[johnu]

 RedSpawn, on 2017-May-10, 17:35, said:

I think what has happened is the bridge community has lost faith in the value of the normal auction and are resorting to alternative, unorthodox methods just for the sole right to open 1st. A well-oiled bidding system can only do so much. . .after a certain point, you need sneakier methods to become the leader of the pack. And here we are looking for that edge in our preemptive bids.

You've got blinders on and can't see what's not right in front of your nose. Constructive bidding has gotten much better in fairly recent history with people playing fairly complete systems like 2/1 and Precision. Plus dozens of gadgets, like XYZ, transfer bids, splinters, RKC, etc that weren't that popular 50+ years ago when the preempt Rule of 2 & 3 and fairly strict suit quality requirements were taught in bridge classes. These days, even intermediate players will get to the best contract a fairly high percentage of the time without interference.

Amazingly enough, you almost have it right when you said "A well-oiled bidding system can only do so much". The conclusion you should have made is that if you let the opponents have a free run to bidding their best contract, they probably are going to get there. If you have an 8 or 9 point hand (2 aces or not), whose hand is it? Probability says it is the opponents hand (just divide the remaining points equally among the other 3 hands), but if you have a 6 card suit, you probably have a good play to make 2 of your suit. The opponents will usually have to make their decisions starting at the 3 level. They not only have to find the best suit or NT, but what level to play, if they aren't already too high.

In any case, I think the debate about having 2 aces in a weak 2 is just silly. Does anybody think partner is going to play you for 2 aces if you pass originally? Instead of an outside ace, you might have something like KQ in a side suit which is highly likely to be a defensive trick. Do you want to expand the don't open with 2 aces dogma to don't open with ace in your suit and a pretty sure defensive trick?

[RedSpawn]

 johnu, on 2017-May-11, 15:26, said:

You've got blinders on and can't see what's not right in front of your nose. Constructive bidding has gotten much better in fairly recent history with people playing fairly complete systems like 2/1 and Precision. Plus dozens of gadgets, like XYZ, transfer bids, splinters, RKC, etc that weren't that popular 50+ years ago when the preempt Rule of 2 & 3 and fairly strict suit quality requirements were taught in bridge classes. These days, even intermediate players will get to the best contract a fairly high percentage of the time without interference.

Amazingly enough, you almost have it right when you said "A well-oiled bidding system can only do so much". The conclusion you should have made is that if you let the opponents have a free run to bidding their best contract, they probably are going to get there. If you have an 8 or 9 point hand (2 aces or not), whose hand is it? Probability says it is the opponents hand (just divide the remaining points equally among the other 3 hands), but if you have a 6 card suit, you probably have a good play to make 2 of your suit. The opponents will usually have to make their decisions starting at the 3 level. They not only have to find the best suit or NT, but what level to play, if they aren't already too high.

In any case, I think the debate about having 2 aces in a weak 2 is just silly. Does anybody think partner is going to play you for 2 aces if you pass originally? Instead of an outside ace, you might have something like KQ in a side suit which is highly likely to be a defensive trick. Do you want to expand the don't open with 2 aces dogma to don't open with ace in your suit and a pretty sure defensive trick?

Johnu, thank you for your feedback but I trust the other user who asked very poignant questions about why would you bid weak 2 from 1st seat with 2 aces when you have 1/2 of the resources to upset any 4 level bid.

Just because the 1st seat person has 8 or 9 points in his hand doesn't mean that it's the opponent's hand. We don't know how the remaining 31-32 points are distributed from 2nd to 4th seat. Applying the law of averages to each hand is not gonna do it for me. Each player doesn't get 10 HCP each hand and each deal has its own set of unique card/HCP distribution properties.

Bridge is a bidder's game, but you don't have to force fit ill-fitting hands into an opening bid just for the sole right to open 1st. You CAN do this, but SHOULD you, is the better question. And is your partner accepting of the additional work he is going to be required to do when reconciling your auction bid to your actual card holding?

Now, if you want to strike 1st for the sake of striking 1st, go right ahead. I get what the offensive strategy is, but do not tell me the bid is necessary from 1st seat because it was the opposition's hand. You don't have enough information to know the exact distribution from this deal yet. You will have more information after 2nd seat bids, but by then, it's too late.

What to do? What to do? I think the consensus seems to be -- bid wrong now, we will deal with the attendant outcomes and blamestorm later.

