rhm, on 2014-August-27, 02:13, said:
I think modern standard natural bidding is simply flawed.
Why should a reverse require more strength in high card values than a strong notrump opening?
Sure that is convenient when you do have these values, but the truth is it simply leaves a big hole in your system, because such hands are quite frequent.
I would switch immediately to 16-18 notrump openings if balanced hands with 15 HCP would never occur.
Why people have lowered their strong notrump ranges but at the same time tightened the requirements for reverses escapes me.
Sure reversing the order of your suit bids require some extra strength and the reverse should be forcing in case opener has more values, but there is plenty of bidding room left to sort things out if opener has at least 15 HCP.
Some require more strength for a reverse than for a jump rebid of your opened suit, even though a reverse obviously consumes less bidding space.
Whatever the minimum strength of the reverse is, few play it as game forcing. So you will require methods thereafter to stop below game anyway.
This is much more a futile exercise in current bidding orthodoxy than in anything else.
I have never ever heard convincing arguments why the minimum values for a reverse has to be higher than the minimum values for a strong notrump.
The current requirements for a reverse seems to me an accepted dogma with a dubious rationale.
Of course I am not claiming that I resolve all problems by lowering the strength requirements of a reverse.
But I think the whole current concept of reverse is seriously flawed.
Modern bidding theorists usually agree on the principle that shape should come before strength.
Even without sophisticated methods I would rather show my shape and risk the very occasional condition getting too high than distorting my shape.
But if you simply align your minimum HCP requirement for your reverse to that of your strong notrump opening these problems disappear.
Rainer Herrmann
This is a complex topic, and not one that I think can be adequately addressed in this format.
To me, as I adverted to in another current thread, I think that a very important part of system design, especially in a method that uses very wide range 1-level openings, is to begin strength differentiation as early as possible. I suspect you agree.
That factor doesn't in itself help much with the question of reverses and where they start, provided that one has 'some' strength dividing line. For you that line would be lower than for me.
However, the lower the line for the first 'cut', the wider is the range contained in the reverse hand.
If you drew the line at 14...(almost) all hands with 15 start with 1N, if balanced, and with a reverse if unbalanced (and a 1-level bid isn't available)...then your reverse hands have a huge range....15-21 or so.
That in turn means that responder has to find out more strength information on a wide range of hands.
Indeed, on weak misfitting hands he can't pass since opener might hold 20 or so and have game on sheer power, but when opener has the far more common 15 or 16 count, there is no safety at 2N or higher. I think that issue is a huge negative for very weak reverses.
Note that this doesn't make it silly to reverse on some 15 counts. AQx KQxx Axxxx x, 1
♦1
♠ now of course many would want to reverse but apart from rare walruses amongst us, this hand is no 15 count anymore. x KQxx Axxxx AQx is another story altogether.
The idea of reversing on the latter hand opposite KJxxx xxx Qx xxx makes me ill. And responder could have a less suitable hand.
It's not just or even mostly about the weak hands for responder. One benefit from strong(ish) reverses is that responder is in an excellent position to gauge the chances for game and slam at a low level.
With a wide range reverse, both players have to focus on using the next round of bidding as strength defining rather than, as for stronger reverses, more subtle assessments/descriptions of degree of fit.
Obviously when one has a narrow range for the reverse hand, one increases the range for the non-reverses, and this is a problem. Wide range reverses have better definition on their non-reverse auctions, and one might think that this offsets the cost on the reverse hands.
However, this isn't so imo, at least not fully. Reverses consume bidding space. Non-reverses conserve bidding space. We use bidding space to exchange information, so conserved sequences are inherently more efficient. One should try to put more sequences into conserved auctions than into space-consuming auctions. Sequences that consume space should be relatively tightly defined.
No matter where one draws the line, btw, there will always be hands that are going to be guesses. My belief is that in the long run, if one accepts that the number of game misses, due to range issues, is the same regardless of where the lines are drawn, then there is a benefit to the strong, narrower range type of reverse over the almost anything goes school in that the latter will go down at the 3-level, when responder has to cater to the very wide range reverse, while in the former, responder can allow the auction to end at the 2 or even 1 level.
I think there is a lot more that could be said on these issues. Everything is a tradeoff or compromise of some kind. The very strong reverse school to which I used to belong allowed for some truly easy and effective game and (especially) slam bidding when one knew what one was doing. This was because responder could very early on decide that slam was in the picture and could start with slam tries at a low level, and opener, having already shown lots of values, wouldn't be worrying about limiting his hand at his next turn.
The problem with the very strong reverse school is, imo now, that it left the non-reverse hand as too widely constrained.....it created too many missed games when responder swung low with an 8 or 9 count, and got too high when responder was aggressive.
Balancing these issues out requires an assessment of where the optimum dividing line should be. I personally don't find that reference to a notrump range is at all useful. Notrump hands are narrowly constrained as to shape as well as strength, and (ignoring transfers for the moment) the bidding structures used over 1N are fundamentally different, and have different objectives, than the methods used over a 1m opening. I think it flat out wrong to apply ideas from notrump bidding to suit bidding, at least in the early rounds.
To me, as I currently see things, the dividing line for reverses is more of a blur than a sharp line. Wonderful 15 counts, with 3 card support for partner, can reverse...personally, for me it would be a terrific 15 count. Misfitting 16's....not so much.
At the end of the day, what matters most is that partner knows what to expect and that the pair have very good methods over the reverse hand. I think one would find that the lighter the reverse, the less effective those methods will be and the question becomes at what point does this growing inefficiency become too problematic. Every partnership has to answer that for themselves, but to do so intelligently, they need to be aware of all of the relevant factors, which include non-reverse hands just as much as they include reverse hands. I am not pretending that I have covered all of the factors in this post.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
Help
Playing standard methods with a strong no-trump, what do you open? Your methods are such that a reverse is not game forcing, with 1♣-1♠-2♦-2♥ being Lebensohl for weak, misfitting hands. Whether this hand is worth a reverse, even with these methods, is up to you.
If you open one club or one diamond, what is your planned rebid over the likely one spade response?
This is a familiar problem, but there are a number of questions I want to ask about the auction as it develops so will try to set them in the context of the majority.