, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: 10-17, 6+Ds and if only 6Ds then a four card major

It's tempting to use 2H and 2NT to make 1C limited:

1C: 11-13 or 17-21 bal or 11-18 singleton/void m with 4-5 in other minor
1D: 3 to 6 in each minor, unbal, or any unbal 19+
1M: 5+, unbal, 10-18
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-18, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: 10-18, 6+Ds and if only 6Ds then a four card major
2H: 22-24 bal
2NT: 24/25+ bal, game force

We can move the 2D hand types into 1D, since if responder bids clubs, opener, if holding short clubs, can correct to diamonds on the same level. This allows the 2D to handle strong hands and make both 1C and 1D non-forcing:

1C: 11-13 or 17-21 bal or 11-20 singleton/void m with 4-5 in other minor
1D: 3 to 6 in each minor and/or 6+Ds, unbal, less than a game force
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-18, 6+Cs and if only 6Cs then a four card major
2D: Any game force
2NT: 22-24 bal

Another tack is to use diamonds as the only suit somewhat moved out of the one level:

1C: 3+Cs, unbal, less than a game force, can have 5Ds with shorter Cs
1D: 11-13 or 17-21 bal or 11-21 singleton/void C with 4-5 in Ds
1M: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: Strong, 16+ with 6+Ds unbal or any game force
2D: 10-15, 6+Ds unbal
2NT: 22-24 bal

This has the cool 2C(Strong)-2D(waiting but limited);-P sequence. 2C could start at 15, making 2D just 10-14, something I would definitely do in ACBL mid-chart event where all 15+ artificial openings are legal.

In mid-chart events one could try something like:

1C: 4+Hs, unbal, forcing
1D: 4+Ds, unbal, less than a game force, can have longer Cs
1H: 15+ bal or 4-3-1-5/3-3-1-6 exactly
1S: 5+, unbal
1NT: 12-14 bal
2C: 10-15 6+Cs or 11-14 4-3-1-5 exactly
2D: Strong, denies 4+Hs, 16+ with 6+Cs and no other suit except Ss possible, or any game force without 4+Hs
2NT: 21-22 bal

In the land of the system free:

1C: 4+Hs, unbal, or 10-15 4-3-1-5 exactly, or 17+ bal forcing
1D: 4+Ds, unbal, less than a game force, can have longer Cs
1H: 10-13 bal
1S: 5+, unbal
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-15 6+Cs
2D: Strong, denies 4+Hs, 16+ with 6+Cs and no second suit or 5+Cs and 4+Ss, or a game force with Ss or Ds
2NT: 21-22 bal

In the land of the price reduction, taking advantage of the US "Black Friday" sales yesterday I bought a Roman atlas. Here's a touch of Roman in the last two frameworks:

1C: 6+Cs 10-14 unbal, or any unbal 15+ or 17+ bal
1D: 10-13 bal
1M: 5+, unbal, 10-14
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: three suiter with no 5cM, 10-14, often a 5-4-3-1 with a 5c minor
2D: 10-14, 6+Ds
2NT: 10-14, 5-5 minors, no 3 card major

1C: 6+Ds 10-15 unbal, or any unbal 16+ or 17+ bal
1D: 10-13 bal
1M: 5+, unbal, 10-15
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-15, 6+Cs
2D: three suiter with no 5cM, 10-15, often a 5-4-3-1 with a 5c minor
2NT: 11-15, 5-5 minors, no 3 card major

The last again has the cool 1C-1D(negative);-P sequence, when allowed. For these last two I would open 1NT with 10 to a poor 13 when not vulnerable in the first three seats, making 1D a decent 13 to 16, and with a 10-15 three suiter with a singleton A, K, or Q, I would open 1D, not the Roman two bid showing a three suiter.