[RedSpawn]

 nige1, on 2017-May-04, 09:57, said:

I subscribe to the theory that a gap between a one-opener and a pre-emptive opener should be as rare as possible.
Hence I would open 2♥ with this kind of hand

---

All,

Please read Josh Donn's lecture notes on preemptive bids as well. He gave a free lecture on BBO.

http://webutil.bridg...tch.php?id=2527

"The worst holding for preempting is Axxxxx. I would go to great lengths to avoid preempting with an ace-empty suit. Maybe I would if the vulnerability and position were very much in my favor, as I described before, but that is it."--Josh Dunn

Since North and South are vulnerable and West and East are nonvulnerable, he is saying North should back off a preemptive bid with unfavorable vulnerability with AXXXXX.

[Zelandakh]

 RedSpawn, on 2017-May-16, 12:31, said:

All,

I don't really expect you to understand yet but it is a philosophy thing. Some experts believe that there are hands that are too good for a weak 2 but not good enough for a 1 level opening, while others think the opposite. Axxxxx is certainly not ideal as it has a very low ODR. But it is a perfectly playable and even mainstream style to allow preempts with such a suit, particularly in 1st and 3rd seat and when NV. As previously mentioned, this style is particularly effective against weak opponents, so you might see some pairs that will treat such a hand as a weak 2 against Aunt LOLly but not against Mr Xavier Pert. It saddens me that you think that only the way you have learnt can be possibly be the right way. What do you think you will gain from these forums if you are not open to different ideas?

[RedSpawn]

 Zelandakh, on 2017-May-16, 16:38, said:

I don't really expect you to understand yet but it is a philosophy thing. Some experts believe that there are hands that are too good for a weak 2 but not good enough for a 1 level opening, while others think the opposite. Axxxxx is certainly not ideal as it has a very low ODR. But it is a perfectly playable and even mainstream style to allow preempts with such a suit, particularly in 1st and 3rd seat and when NV. As previously mentioned, this style is particularly effective against weak opponents, so you might see some pairs that will treat such a hand as a weak 2 against Aunt LOLly but not against Mr Xavier Pert. It saddens me that you think that only the way you have learnt can be possibly be the right way. What do you think you will gain from these forums if you are not open to different ideas?

 nige1, on 2017-May-04, 09:57, said:

I subscribe to the theory that a gap between a one-opener and a pre-emptive opener should be as rare as possible.
Hence I would open 2♥ with this kind of hand

---

I am open to various viewpoints. But I want you to hear me clearly.

When you broaden the definition of what qualifies as a weak 2 bid, you increase the amount of interpretation work the respondent must do when making decisions further along in the auction. To expand the definition of a weak 2 bid to include the possibility of two aces makes it more difficult for the respondent to determine, what, if any, exploratory bids he should make.

The respondent has no idea if you now have KX♠,Q8XXXX♥,JXX♦,XX♣ or the hand pictured above which is markedly different in value to your partner.

Look at the hand above with two aces. With two aces, there is a possibility that this hand could be very useful in the 3 card minor suits--depending on what your partner has. Your hand has two of the quickest tricks possible. We declarers LOVE to see aces in our dummies even if it is with minimal trump support. That possibility won't exist if you decide to pre-emptively rob your partner of a chance to use your hand for such purposes.

I understand the goal of the preemptive bid and how you want to jam up the opponents before they jam us up, but just note that this strategy comes with drawbacks. Your partner might have a nice hand and now has to wonder what garden-variety of weak 2 bid you are holding.

Do you have KX♠,Q8XXXX♥,JXX♦,XX♣ or a more disciplined KX♠,QJ10XXX♥,JXX♦,XX♣ or an extremely disciplined KX♠,KQ9XXX♥,JXX♦XX♣?

Or do you have two lovely aces (as in the screen cap above) that might play well in a makeable 4-level or goodness forbid 5 minor suit level contract?

Those are a lot of different scenarios to evaluate!

And here is the final thing:

In my opinion, when you factor in ♥ distribution, the hand with two aces is a 10 point hand, which is a perfectly average hand. If a person bids weak 2 with two aces, he represents to his partner and the opposition that he has a weak hand, when in fact he doesn't. However, that misrepresentation isn't free; it has drawbacks.

