[MickyB]

Sorry, coming in a bit late on this one. Oh yes, a warning: my experience of actually playing these systems is very limited...

I have recently come round to the idea that Polish Club isn't greatly superior to Precision, if at all. To compare the two systems, it is probably best to compare variations with a lot in common. So, for PC I will work on 12-14 bal with 4♦s being opened 1♦, and for Precision I shall use a 4 card diamond suit (1♦:1major, 1NT showing 11-13), a 12-15 NT, and no Precision 2D opener.

[Firstly, a hobby horse...I don't think Precision 2♦ should ever be used. If you are that keen on having an opening bid for these hands then open them 2♥, this puts a lot more pressure on the opps and frees up the very useful 2♦ opening].

Precision gains on the hands that are opened 1♦, 1♥ and 1♠ in both systems, because they are much more limited.

Precision also gains when 1♣ is opened, assuming there is no interference (a big assumption I know). Relays should be used to maximise the gains.

My suggested wide-ranging 1NT opener isn't great, but with the use of Keri, and a small modification allowing you to play 3C when responder has 5 opposite a minimum (which then must deny 4 diamonds) will minimise this loss.

I'm not sure how well PC handles weak NTs and 4441s in an uncontested auction, and as I am in the middle of exam period I don't really have time to check at the moment! I'd be surprised if 4441s are dealt with well. Personally, I have no problem with opening 4-4-1-4s 1NT at IMPs, as long as they are towards the bottom of the range for 1NT.

Right, now onto the big issue of interference over 1♣ openers.

Yes, a Precision 1♣ does ask for preemption more than PC, as 2nd seat cannot be sure whose hand it is when a PC is opened. But if he does interfere, responder doesn't have the guarantee that partner is strong, which makes things a lot harder for the PC pair.

Now change the above slightly. Let us have a pass on your right, followed by your opening a multi-club on your huge hand. RHO can cause you far more problems than he ever could over a strong club, because your partner cannot rely on your having strength. The ambiguous nature of the Polish Club has rebounded on its users. Surely this problem is so severe as to make multi-clubs totally unsound except in 1st seat?

[Flame]

Hi mickyB
When you're trying to compare to systems it most time the best not to comare everything with everything, but to undewrstand the differents.
Precision open all 16+ 1c, now lets change this to 17, did it make the system worse ? i dont think so, now lets change it to 18, worse? not by much for sure.
now lets try something else, we take 12-14 balance hands and add them to the precision 1c, is it make things better or worse ? (better for interfirence worse if not)
lets add 15+ with club suit, same response as before, we got ourself a version of PC. now someone can play PC and add other things , like not adding the 18 hcp and adding all GF hands, someone else can instead of adding 12-14 and 15+ club, can add 15-18 and 12-14 clubs, or make it depend on seat and vulnerability. someone else can just add 8-9 hcp with semi balanced, etc... (all those suggestions are current systems)
No one has to take into his precision all the components of PC, if you like a component say 12-14 balance you can add just it.

[Free]

Yes, but what's your point?? Really don't get where you're going to. How can you compare systems when you don't compare EVERYTHING with EVERYTHING? I think you have to compare the 1♣ opening, as well as the result on all other openings and the entire system...

[Flame]

Free, on May 30 2004, 07:03 PM, said:

Yes, but what's your point?? Really don't get where you're going to. How can you compare systems when you don't compare EVERYTHING with EVERYTHING? I think you have to compare the 1♣ opening, as well as the result on all other openings and the entire system...

comparing everything is something you cant do, its too compilcated, its better to see how you get from system A to system B, what you give up on the way and what you get back for it, since polish club has many versions you can choose that you like one thing about it and doesnt like something else, you dont have to take all the components of the system. comparing this way is much better imo.
example
system A : 1c= 2+c , 1d = 4+d (normal 2/1 system)
system B : the same as system A but moving all the balance hands with 4 diamonds into the 1c bid, as 1c now may be short in club you make it a forcing bid. (this system is strefa which the_hog plays)
system B has A better 1d then system A but worse 1C, you see what you get and what you lose and decide if you like it or not, in other words you compare this component.