Here's a bonus framework:

1C: Either:
a) three suiter with no 5cM, 10-14, often a 5-4-3-1 with a 5c minor
b) any unbal 15+
c) 17+ bal
1D: 10-13 bal
1M: 5+, unbal, 8-14
1NT: 14-16 bal
2C: 10-14, 6+Cs
2D: 10-14, 6+Ds
2H: 10-14, 6+Hs
2S: 10-14, 6+Ss
2NT: 10-14, 5-5 minors, no 3 card major

And finally the balanced hands completely separated:

1C: Either:
a) three suiter with no 5cM, 10-14, often a 5-4-3-1 with a 5c minor
b) 10-14 6+Cs
c) any unbal 15+
1D: 11-14 bal
1M: 5+, unbal, 8-14
1NT: 15-17 bal
2C: 18-21 bal
2D: 10-14, 6+Ds
2H: 22-24 bal
2S: 10-14, 6+Ss
2NT: 24/25+ bal

For any of the frameworks given above, if you know a close match with an existing system please comment, providing any information and links you may have, and thanks in advance to all!

Structure Revelations

As I mentioned in the last post, using the robots might be the fastest method of testing a new bidding structure or complete system. Last month I played thousands of hands where I opened 1NT, and the playtesting of the robots notrump structure had a couple of revelations.

I've been a big believer in responder showing the singleton/void to the notrump opener, but it surprised me the ratio of how many times that was useless to how many times it was useful. On the vast majority of hands that responder wants to get to game with, if there is no major fit the contact will be 3NT, and showing the singleton/void rarely changes that.

For hands without a four card major (4cM), the robot notrump structure has two common ways to show a singleton/void on the way to 3NT. These are:

1) Use minor suit Stayman (1NT-2S) with both minors, and then show a specific major suit singleton/void.
2) Transfer to the minor (2NT to Cs, 3C to Ds), then bid a new suit at the three level to show a specific singleton/void (there is no way to show long Ds, short Cs, no 4cM, at the three level).

From playtesting the structure, it would be better to give opener the opportunity to refuse to know the singleton/void and hand types. Let's remap the 1NT-2S response to be game forcing, no 4cM, and a hand with a singleton/void. Opener can rebid 2NT to learn about responder's hand type, or rebid 3C, which says not interested unless lots of extras in shape and/or points.

Here's the detailed structure:

1NT-2S;-?

2NT: what you got for me?
--3C: 6+Ds, any singleton/void. 3D asks shortness.
--3D: 6+Cs, major suit singleton/void. 3H asks shortness.
--3H/S: both minors, singleton/void in bid major.
--3NT: 6+Cs, singleton/void diamond.
-- 4C: 6+Cs, singleton/void diamond, good slam interest or better.

3C: not interested.
--3D: a long minor with any singleton/void, extra shape/values. 3H asks suit (3S=Cs, 3NT and above = Ds)
--3H/S: both minors and extra shape/values, singleton/void in bid major.
--3NT: to play

Based on playtesting many hands, most auctions will go 1NT-2S(GF, no 4cM, singleton/void any suit);-3C(not interested)-3NT.

This frees up the sequences 1NT-minor transfer then new suit bids, which can be employed in various ways. One thing that is missing from the above use of 2S, compared to the robot structure, is the good slam tries with no singleton/void (1NT-minor transfer and then 3NT is a mild slam try). These could be implemented via the minor suit transfer:

1NT-2NT(transfer to Cs);-3C-?
--3D: good slam try in Cs, no void and often no small singleton
--3H: slam try with both minors, no void and often no small singleton
--3S: slam try with both minors, excellent clubs

1NT-3C(transfer to Ds);-3D-?
--3H: good slam try in Ds, no void and often no small singleton
--3S: slam try with both minors, excellent diamonds

Likewise the sequences showing 4-4-4-1s/5-4-4-0s (no 5cM) by bidding 1NT-3D, 1NT-3H, or 1NT-3S to show the shortness are a waste of time - using Stayman works almost all the time. After Stayman finds no major fit, if opener has a 4cM opposite a major suit singleton 3NT is usually as good as spot as any, and if opener has denied a 4cM, bidding 3C/D with the longest minor can investigate the stopper situation.

