[mga010]

I am looking for a sensible discussion of the benefits and drawbacks between Acol (4 card majors, weak NT) and 2/1 (5 card majors and strong NT), just to mention two antipodes. I would like to read some expert opinion, or even better, some data to support the one over the other.

[pescetom]

Almost any internet discussion about Acol is effectively a comparison of Acol versus 2/1, just hit the search button of this forum or BW.


As for data to support one over the other, you could start with the number of Bermuda Bowl victories playing Acol (one, in 1955) versus 5 card majors (at least half the editions to date). Or the number of pairs playing Acol in the last Bermuda Bowl.

[DavidKok]

I don't know of such a detailed discussion, though hopefully others can correct me. A quick search revealed https://www.bridgeba...em-is-dominant/ but it discusses frequency more than effectiveness.
One source that attempted a systematic review of different bidding systems is Jan Eric Larsson's "Good, Better, Best" where he had computers fight it out using double dummy solvers and manually programmed system definitions. As far as I know this is one of the few attempts at a direct comparison of systems through their results.

In real play all system designs are little more than a skeleton for the full system. The followups on second and third rounds of the bidding, the appropriate places to upgrade or (heavens) downgrade, the inferences in competition all add up to the old wisdom: a strong player with a bad system will outperform a weak player with a good system. Part of this is because what is commonly called a 'bidding system' really only tends to describe one or two rounds of bidding in most sequences, but part of it is also just the truth. I really like the way John Montgomery put it in his introduction of his Revision system notes, so I'll cite the segment in full:

John Montgomery said:

Most people think that their bidding “system” is whatever they write on their convention card. To them, if they play 2/1 Game Force, 15-17 notrumps, and other popular conventions and treatments, they are playing a system. If they play weak notrumps, that is a different system. Precision, or some other big club method, would be yet another system. They are wrong. What most people call a “system” is nothing more than a framework or outline for a real bidding system. The stuff that goes on the convention card is only the barest of essentials. If you are accustomed to playing 15-17 notrumps, with a 1NT rebid showing 12-14, and then you exchange the meanings of the two bids, you have not really changed your system. You have changed two of the treatments you play. All the rest is the same (although if you are wise, you will add some extra treatments to deal with occasions when the opponents interfere, so that opener, when deprived of his 1NT rebid, will have some way to show his extra values).
Some poor fools go so far as to think that if they put 12-14 on their convention cards, they are now playing K-S (which actually is a true system, as elaborated by Edgar Kaplan in the pamphlet Kaplan-Sheinwold Updated – although this not to say that very many people actually play it as Edgar wrote it). A convention card is not a system. Nor does writing up a few pages of notes to add a bit more detail than can be fitted into the limited space on a standard convention card give you a system worthy of the name. Yet this is all most players have.
Perhaps surprisingly, the basic framework, or outline, or convention-card-level description of the methods you play is not overwhelmingly important. A competent pair could probably pick up the convention card of another competent pair and, using that as a starting point, devise a true system that is just about as good as whatever would be arrived at by starting with their own personal preferences. How can I say this? How, for example, can it not make a difference what notrump range you play? Or whether or not your strong bid is 1C or 2C or something else? Well, it does make a difference, but not that big a difference. We know this because of the remarkable variety of basic approaches that have been successful in actual play. Notrump openings of the preemptive variety (10-12 or, where allowable, 9-11 or 9-12) have been used successfully. So have weak and strong notrumps of various ranges, and even superstrong notrumps (17-19, 17-20, even 18-20). “Standard” methods have won national and world championships, and so have big clubs, forcing-but-not-necessarily-strong clubs, and methods even farther out than that. People who don’t even bid their longest suit first (canapé) have won at the highest level. What is really important is not the basic framework you play on the first round of bidding, but that you know what your bids mean after that. And this is where most players fall down. For various reasons, they do not put in the work to develop a true system, one that is internally self-consistent and sufficiently detailed to make their framework function optimally.