If his partner has a perfectly medium hand and the team is vulnerable, how does the respondent know that he should ask his partner for a feature and pin down a game contract? The opener could have a hand with two aces, absolutely no aces but a well-behaved heart suit, or worse yet, he could have that horrendously undisciplined Q8XXXX♥ heart suit.

The range of what constitutes a weak 2 becomes too wide to know what to do next. We have lost precision in our bids and in exchange we have gained higher opening frequency.

[Zelandakh]

I think you still do not see the other side of the equation. There is no doubt that choosing not to open the Q8xxxx and Axxxxx suit hands is a more than viable strategy and I have no qualms with these not being opened. The other side is not just about frequency of opening though, you also gain from the opponents having a harder time in judging their actions. Terrence Reese once wrote that a preempt that is known to be weak is a blunt sword. The situations suggested for these calls are ones where the odds are in our favour that it is the opponents that will be making the decisions rather than partner. Sometimes it is indeed partner that has the best hand and the strategy backfires badly. Exponents of this style believe that it is a winner in the long run though, as the opponents will make many more mistakes, not only on the hands where we open the "dodgy" hands but also misjudging on perfectly normal preempts.

This is I think what you are missing. It is not, I believe, that anyone here wants to convince you to change to opening these borderline hands, more that your assertion that opening them is basically ridiculous is just plain wrong. More generally, it is not unusual when B/I players find their way to these forums and make very opinionated posts that their way is the only one under the misapprehension that they are really of an expert level. Those of us who have been here a while have seen it time and again and for the most part it ends badly for that poster as they isolate themselves from the community at large. It would be good if this pattern was not repeated again, so I urge you to go into threads with a more open mind. Think first about what you might possibly learn rather than what you can teach or prove. Not only will this be good for your standing in the BBF community but it would, I believe, also help your development as a bridge player. It is your choice though - in the end you will get out of your experience here what you put into it.

[gwnn]

TBH I hate 2H on x A8xxxx xxx Axx when R/W. I'd do it when NV but not happily.

[Zelandakh]

Here is another one, say we hold ♠xxxx ♥KQJxxx ♦xx ♣x. Do we open this with a preempt or not? The original viewpoint on this was "not" but I think the vast majority of modern experts would do so in 1st or 3rd and accept occasionally missing game in a 4-4 spade fit. As with the low ODR hands, opening these makes it more difficult for Responder to do the right thing. This in itself does not make the action wrong, it is the overall picture you have to look at. This is an area where many different lines are possible and different strengths and weaknesses appear. In this thread, Gerben and Han, both strong players in their own right, disagreed. That is not unexpected. And there are many more threads on the topic of borderline preempts if you are willing to search for them.

Again, the main point here is that this is not a "one size fits all" topic. You say potahto, I say potayto...

[RedSpawn]

 Zelandakh, on 2017-May-17, 09:24, said:

Here is another one, say we hold ♠xxxx ♥KQJxxx ♦xx ♣x. Do we open this with a preempt or not? The original viewpoint on this was "not" but I think the vast majority of modern experts would do so in 1st or 3rd and accept occasionally missing game in a 4-4 spade fit. As with the low ODR hands, opening these makes it more difficult for Responder to do the right thing. This in itself does not make the action wrong, it is the overall picture you have to look at. This is an area where many different lines are possible and different strengths and weaknesses appear. In this thread, Gerben and Han, both strong players in their own right, disagreed. That is not unexpected. And there are many more threads on the topic of borderline preempts if you are willing to search for them.

Again, the main point here is that this is not a "one size fits all" topic. You say potahto, I say potayto...

This is a very fair question.

Let's look at Josh Donn's answer:

http://webutil.bridg...tch.php?id=2527

Q6: Can you really preempt with a 4-card major on the side?

"A: That is a very good question. The danger of preempting with a 4-card major on the side, and why it's often recommended not to do it, is that you might belong in that major.
For me again it depends on the hand, but in general I would say four small is fine if your long suit is good.
♠KQJTxx ♥xxxx ♦xx ♣x, you belong in spades probably 20 times for each time you belong in hearts.
So the four card heart suit should not deter you.

But with ♠QJxxxx ♥KQxx ♦xx ♣x now you will very often belong in hearts, so I would recommend against opening 2♠."

I can see what he is saying even though I didn't think that way before. So I agree with you ♠xxxx ♥KQJxxx ♦xx ♣x can be used for a preeemptive bid so long as you keep the suit quality "decent".