One option is to play 1NT-3D as showing long clubs and a 4cM - over 3D opener can ask with 3H (3S=Hs, 3NT+ = 4Ss), bid 3S stopper showing, bid 3NT to play, or bid 4C forcing to 5C. Then 1NT-2C;-2D-3C shows an unspecified singleton/void in any suit but clubs - 3D would ask, while 3NT would unask - that is opener does not want to know what it is.

The other revelation from playtesting was in competitive sequences, where we open 1NT, and an overcall is made directly before responder's first bid. Using Lebensohl many times shows that it is folly for responder, with a weak hand and a long suit, to be unable to immediately bid the suit.

For example in standard Lebensohl: 1NT-2S(overcall)-2NT(Lebensohl)-3S;-?. Opener will want to compete opposite some hands, safely pass in others, and double with good spades and no fit for responder. All that is impossible when opener does not know responder's suit, if any, for the Lebensohl bid.

Note that most partnerships now use "system on" after the 1NT-2C overcall, and thus we will just consider when the overcall is 2D, 2H, or 2S.

There has been increased use of Rubensohl (spelled various ways), and Transfer Lebensohl to allow responder a way to immediately show a suit. The basic format is:

2NT: transfer to Cs, to play or game forcing
3C: transfer to Ds, to play or game forcing
3D: transfer to Hs, to play or game forcing
3H: transfer to Ss, to play or game forcing
3S: transfer to 3NT, with no stopper in opponent's suit
3NT: to play with at least a partial stopper in the opponent's suit

If a suit could have been bid naturally at the two level, the transfer at the three level shows at least invitational values. A transfer to their known suit is game forcing Stayman, and if opener bids the transfer suit it denies a stopper.

Here's a more detailed discussion:

http://www.bridgescore.com/villages/MyPages/Newsletter%20Nov%202008%20revised.pdf

A version called Rumpelsohl has this main twist: 2NT, the transfer to clubs, is either clubs or a game invite in any non-club new suit that could not be bid naturally at the two level. For example 1NT-2S(overcall)-2NT(transfer to Cs)-P;-3C-P-3H is a game invite with 5+Hs.

I prefer invites to have some direct bid, and to lose the invite if unavailable. This is like Rubensohl as described above, but with this switch:

1) A transfer to their suit is a natural invite
2) 2NT, the transfer to clubs, followed by 3D is game forcing Stayman, and then bidding their suit denies a stopper.

For examples:

1NT-2S(overcall)-3H: invite with 5+Hs.

1NT-2S(overcall)-2NT(transfer)-P;-3C-P-3D: Stayman.

1NT-2H(overcall)-?:
--Double: partnership option (penalty, negative, optional, values etc.)
--2S: natural, 5+Ss, non-forcing
--2NT: transfer to Cs, could be Stayman if next bid 3D
--3C: transfer to Ds
--3D: game invite in Ds
--3H: transfer to Ss, game invite or better
--3S: transfer to 3NT, no stopper
--3NT: to play, at least a partial stopper

It would be neat to reprogram the robot notrump structure to try this out.

The Robot Battles Part VI - All for the best

"Are you alive? … Prove it"

The opening lines of the BattleStar Gatlactica series.

This is the last of a series of posts on battling the BBO Robots, although the next posting will discuss notrump structure based on robot tourney experiences. The robots don't bid or play the best, but they might be the fastest method of testing a new bidding structure or complete system.

The robot tourneys give you the best hand, or at least a hand that has the most or equal number of high card points as any other hand at the table. This has certain implications for the bidding, but one has to tread carefully.

When you have the best of the best, you can open 2C, but you have to live with the robot getting to notrump first by bidding 2C-2NT, and now the system is awful, with all suit bids showing 5 or longer and the robot sometimes hiding support. When it goes 2C-2D you've dodged the 2NT response bullet, and will usually have a nice auction.