As for the two extremes you mentioned, I'll share a few of my personal thoughts.

• I think the strong NT is a slight winner compared to the weak NT, and Jan Eric's book made the same claim (even when looking only at Acol, i.e. all natural and 4cM) as did Danny Kleinman's "The Notrump Zone", though he advocates opening heavy and an even higher 1NT range. A strong NT lets the partnership find their optimal strain more often (as we won't preempt partner with a weak NT opening) when it is our deal. Also I think opening aggressively is a long term winner, which clashes with the philosophy of the weak NT (where a 1-suit opening, especially 1-of-a-minor, promises extras through values or playing strength). There is over half a century of discussion on WNT versus SNT though, e.g. here is a somewhat recent round of the argument.
  
• A strong NT enables a semiforcing NT to an extent. The auction 1M-1NT (6-11) is very uncomfortable if opener can have a strong (15-17) notrump, as 1NT may well be our last making spot but also we may have game on, and we don't have a natural rebid either. I've played 2/1 with a WNT for a while but even if you prefer a WNT in Acol I think it pays to play a strong one in a 2/1 style system. If you prefer a FNT this difference is no longer as pervasive though, as you'd have to find a rebid (probably a 3cm) with a balanced hand anyway.
  
• 5cM versus 4cM is complicated, and I prefer a 5cM system in standard. With modern tools like balanced club, unbalanced diamond, T-Walsh or Dutch Doubleton or other artificial structures over 1♣ we are well ahead on the uncontested auctions by starting lower, and gadgets such as transfers in competition and artificial uses of 2NT let us handle the weak and strong balanced hands in 1♣ reasonably well in competition too. It is also worth pointing out that traditional Acol is something one of my partners calls "a 4.5+ card major system", in that the 1M openings are rarely a 4-card suit. In fact, if you open four card suits up the line, 1♠ is 4 only when 4=3=3=3 outside your NT range (and playing a weak NT cuts that frequency noticeably too) and 1♥ is 4 only on 3=4=3=3 or 4=4=(32) outside your NT range, and I've even seen versions where some of these hands are opened 1♣ instead. If you somewhat regularly open a 4cM ahead of a 4cm that changes the math considerably, but if you do not these systems are not as different as they may seem at first glance.
  
• Lastly I think for students of the game 2/1 is more appropriate. The auctions are easier, as we split slam from game from partscore investigation relatively early. It also teaches some overarching bidding principles, such as not jumping around much without a good reason and game before slam. Internationally, especially online, it can also be easier to find partners when you are well versed in 2/1. Personally I consider 2/1 to have an easier learning curve and a more advantageous tradeoff between effectiveness and complexity compared to most other systems, and I therefore recommend picking it up early. That being said though, keep in mind John's quote above, and if you have mastered a full system and then swap to rudimentary 2/1 your score will obviously suffer.

[jdiana]

Sorry if this is a little off-topic but this thread had me googling around a bit and I saw some references to the Ambra system, which I've seen before but never followed up on.

Does anyone know (1) whether this system is maintained, in the sense of being updated based on playing experience, and (2) where I could find a write-up of the current system? (The link on Bridge With Dan seems to be broken.)

Thanks!

[DavidKok]

I don't know whether the Ambra system is still maintained. I think it was a parallel to/precursor of modern Dutch Doubleton - the systems share many similarities, and was created in big part by Benito Garozzo who was a system coach for the Dutch teams at some point in the past. You can find the system notes using old links and the internet archive, for example here.

[jdiana]

Thanks David!

[mga010]

@DavidKok : Thanks for the elaborate response.

There are two viewpoints of this discussion, however. One is the expert championship viewpoint, and the other is about teaching and everyday club playing. Montgomery may be right when he says that experts can adapt any system to their needs and that the basics don't really matter, although I keep my doubts if this can be said in that generality. When teaching is involved, the picture is different, because teaching a complicated system with lots of conventions and "lie bids" is not a good basis to start with. As to data, I found e.g. that the 2/1 GF happens remarkably seldom in real play, and I think a system should help out with the most frequent bidding problems. But this is just my amateur thought.

