[giorgis_di]

I like to bid aggresively, even though I know that in the long-term this might not be for my benefit.

Thus, I would be grateful if you could suggest some aggresive bidding system that have already been "tested"

Thanks,
Giorgos

[mw64ahw]

One of the Strong Club systems comes to mind which uses 9-14 or 10-12 for 1NT NV. Throw in a few aggressive weak 2s, say 2♥ as both Majors or Frelling with as little as 4hcp and you have the beginnings of an interventionist system

There are a write-ups of Canape Precision, Caroline Club or Moscito 2005 online which may fit the bill

[PrecisionL]

EHAA = Every hand an Adventure. See bridgewithdan.com

[DavidKok]

There are many ways to bid aggressively. I'll list some, perhaps that can help give some insight.

For starters you can opt to open lighter in a standard system. The rule of 20 is pretty moderate, the rule of 19 is somewhat aggressive. If you adjust your notrump ladder to become 11-13, 14-16, 17-19 or so this increases your opening frequency quite a bit. This puts more strain on your system, i.e. your partner, as they now cannot safely force to game with a so-so 12-count opposite your opening. However, the opponents also struggle when we open light, so it's not all bad.

If you want to go for significantly more aggression there's two tools that you can swap in somewhat easily: the Kamikaze NT (usually 10-13, 10-12 or 9-12, though you can play any range you fancy) and highly aggressive weak 2's (there are many different flavours, e.g. 5-card weak 2's or going the artificial 'assumed fit' route). This can be tacked onto most standard bidding systems relatively pain free and can increase the aggression.

If you want to go even further you might want to look into non-standard opening systems, in particular limited opening systems. Strong club systems can either open more aggressively (e.g. IMPrecision, though really most Precision players have this tendency) or open higher with the same hands (e.g. Cottontail or other canapé systems), though in my opinion this is again a double edged sword. These aggressive openings put more pressure on the opponents, but also tend to be so light that custom followups are required to land on your feet yourself.
Next if you really want to go to a light opening system, e.g. a system where most hands in the 8-12 range are opened, you could look for a strong pass system (not legal in most jurisdictions) or strong diamond system (for example, Magic D-Light).

Lastly, and I should have probably led with this, you can compete a lot by overcalling and preempting aggressively in competition. Light overcalls are pretty standard these days, but it pays to check what you would consider a minimum overcall. In my experience everybody thinks they are being aggressive, which of course doesn't make sense when looking at it from the outside. There is a particular artificial structure called "The Overcall Structure" that promotes highly aggressive overcalls, though I don't think it's very good. But even just relaxing your requirements for doubling or overcalling, and playing better followups so you don't hang partner, can increase your activity by a lot.


A fun bit of wisdom I like to point out is that opening high with common hands in the 11-15 range can actually result in a higher mean opening than opening very light. If I'm not mistaken Cottontail (strong club, 4cM, canapé) has a higher mean opening than EHAA, or at least I think Jan Eric Larsson claimed as much.

[mw64ahw]

DavidKok, on 2024-May-09, 01:14, said:

There is a particular artificial structure called "The Overcall Structure" that promotes highly aggressive overcalls, though I don't think it's very good. But even just relaxing your requirements for doubling or overcalling, and playing better followups so you don't hang partner, can increase your activity by a lot.

A key feature of The Overcall Structure is swapping the Takeout X and 1NT overcall with the NT takeout being weaker than your traditional Takeout X.
The NT takeout has been described as the weak point in the approach, but I can't remember any disasters and if you are doubled then a simple escape sequence helps if the opponents don't bid on. In fact I remember quite a few tops from using the NT takeout, which needs to be alerted, when the opponents have failed to find their partscore.
Having the Power X limits the strength of some of the other bids. Single jump shifts are done with 5 in the lower ranking suit and 4/5 in the higher one. I will tend to play these as 8+hcp, but can be lower if the distribution is more extreme. Simple overcalls can remain as per a standard approach

[hrothgar]

Here's one possibility

Use the following as your 2!D / 2!H / 2!S openings

https://www.chrisrya...wo/frelling.htm

No need to learn a whole new bidding system, but you're opening frequency will increase dramatically.

If you enjoy high variance, great. Then you might consider investing the time / effort to learn MOSCITO or whatever.
And if not, you're failed cheap...

[Cyberyeti]

hrothgar, on 2024-May-09, 06:58, said:

Here's one possibility

Use the following as your 2!D / 2!H / 2!S openings

https://www.chrisrya...wo/frelling.htm

No need to learn a whole new bidding system, but you're opening frequency will increase dramatically.

If you enjoy high variance, great. Then you might consider investing the time / effort to learn MOSCITO or whatever.
And if not, you're failed cheap...

Need to be careful with local regulations, those 2 level bids are not legal in EBUland

[pescetom]

Cyberyeti, on 2024-May-09, 07:26, said:

Need to be careful with local regulations, those 2 level bids are not legal in EBUland

At first sight they look legal in WBFland, including Italy.

[mw64ahw]

pescetom, on 2024-May-09, 09:26, said:

At first sight they look legal in WBFland, including Italy.

There is also the odd bidding sequence that I have yet to work out
For example:
2♥-3♦-? how do you get to show ♥+♣ and a max.?

[pescetom]

mw64ahw, on 2024-May-09, 10:28, said:

There is also the odd bidding sequence that I have yet to work out
For example:
2♥-3♦-? how do you get to show ♥+♣ and a max.?

