[mikestar13]

I've read about this style (Andrew Gumpers mentioned it in an article on Bridgewinners.com) and have been trying it in power no trump auctions. In response to a 1NT opening, if I want to play in no trump, I will pass or bid game. The auctions 1NT-2NT- P or 3NT not longer happen with us, we are either in a safe 1NT or playing 3NT: maybe with 23 points, maybe with 30. Really doesn't give the defense much help. This has proved a winner at IMPs, but is has been ok at matchpoints, surprisingly. Stealing 3NT gains only moderately over 2NT making on the nose or down one less than game--but it avoids the match point doubles of 1NT-2NT-3NT. Been thinking of using the same style to avoid 1M-2M-3M-P or 4M auctions, where making defense harder and avoiding doubles on bad trump splits may well pay even better. Love to hear pros and cons about this, especially from those of you who have used it and like it or have chosen to abandon it.

[aguahombre]

I believe the big plusses of the style which you propose are fewer partnership misunderstandings, and less need to disclose partnership agreements -- because it isn't partnership Bridge.

Another advantage is the pressure taken off one player when the other guy just makes all the decisions.

[mycroft]

I've been a big fan of "there are no invitational auctions after 1NT" for quite a while. Partly what that means is that invitational situations aren't "are you a good 13 or 14" - which frequently doesn't help - they're "we can make game if you can run my suit" or the like. I make an exception when I'm playing "wide-ranging" NT rebids (which I frequently do when playing a 10-12 NT) or opposite a 14-16 NT - my world is so 15-17 centric that we really do need a call for "the 15-17ers are just blasting game; so go on 15 and hope we can survive being one trick higher than they with 14".

There are very few suit-auctions, however, where one hand is defined as well as opener's 1NT (re-)bids. That doesn't mean I don't play Hamman Game Tries when my hand really can't give or get the right information for a "real" game try, or when I judge that the opponents will be able to use the information better than partner.

[mikestar13]

aguahombre, on 2013-May-09, 16:46, said:

I believe the big plusses of the style which you propose are fewer partnership misunderstandings, and less need to disclose partnership agreements -- because it isn't partnership Bridge.

Another advantage is the pressure taken off one player when the other guy just makes all the decisions.

In fairness, not my idea (some have associated it with Meckwell), I'm trying it out with partners who are also doing it. Really reduces the information leakage to the defense. A concealment-oriented strategy (for game bidding) may or may not be wise, but how is it anti-patnership?

[EricK]

An invitation which gives no information to partner except strength is the worst kind of invitation. Game so often depends on the location of the HCP rather than just their number. This is why 1NT 2NT is one of the most useless invitations. But it's not quite the same after a start of 1M 2M. Not only have we located an 8+ major fit, but there is still a lot of room to investigate game and the degree to which the hands fit outside the major. We have 5 different bids which could be used as game tries of various sorts, which should allow us enough extra accuracy in bidding good games and avoiding bad ones to offset the information given to the defense.

The situation is different after 1NT because we have far less room to investigate things and so far fewer sequences which can be used as game tries. Hence even if passing/bashing might be good opposite 1NT, it might be a net loser after 1M/2M (at least against pairs who are prepared to use the extra room wisely).

[aguahombre]

Actually, in the very beginning, we employed pass or bash a lot. Just counted LT's, did a little subtracting...what fun, no leakage. When we bid slam, we didn't broadcast that we were off 2 Aces or two cashing tricks in a suit.

We didn't notice how well it worked out, or much else for that matter.

[ggwhiz]

If this worked no human would ever beat GIB. Remove all thought, analysis and strategy and it's a game a couldn't care less about. Unless you play this style for cash.

[fromageGB]

aguahombre, on 2013-May-06, 19:35, said:

There is a contingent of posters who believe that their sims and knowledge of probabilities are better indicators than partner's opinion if they invite, so they just bid game or not. It saves Opener the bother of looking at her hand.

I agree with this. While some hands are distributional, say with a long solid suit where it makes 3NT if partner happens to have the appropriate stops (and you cannot find out) so you decide a gamble is justifiable, there are many more hands that are balanced. On these, NT makes a number of tricks according to general strength. If partner has a range, then it can be advantageous to discover where she is in this range. It seems foolish to spurn the 2NT invitation.

Of course if you prefer to use the 2NT bid to mean something else, then that is a compensation, to a degree dependent on usefulness. But then it would be better to have a narrower range for your 1NT open. 15/16 works for me.

[PhilKing]

The definitive article on inviting with a balanced hand opposite 1NT is Inviting and Accepting by John H Lindsay II, and Richard Zeckhauser (The Bridge World, May 1993). They derived their conclusions from a mixture data from actual play and computer simulations, and concluded the following:

1. Standard theory does not raise to 3NT often enough, and vulnerability matters a lot. We want to be in 3NT vul with a reasonable 24 even without a five-card suit.

2. Opposite a standard 15-17 NT, the optimal inviting range is 8.6 to 9.1 (Kaplan points) non-vul and and 8.2 to 8.7 vulnerable. In other words, it was losing bridge to invite with an average 9-count when vulnerable. The optimal accepting threshold was 15.5 nv and 15.6 v. We accept with 15.6 even though our combined max is 24.3, since although 3NT is a losing proposition compared to 1NT, we are already at the two-level.