[MickyB]

Flame, on May 30 2004, 07:32 PM, said:

Free, on May 30 2004, 07:03 PM, said:

Yes, but what's your point??  Really don't get where you're going to.    How can you compare systems when you don't compare EVERYTHING with EVERYTHING?  I think you have to compare the 1♣ opening, as well as the result on all other openings and the entire system...

comparing everything is something you cant do, its too compilcated, its better to see how you get from system A to system B, what you give up on the way and what you get back for it, since polish club has many versions you can choose that you like one thing about it and doesnt like something else, you dont have to take all the components of the system. comparing this way is much better imo.
example
system A : 1c= 2+c , 1d = 4+d (normal 2/1 system)
system B : the same as system A but moving all the balance hands with 4 diamonds into the 1c bid, as 1c now may be short in club you make it a forcing bid. (this system is strefa which the_hog plays)
system B has A better 1d then system A but worse 1C, you see what you get and what you lose and decide if you like it or not, in other words you compare this component.

I agree it can be complex comparing a lot of aspects of a system, that is why I chose variants of Precision and Polish Club that were as close as possible. Having done that, I had to compare all the differences that still existed.

One point - you shouldn't compare by bids, you should compare by hand types. In the case of Strefa, you do better on unbal hands with ♦, worse on unbal hands with ♣, and on the bal hands that you have moved you lose the knowledge of knowing that the hand probably hand 3♣s or definitely had 4♦s, but you gain an extra step in the bidding on the hands with 4♦.

[luke warm]

mishovnbg, on May 1 2004, 10:04 AM, said:

Playing with weak NT will not help to 2/1, because opening still may contain strong bal hand and you can preempt badly your own partner.

Misho

hi misho

can you please explain this? it seems to me that playing a mini nt solves almost all 2/1 problems, given other agreements (maybe something like ben's 2♣ structure over 1M)

if possible i'd like to see some hands you might consider problematic using the 10-13 nt so i can determine if an answer is in place... thanks, friend

[mishovnbg]

luke warm, on May 31 2004, 02:12 PM, said:

mishovnbg, on May 1 2004, 10:04 AM, said:

Playing with weak NT will not help to 2/1, because opening still may contain strong bal hand and you can preempt badly your own partner.

Misho

hi misho

can you please explain this? it seems to me that playing a mini nt solves almost all 2/1 problems, given other agreements (maybe something like ben's 2♣ structure over 1M)

if possible i'd like to see some hands you might consider problematic using the 10-13 nt so i can determine if an answer is in place... thanks, friend

Playing mini NT all time is suitable only for bridge adventurers. It also ruine one or both of your minor opening bids, because they need to handle another ranges of NT. Shortly mini NT is bad bid, suitable for hunting swings in NV vs V 1st/2nd position playing IMPs. Note it is not only my opinion, but also Erick Rodwell and Rumen Trendafilov...

When your minor opening can contain 14-16 bal hand with doubleton in minor, you practically lose any raises in opening suit and play nebulous 1 bid, not natural. This often put you in worse position in competitive auctions, esp if your 1♦ opening can contain such range. It is also important, if you play natural responses to such opening, you will play often wrong sided contracts against the field, which is simple losing bidding.

Friend, I don't know your experience and knoledge of systems, but imo will be good idea for you to take some aggressive system like "Nightmare" or Fantoni-Nunes and play it.
Misho

[luke warm]

it's true, with a 4432 or 4423 14-16 count i'd have to open either 1♣ or 1♦ and either raise partner's major suit response or bid 1nt showing this range... it's also true that partner could possibly have to raise my 3 card minor, if that's his only available bid... but the same is true in any 5 major system that doesn't use 15-17 nt range, isn't it? and of course wrong siding the contract is always a danger...

it seems to me that a lot of precision pairs are on even shakier ground, especially with their 1♦ opening... i respect your knowledge and experience, and while 2 hands could be constructed where a mini nt is *always* wrecked, i was hoping for a couple of practical examples to see where the weakness might come in

i've played against some good pairs while using the mini, and from what i can see they pretty much *hate* playing against it... but i admit it isn't for everyone

thanks for your reply

[pbleighton]

"Playing mini NT all time is suitable only for bridge adventurers..."