I thought the proposal was interesting, but failed to work out why 2♦ can not be 4441?
Maybe means just no major singleton?

[hrothgar]

mw64ahw, on 2024-May-09, 10:28, said:

There is also the odd bidding sequence that I have yet to work out
For example:
2♥-3♦-? how do you get to show ♥+♣ and a max.?

3!H should read Hearts and Clubs without any range implication

[thepossum]

Can't you choose to bid any system in a more aggressive way?

That's what I like to do - has its downsides and upsides

Other days you can choose to do the opposite and let the opps make all the mistakes

[helene_t]

From tomorrow, DavidKok and I will start playing Cottontail Club in a local teams tournament. We will keep you posted

It's a quite aggressive system in that we open 1M freely on a 4-card suit, both with balanced 11-13 hands and with canape hands. And with 5♣332 11-13 we open 2♣ (which includes 10-15 with six clubs also).

Lorenzo is a system that used to enjoy some popularity in the Netherlands. All 2-openings are 0-7 points with 4+ in the suit (some play 2♣ as an unknown minor and 2♦ multi but that's a BSC). They pass with most 8-11 hands.

Fantunes is quite aggressive also, not quite as aggressive as EHAA but quite similar. It may have lost some appeal after it transpired that Fantunes's success was not exclusively due to their superior bidding system ...

Among normal bidding systems, English Acol is fairly aggressive, opening 12-14 NT and with 15-19 balanced they open a 4-card major if they have one.

The least aggressive system which has been played in living memory may be Vienna, in which all 2-openings are strong, 1NT strong and artificial, 1♣ covers all normal openings without a 5-card d/h/s. Among modern systems, SEF is the least aggressive I can think of. Similar to SA except that 2♦ is strong and artificial.

[mycroft]

Heh, that's why I play Bill Jacobs' system...

What I find interesting about this conversation is that both EHAA and (especially) FanTunes are, by design, *conservative* systems. Yes, EHAA 2 bids are nuts, and it plays a 10-12 1NT even 2nd VUL, but the 1 bids (and 1-level overcalls, and doubles) are *very sound*. And that's at least partly what (little) strict benefit comes from the system. FanTunes plays sound, forcing 1 openers; even the 2 bids are descriptive and constructive.

For a homegrown, I'd still happily play Kontrast. Is it good? Probably not. But is it fun? Yes. Is it aggressive? Yes.

[hrothgar]

pescetom, on 2024-May-09, 15:28, said:

I thought the proposal was interesting, but failed to work out why 2♦ can not be 4441?
Maybe means just no major singleton?

Because I deliberately exclude 5440 and 4441 patterns from the 2!D and 2!H openings.

In my experience, these patterns have relatively low ODR so it's risky to open these.
Too great a chance that you end up taking a phantom sack

[hrothgar]

thepossum, on 2024-May-12, 10:58, said:

Can't you choose to bid any system in a more aggressive way?

There are limits

In many cases, a response structure that works really well over a sound opening structure will be suboptimal over a light opening structure and vice versa

[pescetom]

 hrothgar, on 2024-May-12, 18:38, said:

Because I deliberately exclude 5440 and 4441 patterns from the 2!D and 2!H openings.

In my experience, these patterns have relatively low ODR so it's risky to open these.
Too great a chance that you end up taking a phantom sack

Ok thanks.
I like the idea of still being able to open 2S with 6 card.

[thepossum]

I hate to throw in a possibly questionable question

But should not any bidding system be capable of reaching their contract with or without interference - aggressive or not
If so do they ever have the right to complain about slight variations in bidding by opps

I am not trying to incriminate myself but sometimes I feel there are times when you have a choice what to do

TD - our opp didn't bid - we overreached. It's not fair. I couldn't work out where all the points were

[DavidKok]

thepossum, on 2024-May-14, 03:02, said:

I hate to throw in a possibly questionable question

But should not any bidding system be capable of reaching their contract with or without interference - aggressive or not
If so do they ever have the right to complain about slight variations in bidding by opps

I am not trying to incriminate myself but sometimes I feel there are times when you have a choice what to do

TD - our opp didn't bid - we overreached. It's not fair. I couldn't work out where all the points were

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at, but maybe this helps anyway.
A part of what makes bridge interesting is that we fail to get to the best spot reliably. Maybe uninterrupted we have high success rates, let's say upwards of 95% chance of landing in the best double dummy contract, but it's still not 100%. Furthermore, if the opponents compete, it's maybe more like 70%. This creates an opportunity to interfere more, open or overcall more aggressively, to push the opponents from that 95% to that 70%. In doing so we also reduce our own success rate - opening everything left and right places too much strain on the system, and our constructive accuracy suffers. Different systems cater to different degrees of this tradeoff, for example optimising for potentially quite weak limited openings but losing on stronger hands.

People simply aren't all that accurate, especially in competitive auctions. Aggressive opening systems try to take advantage of this, but incur a constructive cost in return. If you were to take a standard system and open it noticeably more aggressively you'd likely struggle more than someone playing a system designed to open that light, while creating a comparable amount of problems for your opponents.

[hrothgar]

thepossum, on 2024-May-14, 03:02, said:

But should not any bidding system be capable of reaching their contract with or without interference

There are a host of competing considerations, above and beyond reaching the "best" contract (whatever that may be)

Memory load is one very important consideration
Minimizing how much information you leak during the auction is another

Ultimately, bidding systems are designed to score well in the aggregate / across many boards.

This is not the same reaching the par contract on every board.