Having the worst of the best, a hand in the 11-13 range, gives you key information: nobody has a better hand. It robot partner overcalls, and you have an 11 count, you know that robot opener likely has a shapely 11 count to open, and that partner has a minimum overcall. There is no need to jump the bidding or cuebid here, as you can pass or manage the bidding to the right spot.

Likewise opening a "weak two" with a poor 12, or any 11, tends to work well since partner will not have many hands with game interest, and this usually gets to the right spot quickly, avoiding robot silliness that can occur on slow auctions. However opening a weak two with just a five card suit frequently fails, as the robot's decisions on when to compete or not to compete is erratic. When a robot opens a weak two against you, that erraticism can work for you, but the lack of "system on" after your 2NT and 3NT overcalls is painful.

When you open 1H or 1S on 11-13, the robot will tend to bid 1NT forcing since it usually doesn't have enough to force to game. It is dangerous to pass this (assuming you have the five card major promised), since the robot can easily have three card support and a shapely game invite hand. However the 1NT forcing structure is imperfect - I've had a robot bid 1S-1NT;-2D-3C on a 2-4-3-4, and the definition of 3C just says 4+Cs - the robots don't like to correct back to 2M on doubleton support. If the robot bids a 2/1 after 1H or 1S, it is never safe to pass it, even if robot is a passed hand - they love to hide support - for example, P-1S;-2D can easily have 3Ss. If the robots need any convention it is Drury, and it wouldn't hurt for them to read (scan) a book on 1NT forcing.

If you open 1C or 1D on 11-13, the weaker you are the stronger the temptation will be to pass robot's suit response. First remember by passing a new suit you are having "trick disposal" robot play the hand, and results tend to be less than the best. However if robot "partner" has already bid the major suit your side is going to play in, then passing an 11 or poor 12 count can at least keep robot at a makeable level, and the robot opponents tend not to balance on the auction 1m-1M;-P. If you don't know if you are in the right strain, then don't pass unless you are shooting for tops - then you might pass an auction like 1C-1S with a 11 count and 3 spades, hoping to catch five spades and a hand that would push too high if you had bid again.

After an inverted minors raise, 1m-2m, you can pass if minimum since partner will have a worse hand and you are playing it. Passing the inverted minor when 12-14 balanced tends to work poorly, since 2NT and 3NT will usually be a better scoring parking spot: after the inverted minor, bid 2NT on most balanced 12-14s, even though the system will tell you that 2NT is just 14 - give yourself 1 or 2 bonus points for being declarer. If your hand is minimum and unbalanced, passing the inverted minor is best, though occasionally responder is so shapely that five of a minor turns out to be a nice spot.

When robot opens and one is in the 12-13 range, opener is quite limited (equal or less high card points than you) even though he doesn't know you know that. When you can place the contract do so - for example after a 1M opening, with a good fit, don't bother with Jacoby, but just bid 4 of the major. Likewise if you open 1H or 1S on 11-13, and responder uses Jacoby, slam is quite unlikely with two minimum hands, so either just bid 4M even with shortness, or bid a fake shortness (e.g. 1M-2NT;3C showing singleton/void in clubs, then retreat to 4M) to sow the seeds of robot confusion.

Sometimes you can have quite a weak hand, which means the points are about even around the table, and you have a questionable opener. Never pass out - if need be reduce your amount of alcohol consumption. Actually there is one case, aside from 20 tequila shots, when you should consider passing out: doubleton or shorter in both majors, and 11 (or even 10, but never saw that) - on these the robots will often compete in a major, and it's hard to bring in a plus score.

Sometimes the robot will assume you have the best of the best, but you don't. For example it goes 4S-P-P-? to you, (4S by left hand robot). If you hover your mouse over various bids you will see that partner will assume a bid of 5C by you now has a lot of playing value. When I first started playing the robot tourneys, it would go 4S-P-P-5C(me);-P-6C-All Pass down one with lots of swearing by me. Now after playing thousands of hands, it goes 4S-P-P-5C(me, I'm not here to defend);-P-6C-All Pass, down one but no swearing, as I now know the robots have great earplugs.