@pescetom : Success in bowls is only a good measurement if the system are equally frequent at the start. They are not.

Now, I have gone a bit too far. In reality, I could live with any decent system. The problems of the average club player are indeed not related to their basic system.

[mikeh]

 mga010, on 2024-January-08, 09:36, said:

@DavidKok : Thanks for the elaborate response.

There are two viewpoints of this discussion, however. One is the expert championship viewpoint, and the other is about teaching and everyday club playing. Montgomery may be right when he says that experts can adapt any system to their needs and that the basics don't really matter, although I keep my doubts if this can be said in that generality. When teaching is involved, the picture is different, because teaching a complicated system with lots of conventions and "lie bids" is not a good basis to start with. As to data, I found e.g. that the 2/1 GF happens remarkably seldom in real play, and I think a system should help out with the most frequent bidding problems. But this is just my amateur thought.

@pescetom : Success in bowls is only a good measurement if the system are equally frequent at the start. They are not.

Now, I have gone a bit too far. In reality, I could live with any decent system. The problems of the average club player are indeed not related to their basic system.

Success in WC events is actually an excellent indicator of relative efficacy of a method.

Why?

Because with the advent of professional bridge players, bridge saw an ever increasing development of ‘systems’ as described by Montgomery. The best players in the world were able to dedicate a huge amount of time and effort into developing methods that won.

Now, this has resulted in some very complex and esoteric methods and it’s important to understand that ‘2/1’ is indeed merely a large tent beneath which one finds enormous variation in system. 2/1 describes a basic philosophy. I play two different ‘systems’ with my two main partnerships. In one we have a few dozen pages of notes, in the other closer to 100 densely written pages. Both are ‘2/1’ and both use T-Walsh principles but, as examples, we use very different responses to notrump opening bids, our ‘BART’ methods are very different, our major suit raise structures are different, in one we use a very large number of transfers while in the other a lot fewer, and so on.

But the important point is that at the higher levels of the game the past 50 years have been a laboratory in which various ideas are put to the ultimate test: in an environment in which all of the players are truly expert (with the exception of a few wealthy clients who are a bit like the tourists who get carried (in some cases literally) up Everest) and can play whatever methods they think are best….nobody plays Acol.

What that means is that the type of player who chooses Acol is not the type of player who is good enough to compete at the highest levels of the game. Bidding theory has evolved on what could be called a crude version of Darwinism…survival of the fittest. If the philosophy underlying Acol (and it is a philosophy…find and read A Design For Bidding and you’ll see an early version of Acol described along with the ideas underlying the system choices) were equally powerful as that underlying 2/1 methods, you can be sure that there’d be pairs winning or at least competing with some success at the highest levels. You don’t.

[DavidKok]

I specifically think that 2/1 GF is easier to learn than Acol. It has fewer exceptions and less memorisation. You may choose to add on gadgets and exceptions and whatnot, but I do not recommend this when just starting out.

The most frequent bidding problems are those in competitive auctions, and with a few notable exceptions bidding theorists have done diddly squat to help with that. 2/1 versus Acol in particular also doesn't really help with that much, other than the opening bid the systems are off in competition. Personally I think if you want to help beginners with their most frequent problems we should start with the goals of bidding (game versus partscore, major suit versus notrump, some simple competitive auctions) and how to bid balanced hands and how to bid when partner shows a balanced hand.

[Tramticket]

Where are you playing your bridge? And what system do your potential partner's play? Bridge is a parttnership game and there is no point in learning Acol, if you play at a club where no one else plays Acol. You will struggle to get partners and get misleading advice from those around you. Conversely, if everyone in the club plays Acol, why learn two-over-one?