See...I'm flexible. I just want to make sure we are fully aware of all the additional work and responsibility we would place on the respondent if we broaden the definition of a weak 2 bid.

[gwnn]

Josh Donn

[RedSpawn]

 gwnn, on 2017-May-17, 11:31, said:

Josh Donn

Thank you for the correction. I am correcting his name by editing previous posts.

[RedSpawn]

 mycroft, on 2017-May-11, 13:05, said:

I try to avoid preempting with two defensive tricks - because I agree, it puts partner in unwinnable situations. But that's a personal preference, and it loses frequently. Sure, at the other table, our teammates are in game, down 1 and they didn't know - or they took the phantom and went down one! But at my table, because I didn't take away most of two levels of bidding, they could find out that game was bad, and are +140. Lose somewhere between 3 and 6...

That quote says a lot about the give and take involved the partnership. Your partner is or should be your greatest asset, so sometimes you may have to choose a method that keeps your partner happy and doesn't put him in "unwinnable situations" even if it might jam up the opponents more often. Your partner should consent to being put in those types of difficult situations.

That's why it pays to give your partner "diplomatic immunity" as an incentive to persuade him to entertain the "ALMOST anything goes preemptive bidding" style. Once a partner knows there will not be a heated "blamestorming" session to follow a disastrous debacle (if it occurs), he won't worry as much about second guessing the preemptive bids he/she sees in the auction.

[Zelandakh]

 RedSpawn, on 2017-May-17, 13:06, said:

That's why it pays to give your partner "diplomatic immunity" as an incentive to persuade him to entertain the "ALMOST anything goes preemptive bidding" style. Once a partner knows there will not be a heated "blamestorming" session to follow a disastrous debacle (if it occurs), he won't worry as much about second guessing the preemptive bids he/she sees in the auction.

My last partner had a very conservative preempting style when we started together but was willing to give wide-ranging preempts (plus other similar pressure techniques for competitive bidding) a try. One of the things I explained about them is precisely this, that it makes follow-ups more difficult and to expect some mistakes. Another was that it would take a little time to adjust and find the right line for different situations. After trying them she was a big convert to the style and has taught the same methods to her other partners, only in those pairs she is the "looser" partner. That mirrors my own experience as a student back in the 80s.

My view is very much that every player should go through this phase to gather experience of what works for them. Until you have done it, it is difficult really to know where the boundaries lie. Even if players decide to go back to a more traditional style, they will have learned enough during the testing to have made it a useful experience.

[mycroft]

But Red, the issue is that getting good results most of the time keeps my partner happier than not being put in an unwinnable situation every once in a while.

We play weak NTs - that's the epitome of "unwinnable situations" in a world of 15-17s. But we play it because the number of system losses is lower than the number of system wins; because we're in control of more auctions (when we open 1NT) than the other players (who open 1NT on fewer hands); we force the opponents (if they're smart) into playing constructive defences to our 1NT (because there's a very good chance it's their hand, and a decent chance it's their hand in game!) and they'll simply be less good starting at the 2 level than the other pairs starting at 1♥ or 1♦; and because, playing the K/S style, our 1m calls are also extra well defined, so we're at an advantage when we open 1♦ whether we have the NT hand or not. Our rescue system is also designed to push the opponents around; as a result, we're in a few "safe, but not best" (and some "hopeless, but maybe survivable"!) situations there, too.

We play 1NT overcall for Takeout; because it's aggressive (on all the hands you're making a takeout double (and some you're not!), they haven't lost any space; at our table, they have to start at the 2 level again), because it's fun, and because we're good enough that we can win, but not good enough that we're likely to if we don't push the real experts a little bit more than most.

My partner would be very upset if I decided to "protect her" from "unwinnable situations". Yours may not be.

I absolutely agree; if you feel more comfortable with a more disciplined style, find someone who agrees with you and enjoy. I don't think it's winning bridge, but it's certainly better when it comes up, and is certainly better than it would be if you are on different strategies, or want to be, from partner.

I also absolutely agree with Zelendakh; everybody should *try* the different styles, and not just for one game. Who knows, you might just find you're more comfortable with a style you currently don't play or are afraid of because of the "randomness"; you definitely will understand how to defend against that style better after you've played it (and experts and duffers alike have defended against it).