Over the next few days, I hope to blog about the responses to the Intermediate range openings. Before doing so, however, it seems prudent to discuss the DIP philosophy on relaying.
I’m sure most if not all long time proponents of strong club and strong pass systems will tell you that it’s all about the Intermediate range openings, not the Strong range (and the typically associated constructive auctions, including Symmetric Relay based ones). The only time I suspect this may not have been true was the 60’s and 70’s (Neapolitan, Roman, Blue and Precision Clubs) when people were fairly respectful of the Strong 1C openings. Certainly, if the above is the consensus view, I share it.
When I first came across FPR (Forcing Pass Relay) people used to relay up to S+2 or S+3 over interference, that is, they still continue relaying even when they had lost 2, or even 3, steps. I imagine many still do so. I come from the almost the opposite school of thought. When the opposition interfere, and show a suit, or even strongly imply a suit, I don’t want to relay at all. Further, even if they don’t show a suit, if they cost us any steps at all, I don’t want to relay (remember, the D structure opposite 1C is already up one step from S). What do I mean by not showing a suit? Well, there’s CRASH (Colour/Rank/Shape) but there’s also the kind of stuff I used to play against a forcing pass in my youth: like a 1S fert over a strong pass, for example!
The significant other developer of DIP doesn’t completely share my views on relays in competition, but, for the present at least, is deferring to my preferences in this regard.
The reason I started the above from the end (i.e. relays in competition) rather than the beginning is that my thinking on relay use and optimisation pervades purely constructive auctions as well. You have already seen an example of this with the decision to include direct semi-POS and transfer captaincy POS bids opposite 1C: not optimal from a relay perspective. The former are good, however, in competitive and fast-arrival auctions, and the latter more effective at determining the correct strain for game (if occasionally less effective at getting to a good slam).
Moving on to what is coming up in this blog, the same sort of thinking is applicable to the relay responses to the Intermediate strength openings (1D, 1H, 1S, 1NT & 2C). DIP has largley adopted the ideas I first saw in MOSCITO2007, namely
- Allowing responders step R response to contain the kind of stuff you would expect (some INV hands without clear direction and almost all FG hands) but also what would have been a normal 1NT response
- As a consequence, the first round rebids by the intermediate strength opener are largely NAT, to cater for the “1NT” type hand and facilitate a pass by responder
This doesn’t hurt the subsequent relay structure too much, but it would be disingenuous to say it had no cost at all.
No longer needing to bid 1NT with the 1NT type hand obviously frees up an extra low-level bid. To take 1D(=H) as an example, with 1H now R and including the 1NT type hands, you now have 1S, 1NT, 2C, 2D, 2H, that is, 5 bids at or below 2 of the shown suit. It would be entirely normal to pre-allocate four of these: one to a raise, and three to show the other suits (whether naturally, or via some sort of transfer). The questions are, how to best use the valuable extra bid that has been freed up and whether to play transfers or natural to show the other suits? Some obvious candidate answers for the former question
- As an extra raise, that is a stronger raise to 2 of the suit. This is what MOSCITO2007 does IIRC (with 2D being a stronger way to get to 2H over 1D)
- As an explicit game force relay
- Some sort of puppet/Lebensohl’ish type structure
In a previous life, I’ve played the latter method in a slightly different system, and found it useful. I plan also to use it in DIP in the first instance. It also fits in quite well with NNF type responses in the other three suits, which I have a slight preference for over transfer responses (the latter obviously being more effective when a highly constructive auction would be useful, but less frequent and hence effective in this scenario IMO).
So, to give you a partial flavour of what is coming up, over 1D(=H)
- 1H: R, either (i) ART, FG, or (ii) INV no primary support, or (iii) 1NT type hand
- 1S: 4+S, NNF
- 1NT: “Puppet” to 2C, typically some form of discrete INV hand-type
- 2C: 5+C, NNF
- 2D: 5+C, NNF
- 2H: 3H, NNF
You’ll see the above principles in broader action shortly.
I suppose the final thing to say is that including the 1NT hand types in th R response is also not without cost. It would not have been unreasonable, in their absence, to have the R response set up some sort of Forcing Pass type auction over interference, at some levels at least (e.g 2 and 4). The inclusion of the 1NT hand type makes this impractical, so, it’s take-out doubles in competition as high as you want to play them (up to and including 4H is my preference) and transferable value doubles thereafter.
Regards, DipBridge
