[ggwhiz]

babalu1997, on 2011-September-12, 11:27, said:

I never understand the "1♦ is 4" requirement which some players use.

I never understood it either and have won a lot of partscore battles when they pulled in their horns after 1♣ "may" have been short.

However, that's not exactly playing against many of the strong pairs that play it succesfully and I find the thread interesting in the discussion so far.

I always thought it was fear of playing the moyse (as in playing support doubles too) but the more hi-tech agreements like transfer responses are starting to make sense.

[mycroft]

I think that the strong players play a could-be-short 1♣ "clubs or balanced"; the weak players are playing majors 5, diamonds 4.

I think there are benefits to "clubs or balanced" (smartarse comment here: especially if they can convince the arbiters that it's natural, and don't have to play against conventional defences allowed against artificial calls), especially the 1♦ is unbalanced that Ken is talking about and Transfer Responses to 1♣. I'm not sure, however, that there are benefits to majors 5, diamonds 4 that aren't swallowed up in the "OMG, I can't raise because what if it's a 4-2 fit!"

But I've never played it. I know that SEF is a majors 5, diamonds 4 system, and there are some very good french players playing SEF, so there must be ways of making it work; but that addition to Standard American is almost always "weak player playing a panic system", so.

Having said that when I learned bridge (too many years ago), we played the "4-cards up the line, 5-cards down the line" that lowerline talked about. It basically was "yeah, 1♥ especially could be 4, but ignore that - you're playing 5-card majors".

[Zelandakh]

mycroft, on 2011-October-03, 16:19, said:

Having said that when I learned bridge (too many years ago), we played the "4-cards up the line, 5-cards down the line" that lowerline talked about. It basically was "yeah, 1♥ especially could be 4, but ignore that - you're playing 5-card majors".

This method, essentially 5443, is commonly known this side of The Pond as Swiss Acol. Perhaps it has a different name over there though.

[mgoetze]

Zelandakh, on 2011-October-05, 04:27, said:

This method, essentially 5443, is commonly known this side of The Pond as Swiss Acol. Perhaps it has a different name over there though.

I would think that Swiss Acol further implies at least a weak no-trump. Certainly all the people claiming to play Swiss Acol here in Germany (such as Gromöller-Kirmse) play a weak NT (typically 11-13).

[Zelandakh]

mgoetze, on 2011-October-05, 16:04, said:

I would think that Swiss Acol further implies at least a weak no-trump. Certainly all the people claiming to play Swiss Acol here in Germany (such as Gromöller-Kirmse) play a weak NT (typically 11-13).

Certainly the method is much better with a weak NT, at least in my opinion. I believe there are a small number of experts playing 5443 and a strong NT but I find this a very unharmonic combination.