[ggwhiz]

I would echo P_Marlowe in that you should invest more time on defensive agreements than bidding at this point.

I see most opponents up to advance level on BBO that have a laundry list of conventions in their profile with nothing on defence and they usually blow many tricks.

Lot of good advice here, especially FORGET GERBER!!!

[Zelandakh]

I am not a fan of Gerber and do not have it included anywhere in my favoured methods. However, I would like to say one thing for it that seems to be misinformation in this thread. The idea of the convention is to use it on suit-oriented hands after a NT opening where you only need to know about partner's aces/kings to be able to place the level of the contract (in your long suit). Using it on balanced hands is as much a misuse of the convention as making a 2♥ transfer with 3 spades. This also shows why the convention is unnecessary - in any decent NT response structure there should be a way of setting a long suit as trumps at the 3 level. That means you can bid the "Gerber" hands by setting your suit and asking for aces on the next round. Gerber was used in an era where NT structures often could not set a suit as trumps at the 3 level.

[mgoetze]

ggwhiz, on 2012-April-29, 16:26, said:

I see most opponents up to "advanced" level on BBO

FYP.

(Let's try not to give anyone the false impression that self-rating on BBO is meaningful.)

[han]

.

[mikestar13]

gwnn, on 2012-April-29, 13:15, said:

1/1 forcing is the best convention in the history of bridge and will never be surpassed.

Two thumbs (and a big toe) up for this !

I can remember reading Culbertson's Blue Book and one of Sydney Lenz's books (can't recall the title) where the authors rejected this idea. Back then it was actually controversial. But at the time of Culbertson's Gold Book (six years after the BB, IIRC) 1/1 was so much expert standard that Ely C. taught that it was forcing, just like everybody else did.

[Vampyr]

Zelandakh, on 2012-April-30, 01:43, said:

Gerber was used in an era where NT structures often could not set a suit as trumps at the 3 level.

I don't normally play Gerber either, but I have detailed agreements about how to set up a Blackwood ace-asking situation; without that, or kickback (obviously inappropriate in this forum), there can be ambiguity in when a 4NT bid is Blackwood, since it will be quantitative in most auctions.

The thing is, learning how to use an ace-asking convention of any sort is a lot simpler than learning when to use it. All varieties of Blackwood, Gerber etc are abused by less experienced players much more often than they are properly used. It is probably best if new players do not use an ace-asking bid at all.

[ColdCrayon]

I agree with the people who are saying New Minor Forcing or Checkback Stayman and Negative doubles are probably pretty important. There are other, better alternatives to NMF and CS, but the first two are easy to learn and easy to recognize. Also get comfortable with splinters, reverses, and control-showing cues - I'm not sure if those are properly called conventions or not, but all three are great: the first two because they allow you to describe your hand almost completely with one or two bids, and the last because it's more often useful than Blackwood is. And pick some form of game try: in my experience, they're underused. I'm constantly playing pickup games where the auction goes "1♥ P 2♥ P" and then opener pauses for a long time before either raising or passing.

As far as constructive auctions go, after this you should probably just add things when you find yourself in a situation where you needed to show something or know something specific and didn't know how to bid it. If you're going convention shopping, however, concentrate on ones for competitive auctions. I wouldn't recommend Lebensohl for a long time, but it's the swiss-army knife of conventions. Instead, check out other types of doubles and redoubles that have conventional meanings.

Your list is fine.