BBO Discussion Forums: Weak two bids - BBO Discussion Forums

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-12, 08:15, said:

BBF posters often condemn condescension and insolence directed against individuals.

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-12, 08:15, said:

With little risk of physical retaliation, some posters unfetter their ids, when losing an argument.
Moderators do their best but fight a losing battle

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-12, 14:25, said:

Apparently not

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-12, 14:25, said:

Yes I did. But Josh at absolute no point in the article emphasized requiring defensive quick tricks in order to open. The fact that he posted examples that happened to have 1 QT doesn't mean that without 1 QT he would definitely not open. He didn't post any examples like "oh here's a hand that has a good 6 cd suit but I won't open it because I don't have any quick tricks".

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Ship-shape for what purpose? How is that 1 QT going to help you bid more accurately? What superior contract are you going to reach by passing, or which worse contract are you going to avoid by passing, that is going to gain you matchpoints or gain you IMPS?

You are advocating having a QT just for the purpose of having a QT. You haven't explained how this is going to lead you to a better result in the end. Are you just going to pass throughout? Are you planning on showing a 2 suiter? What if it's at 3♠ or 4♠ already when it comes back around?

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You get 1st round control of clubs, but instead of 1 fast loser in the outside suits you have 3. It's a tradeoff. Having a side six bagger also means possibility of 4-5 winners in that suit with a little help from partner, and fewer losers outside. Side 4 bagger, that only gets you up to 3. Having the side suit is better offensively, on average. Good offense favors bidding over passing. Bidding right away causes the opponents more problems usually than passing and giving them an unobstructed first round.

Having the QT requirement prevents you from jamming the opponents, and you haven't demonstrated at all how it would let partner make more accurate decisions.

MrAce, on 2017-May-12, 13:56, said:

MrAce:

Of course the X is penalty. The only reason we went down a rabbit hole is that a responder indicated that she would never play again with anyone who opened a weak 2 and pulled her subsequent penalty X, presumably because such a player was a rank beginner far weaker than she. I was just trying to point out that lots of expert players would on rare occasions pull such a penalty X, so to understate things, her comment was a bit of an overstatement.

RS: The majority of us have been in a small minority on an issue. Sure we fight our corner, but we do not keep coming back and saying the same things over and over. You play your game and let others play theirs, and hope your views are vindicated at the table, not in the court of public opinion

If you feel that ceasing to post on the matter is conceding defeat, where does it end?

PS I have a regular partner who has asked that we promise the A or K for a 2-or 3-level preempt in 1st or 2nd. It is not my favourite approach, but it is surprisingly effective.

miamijd, on 2017-May-12, 16:50, said:

I understand you. It is just not an expert topic. The question asked in OP makes this very clear. The forum chosen to ask this question makes it clear also. This is why I, rightly or wrongly, found it odd to mention the VERY RARE hand types and their expert practices to be mentioned. In the poll I set up in BW (http://bridgewinners...m-2-4fs03h8f5d/) even when someone faces the VERY RARE position the 6-5 hand weak 2 (i did not post the 6-6 hand in order to be fair to you and to prevent the abstentions) there are still more votes for pass over DBL than those who decided to bid.

So what you wrote here, considering the OP, is a VERY RARE constructed hand and even then you do not have reasonable majority to support your view. My reaction was more about the hand you chose to express your view and the topic you chose rather than a reaction to your view. I am reminding all of you that we have someone who bravely came here and asked a very simple question, obviously trying to improve. I react to things that may confuse them. Writing a 6-6 hand or showing an article from a well known player who talks about totally different subject and to totally different level of audience and asking for respect is weird to me. (I know that was not you)

What is next? Are we going to mention the hands where responder can pass a reverse? We all know this exists especially if your style responds at 1 level almost with nothing. But mentioning this to someone who basically asks us "what is reverse?" is probably nothing but forum masturbating! I am all up for discussing these things but I would never do it in a topic where someone obviously has no clue what a reverse is, what does it show and how to avoid it when your hand does not meet the requirements of a reverse. All he needs to know is that pd can not pass this at this moment. When someone asks something, the way they ask, there are actually plenty of flags that shows who you are responding to. But this is not the first time I witnessed people are so keen to show their deep knowledge rather than putting themselves in the shoes of someone who sincerely wants to improve and has some serious basics to learn.

MrAce, on 2017-May-12, 18:30, said:

Not trying to show deep knowledge. I think most folks missed my point, which is quite relevant to an int / adv forum. The point was that holding to hard and fast rules, which several responders recommended, Is not good strategy in bridge and teaching players to "always" do x or "never" do y doesn't serve them well at all. Bridge is about logic and analysis not merely blindly following a bunch of rote rules. If you want to argue with my example, fine. That wasn't the point at all. The point was that saying "I'd never play with someone who did x" is silly. There are going to be rare times when x is reasonable and top experts might do it.

