[DavidKok]

mikeh, on 2026-July-11, 11:22, said:

Edit: my comments are not intended to be critical. It’s important that one be comfort with one’s methods and our comfort level is always going to be influenced by experience, and (more importantly) there are very few treatments that are ‘demonstrably’ the ‘correct’ way to play a sequence. It’s possible that I spend too much time, as an amateur player, discussing system and style with my regular partner. Indeed, I don’t play kickback with anyone else because of the problems David identified.

Thank you, and I agree. In very broad strokes, my approach is that there is always going to be a gap between what I would ideally play and what I actually play. I care more about system than my partner, and have more experience than my current partner. In my opinion (all) partnerships should put system effort towards identifying the gaps between where they are and where they want to be, and close them in order from most to least important. Some factors to help decide importance are frequency, added value if the gadget comes up, difficulty to remember and possibility to recover after a mishap. There are many gadgets that I think are a net benefit to a partnership which I wouldn't dream of playing, simply because they rank 70th or worse on my list based on these criteria. I'd much rather solve more important problems, and we'll get to the other gadgets maybe ten years from now.
Now to be fully clear, I think lowly of kickback, exclusion and this 5-of-a-major gadget in addition to the above. I think it would be interesting to at some point debate the merits of the gadgets while ignoring any potential concerns surrounding frequency, gadget overuse or misunderstandings. Even under these assumptions I think they gain relatively little, and some arguably lose more than they gain depending on the auction. There's an interesting discussion to be had whether the net impact of these gadgets on our score is positive or negative (again, assuming no mistakes, learning curve, etc.), but I think more importantly the impact is going to be small in an absolute sense, i.e. near zero impact, whether it's positive or negative.
Back in the real world, with all the troubles that brings, I think these conventions are demonstrably costly. The potential minor gains are swamped by the significant losses to mishaps, even at international level. Like I said, maybe in 10 years we'll have solved the smaller problems and can get into these ones...
As a minor case in point, consider West's hand on this deal. It deviates from what I had in mind for a 5♠ bid. I think West should offer a choice of slams between diamonds and spades instead.

[mycroft]

May be true, may be true. But remember that the fallout from "more system" or "changed system" not only applies to the auction, but the play and the defence.

Those (like you and me) who find it easy to remember system, and to work it out from principles when we don't remember, don't have much of an affect to the rest of the game from "fixing holes". Many many people just can't. If they try to remember Just One More Thing - especially if it's something that "never comes up" - will find their ability to remember the rest of the system goes down. And they make more 90% plays as they just don't have the brainpower left to do the things they would normally get right.

If you're playing with one of those, fix the criticals only, and live with the holes. You can and do lose boards (and double-digit IMPs) on "90% plays"; and there are many more opportunities to do that than opportunities to win with the latest "hole fix".

It's one of the reasons that, unless it's a "book fix", if there's a style difference between my Precision partner and me, we play it his way. It's just easier for me to switch even if he's clearly wrong :-) than take the hit on the book stuff, never mind the missed opportunities on declarer play or defence. I'm willing to take that hit instead, as it is smaller.