Well, yes, but so what?

"i've played against some good pairs while using the mini, and from what i can see they pretty much *hate* playing against it... "

Yup. And good pairs guess wrong and make plain stupid bids too.

"it seems to me that playing a mini nt solves almost all 2/1 problems..."

An exaggeration, and it does create some problems of its own, but it certainly solves a lot of problems for me. I play 2/1 with light openers, and find the mini really helps.

I play a 10+ to 14- NT, so the NT rebid is 15-17, 2NT 18-19. 15-19 count 4432 and 4333s are always opened 1C (12-21, 2+ clubs and forcing), along with all 4441s not short in clubs. NMF works with 8+ points, allowing us to rebid NT after 1C-1H with 4 spades, and mitigates the loss of a strong NT.

I have 3 ~5 card openings, which work well for light (decent 10) openers. I open 10 and 11 count 5M422s not 54 in the majors 1NT, along with 10-13 5any332s and 10-13 5m422s.

In the minors, the NT opening takes the balanced crap out of the openings.

In the majors, we make a 2/1 GF with 13 points, but need 14 for GF with the NT opening. Opening two thirds of the dead minimum hands without 6 card suits 1NT mitigates the overbidding effect of the 13 point 2/1 GF.

The wide NT range occasionally hurts, but not too often. Vulnerable isn't as nice as NV, but into every system a little pain must fall..

Is this a world class system? I highly doubt it!

Does it work well against a reasonable field? Yes!

Is it fun? Guess!

Peter

[hrothgar]

pbleighton, on Jun 2 2004, 03:05 PM, said:

"Playing mini NT all time is suitable only for bridge adventurers..."

Well, yes, but so what?

"i've played against some good pairs while using the mini, and from what i can see they pretty much *hate* playing against it... "

Yup. And good pairs guess wrong and make plain stupid bids too.

"it seems to me that playing a mini nt solves almost all 2/1 problems..."

An exaggeration, and it does create some problems of its own, but it certainly solves a lot of problems for me. I play 2/1 with light openers, and find the mini really helps.

I play a 10+ to 14- NT, so the NT rebid is 15-17, 2NT 18-19. 15-19 count 4432 and 4333s are always opened 1C (12-21, 2+ clubs and forcing), along with all 4441s not short in clubs. NMF works with 8+ points, allowing us to rebid NT after 1C-1H with 4 spades, and mitigates the loss of a strong NT.

I have 3 ~5 card openings, which work well for light (decent 10) openers. I open 10 and 11 count 5M422s not 54 in the majors 1NT, along with 10-13 5any332s and 10-13 5m422s.

In the minors, the NT opening takes the balanced crap out of the openings.

In the majors, we make a 2/1 GF with 13 points, but need 14 for GF with the NT opening. Opening two thirds of the dead minimum hands without 6 card suits 1NT mitigates the overbidding effect of the 13 point 2/1 GF.

The wide NT range occasionally hurts, but not too often. Vulnerable isn't as nice as NV, but into every system a little pain must fall..

Is this a world class system? I highly doubt it!

Does it work well against a reasonable field? Yes!

Is it fun? Guess!

Peter

Peter

Curious about the frequency of your 2/1's.

Suppose that you open 1M...

How often is responder able to 2/1?
Equally significant, how often is here required to respond with a forcing NT?