Cheers
Mike

Stephen Tu, on 2017-May-12, 15:35, said:

Josh's article highlights our competing concerns.

"Preempting has proven too effective a tactic to limit to the ‘traditional’ hands. So, in exchange for the gain of added frequency, we pay the price of decreased precision in describing our hand."

In Bridge, you can either have "bidding accuracy" or a "higher frequency of opens". You can't have both and if you could, that book would have sold out a long time ago and we could all be Bridge Masters ruling the game.

The auction board is full of promises by various parties. What I want from my partner is honesty and "representational faithfulness". By that, I mean I want to know my partner's bid means what it says and that my partner's hand, shape, and features aligns with my initial expectations. I want a partner that keeps his promise (bid). It is important that partnerships minimize "expectations gaps" to maintain harmony and also to negotiate a final contract that is tenable and suitable.

When a partner makes an unconventional opening bid that is rife with surprises, he may succeed in opening 1st, but now the respondent has to "unpack" this "promise" and figure out how many, if any, inconsistencies his partner's hand contains. He must do this before deciding where to place the team's contract next. This adds additional risk for interpretation error and we should not downplay how difficult it is to mitigate this risk.

• Has someone ever made a promise to you and then you were unpleasantly surprised when their actions didn't align with the promises they initially made?
  
• How did you feel about the person who made a promise they couldn't keep?
  
• How did that affect your ability to trust them in the future?

Bridge is all about managing relationships and expectations. If you are violating "unwritten" rules and guidelines and breaking promises in the auction bidding, you are planting some seeds that will bear very strange, bitter fruit for the partnership.

Just a few things to think about. . . from the other side of the table.
====================================================================================================================================================

I gather from your posts that you are more concerned about the team's opening frequency and jamming up the opponents before they jam us up. That is a nice goal and consistent with a zero-sum game mentality, but that is not my primary concern. My primary tactical concern is "bidding accuracy" and "representational faithfulness". If we get this primary goal right, I believe we can accomplish my secondary tactical concern which is jamming up the opponents. To me, jamming them up is my bonus not my purpose.

Let me be clear, my concern is not more valid/important than yours. It just means we have competing objectives, strategies, and game plans for our bridge play and our partnership agreements. In my view, a call of PASS doesn't mean that the opponents have won the war. It just means that you have a distributional 5 HCP hand that doesn't conform to our agreed-upon definitions of a 1 of a suit open or a standard, plain vanilla weak 2 open. So to me, PASS, is the best call that describes your hand 1st round.

But I get it, you want to open 1st and that is your wheelhouse.

It took me a while to see what was going on here. That is why BBO needs to add some survey questions that we can answer and display because partnership harmony is very important for the bridge game and some partners may have different objectives as can be seen here.

Kit Woolsey: Diversion is about deciding whether a marginal hand is worth a weak 2 (Kit plays multi but the principle is similar).
Kit Woolsey: Hammans rule recommends opening a 3♠ on a ten-high suit at favourable vulnerability.
Kit's Korner on BridgeWinners is an excellent "over my shoulder" guide to how good players think.

nige1, on 2017-May-14, 01:00, said:

Kit is a great contributor on many subjects. His preempts are 'not mainstream'.

I split redspawn's example hand and follow up discussion to a separate thread here.

diana_eva, on 2017-May-15, 10:52, said:

I was thinking of a better place to put it.

miamijd, on 2017-May-11, 13:32, said:

Here is part of the problem. A weak 2 bid used to be narrowly defined so your partner will have a quick "snapshot" of your hand much like a crisp, clean strong 1NT bid describing a balanced hand with 15-17 HCP.

However, that picture becomes fuzzy once again when you try to attach a void suit and a 5 card minor suit as a possibility to what was once narrowly defined.

K&R rates this hand as perfectly average at 9.90 points (given distribution) and I will buy that.

That makes this hand perfectly average with nothing interesting to report yet, but I have this feeling that once partner comes alive, your hand's value with shoot through the roof. There are times you need to jam up your opponents and there are other times that you need to let nature take its course. Let nature takes it course. Let your partner in on the fun and do not preemptively rob him of the chance to describe his hand by force fitting a weak 2 bid for this 6-6-1-0 hand. This hand is so distributional that it has that 6-5+ freakish thing going on so you can start doing some nice things after you pass 1st round.

Let your partner do his job 1st. If partner decides to pass, have a little fun with this hand afterwards -- you definitely have the distribution to give the opponents a run for their money.

RedSpawn, on 2017-May-17, 14:02, said:

Definitely an average hand with nothing interesting to report.

Passing and then acting after partner passes will be anything but fun.