[RunemPard]

Hello all,

I have yet to play in a live tournament, but hope to soon. I can understand that all tournament rules regarding bids may vary, however, what bids may not be allowed? I am aware that many tournaments forbid the use of multi 2D, or any bid similar in nature. This brings me to a question...

The general reason for this is that the suit is not known to the defenders, making it difficult to assess the hand and make the proper call. This leads me to wonder...if 2D multi is forbidden, is 2C also forbidden? To many partnerships a 2C opening signals 22+ HCP, or a GF hand. It says nothing about the suit held, sometimes a multiple point value. I have opened 2C with far lower than 20 points in the past myself.

So my question is...exactly what bids are not allowed in most tournament play? Should 2C also not fall under this? Because after reading reasons why 2D multi is forbidden, 2C also falls under these same restrictions for me.

Thank you,

Don

[Cthulhu D]

This depends heavily on country. Where are you planning to play?

[kenberg]

It appears that you are straddling two issues:
A. What are the rules in most tournaments?
B. What should be the rules in tournaments?

Just about everyone has an opinion about B. No final resolution will occur soon. As to A, yes, as noted, it depends on where you play or else the question is just too open ended. I play in the US. For a brief and shining moment, the multi was allowed at our unit game. No more I think. Defending against 1NT we can use 2♣ to show a single (unknown) suited hand but we cannot use 2♦ to show a single (unknown) major suited hand. Or at least I think that's the rules. No real reason for it, just policy.

[RunemPard]

Greatly confused, yes...lol. Plan to be playing in Sweden or the USA. Just looking to find from others' experiences what bids could not be used so I know what to expect.

[Cthulhu D]

You are going to see very different stuff in Sweden and America, very, very different.

[Zelandakh]

The reason why the Multi 2♦ is restricted, and that similar bids are generally banned, is that they can show a WEAK hand where the suit is UNKNOWN. By contrast a 2♣ opening usually shows only STRONG hands. The regulations tend to assume that opening bids made on strong hands are constructive whereas opening bids made on weak hands can be designed as purely destructive. Destructive bidding with weak hands is something that many weaker players have difficulties with - in some cases even strong players too. Apart from the Multi-2♦ (and its brother the Multi-2♣) bids that have weak options showing different suits are often called "Brown Sticker Conventions" even though this name actually only refers to WBF regulations. You should probably avoid playing such conventions as they are generally only allowed in high level competition unless your local Bridge Organisation or club is especially lenient.

[barmar]

When you play in the USA, the rules on allowed conventions will most likely be ACBL's General Convention Chart, which you can find at http://www.acbl.org/...tion-Chart.pdf.

[mattias]

The rules for allowed systems in Sweden are here

http://www.svenskbri...rickar_2006.pdf
An English version can be found in appendix 2 of this document

http://www.svenskbri...estival2011.pdf

They are based on dots. The more difficult to defend against the more dots an opening bid gets, and for each competition there's an upper limit to the number of dots allowed. Overcalls and doubles are not regulated.

[Cthulhu D]

 mattias, on 2012-January-13, 17:10, said:

The rules for allowed systems in Sweden are here

http://www.svenskbri...rickar_2006.pdf
An English version can be found in appendix 2 of this document

http://www.svenskbri...estival2011.pdf

They are based on dots. The more difficult to defend against the more dots an opening bid gets, and for each competition there's an upper limit to the number of dots allowed. Overcalls and doubles are not regulated.

Reading that (purely out of general intrest), it looks like if you were willing to play your other bids natural with 4 card majors, forcing pass with a 1D fert is legal in most tournaments. You might have problems just for the difficulty or opening diamonds hands. Have I completely misread it?

[mattias]

 Cthulhu D, on 2012-January-15, 22:51, said:

Reading that (purely out of general intrest), it looks like if you were willing to play your other bids natural with 4 card majors, forcing pass with a 1D fert is legal in most tournaments. You might have problems just for the difficulty or opening diamonds hands. Have I completely misread it?

Unless the forcing pass is strong (15+hcp) the responses to pass would count as opening bids and get dots, unless they are gameforcing. If you put your conventional responses to pass into 1D you wouldn't get any more dots though.

It is easy to construct legal forcing pass systems without a fert though. Let pass be 0-7 or 16+, and have the 1C response be either 0-7 or 16+ as well. This gives you three dots and plenty of room to for further artificiality.

[Cthulhu D]

 mattias, on 2012-January-16, 14:03, said:

Unless the forcing pass is strong (15+hcp) the responses to pass would count as opening bids and get dots, unless they are gameforcing. If you put your conventional responses to pass into 1D you wouldn't get any more dots though.

It is easy to construct legal forcing pass systems without a fert though. Let pass be 0-7 or 16+, and have the 1C response be either 0-7 or 16+ as well. This gives you three dots and plenty of room to for further artificiality.

That's actually super cool. Intresting point about the responses to pass. Cheers for the clarification.

[FrancesHinden]

I also read this out of interest. I like the idea of a 'budget' of artificiality which you can spread out among your opening bids as you like.

[FrancesHinden]

 RunemPard, on 2012-January-13, 05:28, said:

Greatly confused, yes...lol. Plan to be playing in Sweden or the USA. Just looking to find from others' experiences what bids could not be used so I know what to expect.

So now having read the Swedish rules:
- in the USA unless you are playing in high-level events, generally you can't play any weak artificial openings, and there's lots of other stuff you can't play (e.g. transfer responses to partner's opening 1C or transfers after an overcall)
- In Sweden you can play whatever you like, except there are some restrictions on how many weak or intermediate artificial opening bids you can have but everything else is anything goes.

[barmar]

 FrancesHinden, on 2012-January-17, 14:11, said:

- In Sweden you can play whatever you like, except there are some restrictions on how many weak or intermediate artificial opening bids you can have but everything else is anything goes.

Which means that opponents may have to be prepared for almost anything, even in low-level events, but not multiple things by the same opponents. What's the point of that? Do combinations of artificial openings make things that much harder to defend against?

[Cthulhu D]

 barmar, on 2012-January-17, 15:44, said:

Which means that opponents may have to be prepared for almost anything, even in low-level events, but not multiple things by the same opponents. What's the point of that? Do combinations of artificial openings make things that much harder to defend against?

Opening 1C may be 3 appears to attract dots in the system as 'artifical', so the regulation on how 'artifical' your bids are is pretty tight. This is also for high level events, Tournament directors may also restrict the budget to 0 dots for low level no fear events (according to the regulations, I have no idea if that happens in practice) which I think means everyone needs to play ACOL or similar.