[MickyB]

Peter, IMO opening 5M422s 1NT is horrible, you will miss so many fits. How about playing 2D as a multi and 2H and 2S as Lucas, both fairly constructive, then your 1M openers will be sounder and you can make lighter 2/1 responses, which will improve your bidding accuracy greatly. Also you say the mini isn't great vul, why not bring it in half a point when vul then? Maybe bad 11-14 NV, good 11-14 vul.

[flytoox]

All these discussion remind me of a famous economics theory: revenue equivalent theorem, which roughly says all auction rule, be it sealed bid auction or english auction, or other auction, will usually generate same revenue for the seller under quite general condition.


What do i want to say here? Well, I think most system should be equally good, or very close. Who will win out depends on not the system, but the players. There are many world champion, they play different system. This should explain my point.


Hongjun

[pbleighton]

"Suppose that you open 1M...

How often is responder able to 2/1?
Equally significant, how often is here required to respond with a forcing NT?"

Richard, your point is well taken, and is the major (no pun intended) disadvantage, part from some bad NT results vul. I haven't done the math on frequencies, but we are one point away from the field (which in my area responds 2/1 with 12/strong 11), so we are responding with 1NT forcing with strong 11 - OK 12 when the field is making a 2/1 response. We have essentially split the difference between the level of our openings (decent 10s vs most 12s - a little less than 2 points) and the level of our 2/1 response (1 point). Using the mini NT to take the dead minimum balanced and semibalanced hands out of the 1M openings reduces the penalty for the increased overbidding caused by splitting the difference. In fact, we don't seem to get to too many underfunded 3NT games, and this is definitely helped by the mini.

As to the frequency of responding 1NT forcing when the field is making a 2/1 response, they happen, but seemingly much less frequently than our opening hands the field would pass. We are therefore quite comfortable with our system vs Rule of 20/strong NT 2/1, which is the field in our area.

As to an alternative response structure, for a while, we tried a relaxed Standard approach (forcing for one round but not guaranteeing a rebid). We didn't really give this much of a chance, as my pd had developed a fondness for 2/1 GF when we played The Science, and it didn't seem to hurt us there, so we went back to it. Now 2/1 GF is integral to The Science's system, and optional in ours. It is possible that a relaxed Standard approach is theoretically better, but the fact is that my pd bids 2/1 better than F1, so there you are

"Peter, IMO opening 5M422s 1NT is horrible, you will miss so many fits. How about playing 2D as a multi and 2H and 2S as Lucas, both fairly constructive, then your 1M openers will be sounder and you can make lighter 2/1 responses, which will improve your bidding accuracy greatly. Also you say the mini isn't great vul, why not bring it in half a point when vul then? Maybe bad 11-14 NV, good 11-14 vul."

Thanks for the input, Mickey.
1) We only open 5M422s 1NT when they are dead minimum, for the reason explained above. Most of the field isn't opening most of these hands, so we don't miss much by missing the fits.
2) "2D as a multi and 2H and 2S as Lucas" - ACBL - nuff said
3) We are considering making the vul range start at 11+ rather than 10+. The tradeoff would be that we would probably also not open 1M quite so light (it would also make our NT bidding more accurate). We aren't quite ready to do that, but I am keeping note of the bad results at vul. This could be a halfway move to true variable NT, which we are definitely not willing to make at this point.

Peter

[the hog]

Imho the mini is a poor substitute for 8-12 openings. As these are unfortunately restriced by many organisations, I guess you are forced to play these greatly inferior methods if you want to create action. The mini concept is quite poor in term of system design - I have 10-11 points balanced. This gives you an immediate pre emptive effect at great cost. It also has a penchant for increasing the difficulty of your constructive auctions. (Contrast this to the 1C/1D showing 8-12 with H/S and how much more information this conveys and how much more pre emptive it can be if partner can raise. This is largely an academic argument as this is banned in the US).

I personally believe the mini is a very easy bid to counter; US players tend to have problems with these methods due to their unfamiliarity with these methods - another argument against legislating against systems. Eventually the mini will die out as players become more accustomed to dealing with it.