And I fundamentally disagree with David Kok - there is nothing easy about learning two-over-one. Acol does have the advantage in simplicity. Which suit to open in Acol? Easy! Open the longest one, don't make up a suit!

[pescetom]

 mga010, on 2024-January-08, 09:36, said:

@pescetom : Success in bowls is only a good measurement if the system are equally frequent at the start. They are not.

Frequency of systems in bowls is a measure of their perceived chance of success.
Partnerships choose and adopt systems, they are not condemned to play the national favourite (even in the England team).
@mikeh who has played at that level already summed up how Acol is seen.

 mga010, on 2024-January-08, 09:36, said:

As to data, I found e.g. that the 2/1 GF happens remarkably seldom in real play, and I think a system should help out with the most frequent bidding problems. But this is just my amateur thought.

The 2/1 GF helps out with a frequent and most important bidding problem, how to communicate game going (or better) joint strength ASAP and without consuming precious bidding space.
But this is just my amateur thought after playing first four card majors and then 2/1 (I enjoyed both, unlike the 5 card major SA I briefly played between them).

As for teaching, I agree with others that we should start from hand shapes and evaluation and what makes game or slam feasible or not. Systems are a consequence and Conventions not necessary at first.
It is feasible to teach 2/1 from the start and I think that is better than most alternatives, although it does make some "natural" principles harder to grasp.
On paper there is a good argument for starting with a simpler system before introducing 2/1 later, but I've only seen it actually work with an exceptionally good teacher using a Strong Club system.
I am firmly against teaching 4 card majors as a "natural" basis before introducing 2/1, having seen this fail time and time again. The 4 card system is at least as difficult to learn as 2/1 and the switch is traumatic and confusing, with many players remaining stranded in the middle.

[Gilithin]

 mikeh, on 2024-January-08, 09:45, said:

nobody plays Acol.

Helgemo-Helness were nobodies? While not too many play any form of Acol at the top level, nobody is a slight overbid. Swiss Acol, at least, is still twitching.

One way of thinking about this specific system discussion is what a pair opens with specifically a 4=4=3=2 outside of NT range. Early systems like Acol typically opened 1♥; then pairs found that an extra step by opening 1♦ was beneficial with few side effects; and now the trend is towards opening the hand 1♣. There are secondary benefits of the 1♣ opening - transfer responses are efficient and the unbalanced diamond is a winner in competition - but the fundamental system shift is in moving some hands down to 1♣, which is chronically underused in natural systems according to bidding theory. The only real way of improving the distribution of hands per opening bid from this is more or less to switch to an artificial system of some type. Since many prefer not to do that, even those who think they have a small advantage, 2/1 with a short club is the most efficient semi-natural method available.

[pescetom]

 Gilithin, on 2024-January-08, 11:18, said:

Helgemo-Helness were nobodies?

No, but they were also playing 1♠ 5 card, a Strong NT which could contain almost anything, inverted minors, 1M-2N GF, Multi, 2M 5M5m, Namyats... not sure many would recognise it as Acol.

[jillybean]

What I have observed is that ACOL (4 card M, 12-14nt) is taught and played at the club (NZ). Some clubs go as far to say new players are NOT allowed to play anything else.
Anyone looking at becoming more than a average club player is not playing ACOL, they may call it ACOL but they are not playing 12-14nt and 4cM. It has little resemblance to ACOL as I understand it.

[P_Marlowe]

 Tramticket, on 2024-January-08, 10:13, said:

<snip>
And I fundamentally disagree with David Kok - there is nothing easy about learning two-over-one. Acol does have the advantage in simplicity. Which suit to open in Acol? Easy! Open the longest one, don't make up a suit!

And everything that looks nonforcing is nonforcing, even, if it makes no real sense, just bcause you need to cater for some stuff, that
was part of the game several decades ago ...

Anyway: I dont think, that teaching Acol is simpler / harder than teaching 2/1.
To learn a system / to learn the game you need to play, this means practice, this means partners, that are willing to play with you.