3. The benefits of inviting were minimal even with the optimal range (0.4 total points per hand, so it would take over 50 hands to produce an expected loss of one imp when compared to an optimal bashing strategy, which for me means bashing on their entire invite range).

One can't model for the cost of information leakage, so in my view, inviting is a flat out loser, particularly if you go via Stayman. For a statistical summary of how many points you need to bid 3NT go to http://www.rpbridge.net/rpme.htm which gives many 3NT stats from top-level play.

[billw55]

PhilKing, on 2013-May-10, 05:17, said:

For a statistical summary of how many points you need to bid 3NT go to http://www.rpbridge.net/rpme.htm which gives many 3NT stats from top-level play.

Thanks for the link, some fascinating data there. Things I found particularly interesting:

Having a 5 card suit makes a bigger difference than I thought - really huge.
3NT with even 25 points, but without a 5 card suit, is a matchpoint loser.

[PhilKing]

billw55, on 2013-May-10, 07:07, said:

Thanks for the link, some fascinating data there. Things I found particularly interesting:

Having a 5 card suit makes a bigger difference than I thought - really huge.
3NT with even 25 points, but without a 5 card suit, is a matchpoint loser.

That is an invalid conclusion - the stats are only for when one side bids game and the other does not, and I should have mentioned that above. Often the side that went low will have a valid reason or reasons, such as bad spots, unsupported honours or whatever, so there will be more "bad" 25s in this group than average.

One can speculate that the stats for combined 24s with no 5-card suit may be inversely skewed by players upgrading good spots or cards that appear to be well placed.

Use with care!

[y66]

+ a gazillion for the Pavlicek link.

[y66]

duplicate post

[billw55]

PhilKing, on 2013-May-10, 07:19, said:

That is an invalid conclusion - the stats are only for when one side bids game and the other does not, and I should have mentioned that above. Often the side that went low will have a valid reason or reasons, such as bad spots, unsupported honours or whatever, so there will be more "bad" 25s in this group than average.

One can speculate that the stats for combined 24s with no 5-card suit may be inversely skewed by players upgrading good spots or cards that appear to be well placed.

Use with care!

er, yeah .. I didn't think that through very thoroughly. Can't make conclusions about matchpoints when they weren't playing matchpoints! And the possible nonrepresentative sampling too.

[fromageGB]

billw55, on 2013-May-10, 07:07, said:

3NT with even 25 points, but without a 5 card suit, is a matchpoint loser.

This is not my experience, I think 25 is OK for 3NT. I would agree, though, that 24 is a definite loser.

PhilKing, on 2013-May-10, 05:17, said:

1. Standard theory does not raise to 3NT often enough, and vulnerability matters a lot. We want to be in 3NT vul with a reasonable 24 even without a five-card suit.

This means you need 2 different systems/treatments for IMPs and matchpoints. At matchpoints it matters not a hoot whether you are vulnerable or not. And there is less need to bid risky games.

[mikestar13]

About the 1M-2M auctions, clearly a well-designed game try structure is better, but the if only thing available is a power invite (whether due to poor agreements or a hand that just doesn't fit your structure), I prefer pass or bash.

[CSGibson]

If you go whole-ham into this no-invite style when balanced opposite balanced, you can do a whole lot after stayman/transfers using 2N as a relay to 3♣ - you can now bid weak hands with a 4 card major & 6 card minor much more effectively, and go through some choice-of-games showing good or poor suits. It also facilitates slam exploration to use 1N-2C; 2S-3S as a slam try - you can get in specific cues at a lower level, or just make use of a non-serious 3N to differentiate between different levels of slam suitability.

If you are interested, I have system notes that I believe use the freed bids very well if you choose to try the never invite strategy.

[aguahombre]

mikestar13, on 2013-May-10, 15:51, said:

About the 1M-2M auctions, clearly a well-designed game try structure is better, but the if only thing available is a power invite (whether due to poor agreements or a hand that just doesn't fit your structure), I prefer pass or bash.

Yes, absolutely. My strong feelings on the subject, caustically presented here, are tainted because we have worked on these things for so long. It is true that no methods are better than poor methods.

[PhilKing]

mikestar13, on 2013-May-10, 15:51, said:

About the 1M-2M auctions, clearly a well-designed game try structure is better, but the if only thing available is a power invite (whether due to poor agreements or a hand that just doesn't fit your structure), I prefer pass or bash.

Yeah, where side suit fits are important, it pays to explore, but not by opener EVER tipping his hand.

I think a good way of doing this is as follows:

Step 1 - all game tries without a shortage (then dummy describes).
Steps 2-4 - either short suit game tries, short suit slam tries or some portion of our game drives that are randomly psyching a short short.

I haven't worked out a way yet of randomising the random game drives in order to protect out game tries from information leakage whilst satisfying full disclosure (though it is on my list).

[JLOGIC]

Losing 1N 2N invite hands is fine to me (in fact, that's basically how I prefer to play, I like 1N 2S clubs rather than range ask), but losing invites after staymaning is bad imo. There are a lot of 8 counts where you have to stayman because your hand is quite good opposite a 4-4 major suit fit (and even some 7 counts like xxx Kxxx x AT9xx imo). After you miss on the major suit fit you then have to bid 2N. Usually I think pass with 8 and bid 3N with 9 is fine so I'm fine losing 1N-2N hands, but these hands where you stayman need to be able to next bid 2N imo, forcing to game or passing 1N both seem like losing options.