If the robots were to take those earplugs out, and pass along some recommendations to the programming team, here are my top three:

1) Eliminate the Bot Tell (discussed in a previous post).
2) Only give the South hand the best hand 95% of the time, removing the certainty that everybody has a worst hand.
3) When North becomes declarer, rotate the hands temporarily in order that the non-robot plays all North-South contracts - as discussed on BBO forums this would make these individual contests (see previous post on this) even more a matter of skill.

The bridge crew of Battlestar Galactica believe that the Cylons plan to eradicate all human participation in order to increase the tourney's skill level, and have one of the "final five" robots reach 100,000 masterpoints first. To prevent this bot plot, please encourage the ACBL to keep the tourneys alive: let humans remain in the online robot tourneys.

The Robot Battles Part V - Tactical Bids

This is the penultimate of a series of posts on battling the BBO Robots.

The only time you should psych in a robot tourney is when you are bored, need some entertainment, and want to relearn why you should not psych. It boils down to:

- It is pointless psyching when you have the best hand (okay, not pointless, but pointfull);
- Your robot partner will believe your psych until the bitter end, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

However tactical bids work very well by telling little lies (when not vulnerable little white lies) that will put the robot opponents on the wrong trail, and that can put robot "partner" on the right one.

Some tactical bids involve nondisclosure, as disclosed in the last posting. For example, after a Jacoby transfer, 1NT-2D or 1NT-2H, if you want to superaccept I suggest you ignore the system (which involves showing a specific suit doubleton), and simply jump to 3 of the major regardless of where the doubleton is. The superaccept will still get you to game when you need to be there, and will often get the robot opponents to misdefend.

After 1NT-2S minor suit Stayman, it's best to always bid 2NT, even when holding a minor suit, since you want to put partner on the trail to 3NT, and not to five of a minor. Sometimes denying a four card or longer minor will get the robot opponents lost on the defense.

The most common tactical bid is the triple-x rated minor bid. When you have xxx in a minor suit (three little, or triple-x), bidding the suit can act as lead deflectional (okay, that's not in dictionaries just yet, but let's not get deflected). There are two common places for using the bid:

i) After robot "partner" opens 1H or 1S, bidding 2C or 2C with triple-x can put you on the trail to 3NT, and deflect the lead of this suit. A typical auction: 1M-2m;-2M(can be 5 if not extras)-2NT(game force, natural);-3NT. Even if robot raises the minor, he will often let you play in 3NT if that's your next bid.

ii) As an opening bid, with 11-13 high card points, xxx in the minor you bid, and a natural opening in the other minor (the one you ignore). There is some risk here, as it sometimes goes 1m-any;-1NT-2m: that is "partner" will pull your 1NT into 2 of your yucky minor, often a 4-3 fit and a poor score. However it works the majority of the time, and it is a useful way to shoot for tops - if your percentage is less than 57, it provides the opportunity to increase it without having lost too much when it fails. The auction 1m-overcall-3m seems to produce okay results, and don't retreat into 3NT as it often has no chance.

The key to tactical bids is little lies, not big ones. It's much like the notrump rule: a point and/or a card away: if you stretch that to two points (e.g. opening 1NT with 13) more bad things happen than good things. Likewise you can try opening 1C or 1D with two little, but you will soon find you have too little in your minor.

Tactical bids, or distortions as I sometimes call them, are useful to have in your arsenal for live bridge. When live defenders know you are an active bidder who can make these calls, when picturing your hand they have to consider a wider range of potential hands, which makes finding the best defense tougher. Consider using robot tourneys to practice up your tactical bids and get comfortable with them, and then make your live opponents less than comfortable playing against you.

Next and last: All for the best

The Robot Battles Part IV - Full Nondisclosure

This is the fourth of a series of posts on battling the BBO Robots.