The truth is, for most auctions there is no real difference, ..., 5 card vs 4 card major obv. changes the meaning, but you raise, when you
have fit, otherwise you bid a 2 suit on the 2 level or 1NT. Opener showes his distribution and with the 4th bid, responder sets the contract.

[P_Marlowe]

 pescetom, on 2024-January-08, 12:23, said:

No, but they were also playing 1♠ 5 card, a Strong NT which could contain almost anything, inverted minors, 1M-2N GF, Multi, 2M 5M5m, Namyats... not sure many would recognise it as Acol.

That is the 2nd issue question rearding Acol, but the prepared 1C opening on 3 with 4333 is / was a Acol flavor, I came across
similar a 15-17 NT opening bid, and Multi is also common in Acol land, ..., but the question what flavor of Acol is the real Acol
is a question, similar, what is the real 2/1 system.

[paulg]

 pescetom, on 2024-January-08, 07:26, said:

As for data to support one over the other, you could start with the number of Bermuda Bowl victories playing Acol (one, in 1955) versus 5 card majors (at least half the editions to date). Or the number of pairs playing Acol in the last Bermuda Bowl.

Even if you just look at the systems used in the British Home Internationals, you will only find a handful of Acol pairs with 5-card majors, strong no trump being the dominant system.

The same is true in the (respective) UK trials and strong UK events: it is fair to say that the expert community has voted with its feet.

There are a handful of hold out pairs who remain wedded to four-card majors and a weak no trump. But their systems bear no resemblance to traditional Acol nor the standard systems taught by the NBOs.

Of course club bridge is dominated by Acol but lockdown has promoted 5-card majors, strong no trump to a wider audience, not least due to BBO and exposure to such methods.

[Gilithin]

 pescetom, on 2024-January-08, 12:23, said:

No, but they were also playing 1♠ 5 card, a Strong NT which could contain almost anything, inverted minors, 1M-2N GF, Multi, 2M 5M5m, Namyats... not sure many would recognise it as Acol.

The original root system is called Swiss Acol, although the expert level version of it has about as much to do with the original as Goren or Standard American has to do with modern expert level 5+Strong systems or Meckwell RM Precision to the original Precision. Acol is a family of systems with the original version being one of a variable NT. The idea of Modern English Acol, Weak NT and 4x4 card suits, being the only valid one is a complete fabrication. Systems generally get categorised by pretty basic criteria - 5533 vs 5542 vs 5443 vs 4444 vs 55x0 and so on. If the point of this thread is to say that 1950s systems are no longer played in World Championships then I think we can agree on that but it has nothing whatsoever to do with Acol.

[pescetom]

 Tramticket, on 2024-January-08, 10:13, said:

And I fundamentally disagree with David Kok - there is nothing easy about learning two-over-one. Acol does have the advantage in simplicity. Which suit to open in Acol? Easy! Open the longest one, don't make up a suit!

I fundamentally agree with Davidkok.

A few years ago we switched from teaching 4cM to teaching 2/1 and the students seem to pick up the latter more easily.
It is also a major challenge to pass from 4cM to 2/1 and almost none manage it with real success.
If anything (as mentioned earlier) I think there is some hope for a simple strong club system followed by 2/1.
But teaching 2/1 with more emphasis on hand evaluation and logic of fit will do fine.
Teaching the Teachers 2/1 is important and another challenge.

[mga010]

Thanks for all those answers. I am happy to have triggered such a discussion.

What I really intended, however, was a discussion of the benefits of various starting points in bidding. I still do not buy the cited opinion by Montgomery, that it does not matter if we open strong or weak NT, 5 or 4 card major, strong or weak 2s etc. In these times, the aggressive interventions alone should influence the bidding from the start. There should be some intelligent discussion and data to this.

By the way, I played Acol with strong NT 40 years ago too, often with excellent partners. Now, I am forced to play Forum D.