I would also agree with Misho's statement that the mini places too much of a burden on your minor suit openings. We have found a natural 1D opening to be an Imp and MP gainer.

Ron

[Flame]

luke warm, on Jun 2 2004, 06:08 AM, said:

i've played against some good pairs while using the mini, and from what i can see they pretty much *hate* playing against it

When im strong in the field i play, i hate when someone make a non common bid because this give me less chances to use my better skills then most of the field.
If the pair who use the non common bid is also a weak pair then i hate it even more.
This doesnt mean its good for them, just bad for me.

[cwiggins]

I found the following at http://www.ipipan.wa...lub/ankieta.htm

Kowalski echoes some of the comments in this thread that Polish and Precision are close.



What is your opinion about the effectiveness of Polish Club comparing with other general bidding systems (Standard American, Precision, Canape, different Italian Clubs and Diamonds)?

Apolinary Kowalski
In my opinion Polish Club is superior in this respect to above mentioned foreign bidding systems except perhaps Precision. However Precision is more vulnerable to interventions, than Polish Club is.

Krzysztof Martens
The main criterion to evaluate the bidding system is how it fulfills certain postulates of the natural bidding. In the modern bridge high culture of the bidding (especially while fighting) is much more important that a bit better or bit worse construction of the basic system.

Julian Klukowski
I am quite certain that Polish Club is more effective than any other foreign system known to me.

Stanislaw Bitner
I think the question is ill defined. Every bidding system is effective provided it is based on logical premises and handles some 80% distributions (hands) to be faced with in the course of bidding. If two partners achieved perfect understanding they can successfully compete with the pair playing any other system but lacking such understanding.

[mishovnbg]

Flame, on Jun 3 2004, 02:43 AM, said:

luke warm, on Jun 2 2004, 06:08 AM, said:

i've played against some good pairs while using the mini, and from what i can see they pretty much *hate* playing against it

When im strong in the field i play, i hate when someone make a non common bid because this give me less chances to use my better skills then most of the field.
If the pair who use the non common bid is also a weak pair then i hate it even more.
This doesnt mean its good for them, just bad for me.

Agree! I need to add hate not because bad bid, but because lottery result. When you are better than field, you try to keep most of contracts with field and gain from better card play.
Misho

[luke warm]

there was a time when bergen/cohen were either winning or almost winning every national event they entered... one of the reasons was their preempt style, which presented a little of misho's "lottery result" into the mix... however, i don't believe they used this style because they felt somehow inferior, cardplaying-wise, to the field, but because they felt it was a better way of bidding

the acbl eventually banned some of their weapons, which (i'm sure) made the rest of the field feel much better... after all, they could then fall back on their own bidding skill and card playing ability, and not have to worry about b/c taking the bidding away from the field... if you can't beat 'em, legislate 'em..

i disagree that the mini wouldn't fit into a 'world class' system... i also disagree that it will fade away as more pairs learn to combat it more effectively... the nature of such things is that as defensive weapons improve, so do the offensive weapons...

i don't believe the mini brings a lesser player up to par with a better one... my opinion of it is based solely on the fact that i think it fits in better with 2/1 bidding, period... i've proven the (admittedly limited) results to my own satisfaction, on those few times i've found someone to play it...

but all of this is just my opinion

[Flame]

The lottery result idea was just to exaplain that the fact that your opponents hate your system doesnt mean its good, this by itself doesnt mean your system is bad either.

[luke warm]

Flame, on Jun 8 2004, 04:20 PM, said:

The lottery result idea was just to exaplain that the fact that your opponents hate your system doesnt mean its good, this by itself doesnt mean your system is bad either.

i know... and i don't necessarily think the mini is better than the weak or strong nt, just that it seems to simplify 2/1 bidding (for me), since the nt rebid ranges seem to lend themselves very well to 2 way ckback bidding.. that's just one reason, but for me a big one