MrAce, on 2011-April-21, 13:40, said:
Can u tell me where did you get this idea that says 2♥ promisses something and 3♥ not ? They are both preempts only difference is the number of cards in the suit bid. 3 promisses more cards than 2, thats pretty much it.
I play this style with one of my F2F partners when NV vs V and only for 1st seat openings. 2-level is constructive, 3-level is destructive. We play 2M as normal weak two with a 6 card M usually, and 3X = 0-7HCP with 5+X (don't count on 2 tricks!). The 3-level openers are really random because there's no suit quality or extra distribution necessary. You can just open 3♠ on 65432-32-432-432, but it won't be AQ432-32-432-432 (too good). It has worked well so far, even at imps.
So the idea exists, and works pretty well. However, when applying this to 2nd and 3rd seat openings it doesn't work that well. We learned this the hard way. You preempt your partner too often (2nd seat) or you overbid the hand (3rd seat, so partner usually has some values) when opps know already too much.
Applying this to overcalls is also risky imo, because opps already know a lot from their partner. So I'm not a fan to use it for overcalls either.