The Robots have some strange ideas on what to lead - they love to lead singleton trump honors, or trumps on no-fit auctions, or random suits instead of the suit you bid - perhaps this is just robot revenge rage from being cutoff in the bidding. However their specialty is the passive lead against notrump: they love to lead from Jxx, Txx, Qxx, Jxxx, Txxx, and Qxxx in an unbid major against notrump. Their passive leads can be quite effective against those who assume robots would lead fourth best from longest and strongest, but the leads don't work particular well against those who know to watch out for them.

Picture that you have KQT3 in hearts and 15 points balanced. Now you would love to have a lead away from Jxx or Jxxx into this holding. How can you make this happen more often?

Say you open 1NT, and "partner" bids Stayman - if you now bid 2H, the normal Stayman reply, and partner bids 3NT, hearts are no longer unbid, and the robot leader (not Optimus Prime of the Transformers leading the autobots, but the robot leading a card) will no longer heart you.

The solution I found was to always reply 2D to Stayman with a decent four card or longer major - this convention is called Staybot (formerly Stayrobot, thanks Chris for the name suggestion). The exceptions are: always give the correct reply to Stayman if you have both majors (strong chances you have a major fit), or if you hold a weak four card major (since you don't want this suit led). There are a three management issues with this convention:

1) After 1NT-2C;-2D, if the Robot now uses Smolen, you cannot backtrack into your 4-4 fit - the Robot will always correct back to the five card major now that you denied 4 in the other major. For example, you hold four decent spades, and fewer than four hearts, and use the Staybot convention: 1NT-2C;2D-3S(Smolen 4S&5Hs);-4S-5H;-5S-6H;6S-7H: regardless of how many times you bid spades, once you bid 2D, it will always put you back in heart land: the auction needs to go either 1NT-2C;2D-3S;-3NT or 1NT-2C;2D-3S;-4H.

2) You miss your 4-4 fits to play in notrump. However much of the time you will get a nice lead (not Optimus for the robots), and make the same number of tricks in notrump as you would have in the suit contract.

3) After 2NT-3C;-3D-?, the robot sometimes gets discombobulated and bids 4C or 4D on assorted junk - if you cuebid 4H or 4S, sometimes it will bid 4NT Blackwood and you can pass that, or you may find yourself in 6NT. The bad news is that these 6NT contracts can have no play. The good news is you may still make them with the helping hands (claws?) of the robot opponents.

The use of the Staybot convention is an example of nondisclosure - we deny a major suit in the hope we get a helpful major suit lead. The other main place to use nondisclosure against the robots is after partner opens one-of-a-minor. On most hands, regardless of major suit length, or stoppers, just jump to 3NT: 1C-3NT or 1D-3NT. On average these bids are highly successful, although occasionally you will get to a terrible spot: don't write for refunds.

Over the major suit openings, nondisclosure is harder. Usually I bid 1NT (forcing), then 3NT, but there are two problems:

1) The robot opener can pass 1NT forcing after 1H-1NT;-? when holding 4-5 in the majors. The big plus (aside from 1NT making 6) is nobody taught the robots Flannery.

2) On auctions like 1M-1NT;-any-3NT;-?, the robot will sometimes pull to 4M with just 5 in his major, and now you are in robot hell: wrong contract played by your "partner", and now if you bid 4NT, its Blackwood. Don't write for refunds.

Another way to get to 3NT when robot opens 1M will be covered in our next posting: tactical bids.

The Robot Battles Part III - Pig Out

This is the third of a series of posts on battling the BBO Robots.

This is a picture of a nice robot, a gift from our oldest daughter:


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It cleans the house.

This is a picture of a bad robot:


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It also sucks, but not as a cleaning action.

Your primary duty in the bidding is to prevent any robot from becoming declarer, and especially the very dangerous GIB N robot pictured above. To do this you want to bid lots, but there are two landmines to avoid:

1) If you make a takeout double, or make a Michaels cuebid, or unusual or sandwich notrump, you are making a bid that gets the robot to bid the suit first - danger Will Robinson danger! - instead use natural bids (btw a takeout double is not "natural" but conventional), even if the bids are far less than perfect.

2) If you open and the opponents interfere while bad robot above remains silent, then if you bid again, bad robot will assume you have an amazing hand for freely bidding. For example, say you open 1NT, the next hand bids 2S, it comes back to you and you bid 3C - the robot thinks you have 15 to 17 high card points still, but it assumes you have 20 or so of what it calls "total points" - lots of playing value. In these situations you are in a tough spot - either pass out 2S, defend with bad robot and get a bad score, or bid, have bad robot push you overboard and get a bad score perhaps. It's the perhaps that can work for you: if you do bid, and get overboard, the opponents can misdefend to turn straw into gold.

The number one tactic to becoming declarer is the same tactic that second rate pros use with their third strata partners:

bid notrump first

For me the rule was any hand that was a point away and/or a card away from a 15-17 notrump opened 1NT. That meant a 1-3-4-5 14 count opened 1NT (one point away, and if you moved the club to the spade you would open 1NT). It meant a 5-4-1-3 18 count opened 1NT.

However a world class expert told me that he did not have good results in robot tourneys opening 1NT with 14s, so you are going to have to find your own comfort zone for opening 1NT, especially since the the bad robot pictured above can aggressively invite over your 1NT opening. I also used the point away/card away rule for 1NT overcalls, and I used it for 2NT 20-21 opening bids.

Thus a 12 board robot tourney might see me open 1NT 8 times, overcall 1NT once, open 2NT twice, and on the last of the dirty dozen have to bid a suit.

However there is yet another landmine: bad robot will never believe you have a five card or longer major if you open 1NT. Once I opened 1NT with a seven card major (okay more than once), and then bid my major, rebid my major, and rebid bid it once more (we were now several levels too high): the robot still assumed I only had four cards in the suit.

The good news is that your robot opponents, defending your contract after you opened notrump with a five card or longer major, will assume you don't have one either. For this to work well, hide your major length until later in the hand and the robots will often misdefend, assuming length in your hand in other suits.

Before you allow GIB N to play a hand remember this rule:

The No Dummy Rule: I'm not paying money to watch a robot misplay a hand

Something else to watch for is the "penalty double" by GIB N. If at all possible pull penalty doubles as GIB N will either have the wrong cards for it, and/or will make a silly lead, and/or will misdefend. Especially be careful of the situation where the opponents are bidding wildly, as they will often be shapely enough to bring home their contract (or in robot speak, bring the contract back to its docking station).

If you strive to hog the bidding, the robot tourneys become extra fun because you get to play the vast majority of the hands. I just brought in (from bridgebase's myhands) the hands I played from Oct 5 to the end of the month, and I was declarer on over 72% of them. Now that's pigging out on declarer play.

Next up: nondisclosure

The Robot Battles Part II - Disguise and the Bot Tell

This is the second of a series of posts on battling the BBO Robots.

In the late seventies at the University of Waterloo I attended a guest lecture by a world expert in artificial intelligence (AI). With incredible prescience he explained that the future of AI was not rule-based, by having a program judge a position by applying many rules (e.g. if the following twenty conditions are met, the best line will be a cross ruff), but by using processing power to examine end states (e.g. play out thousands of different lines, find out cross ruff works best in the majority of cases). Thirty years later, the BBO Robots with the GIB software use the processing power method to "think" - they are constantly running simulations of the current position to determine what will likely work best.

To run these simulations the BBO Robots take what they "know" - what information they have about the current layout - produce many example hands that match the knowledge, and then quickly play out each of the example hands to determine what seems to work best much or all of the time. It repeats this step ever time it has to play a card, and can even change its mind from card-to-card if new knowledge has been gained, or if the example set of hands becomes skewed in a new direction.

One of the best ways to combat the BBO Robots is to hinder them from knowing the true situation. If they create the wrong example hands, they will often play less than optimal. Thus one should try to disguise or hide the actual situation from the robots, and to only reveal key information when you need to.

This matches the situation in live bridge, where most players don't disguise their holdings enough. BBO Robot tourneys are a great place to practice your disguise techniques, given that Halloween is over and trying out disguises at your local bridge club may not be well received - okay, given that you want to try the techniques over and over again, to see when and how to use them.

Say you are declarer, and have 642 in hand in a suit, with decent length and strength in dummy. The vast majority of players will play the 2 first, the 4 next time, and the 6 last, even though saving the 6 and the 4 makes absolutely no difference. It can be better to play the 6 in some circumstances, so that your opponent, live or robot, doesn't know where the 4 and 2 is. For the robots, not knowing where the 4 and 2 is can change the example hands they produce to try to work out the best play to hurt you.

Against live opponents you want to use a mixture of disguise and truth - sometimes play the 2, sometimes the 4 and sometimes the 6. If you always played the 6 from 642, they would then know what you have or don't have when you play the 2 first. However Robots don't learn from hand-to-hand - they treat you as a new opponent. Thus you want to maximize your use of disguise against the Robot opponents, and that's why the tourneys are a great place to try out these techniques.

Say I opened 1NT with a six card major (more on this in the next post), and end there. If the Robots lead that suit, I will pick my cards to play the suit as if I had a nice three card suit, instead of true situation. The Robots will often be fooled by this disguise - they will assume, in their example layouts, that their partner is the one with the length in the suit, and defend, and mis-defend accordingly. Always look to assist the Robots in misreading the actual situation, by using disguise, and hiding information.

Say you are playing out a hand, and you will need to give up a trick to the Robots, and at that point they can hurt you with one play, and help with another. If you delay giving up the trick, the Robots gather more and more information, and then when you give up the trick their example layouts are very accurate. If you give you the trick early, and have hidden key information, the Robots will often form a wrong picture of the hand, and make the play that helps you.

This brings us to the "tell" and how it can help you. As Wikipedia tell us:

A tell in poker is a subtle but detectable change in a player's behavior or demeanor that gives clues to that player's assessment of his hand.

In live poker at the very cheap levels, most of your opponents will seemed to have gone to the Jessica Simpson school of acting. For the robots, early in the hand they don't know how to maintain a poker face, let alone read the song like Christopher Walken:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJDx3H_hvI8&feature=player_embedded

Early in the hand, if a robot has a number of choices to make, it generates examples and determines what seems to be the best play. If the robot has limited or no choice, it does not need to do this, and can play fast. Hence robots can quickly play singletons, or from cards that are equivalently the same (e.g. 345, or if the 7 has been played, 568). Thus the speed the robot plays a card is a "tell".

Say you have KT9764 in your hand and AJ3 in dummy. Early in the hand, you lead the 9, LHR (left hand robot) plays small quickly, you win the ace, and RHR plays small slightly slow. Now you led the jack, and RHR hitches (i.e. slow plays), before playing small in the suit. What is the robot thinking? If he didn't have the queen, there would be no need for robot thought, so let the jack ride.

Important warning 1: the same "tell" does not work later in the hand, since the robot does not have much cards left for thinking - the robot can play in tempo, and is quite capable of smooth ducks.

Important warning 2: the programmers can (and should) remove the "tell" by adding appropriate pauses into the robot play.

Watch for the bot "tell", and remember the longer the bot thinks, the more it has to think about.

The longest "tell" I've seen in the bidding is after 1H(bot)-P-1NT (forcing)-P;-?. If the robot opener has exactly 4Ss and 5Hs, he will now take a long time to rebid, sometimes rebidding 2H, sometimes passing, and sometimes bidding a minor. Most other hands provide for easy rebids following the structure, but this hand type does not fit into the rebid structure provided to opener.

Next up: hoggin' the hand.