[paulsim]

hi all,

More than a single defense, I would like to know the general strategy against a weak notrump (assuing e.g. 12-14)

a.- Direct seat
----------------
Bid with good hands, right?

But, Double with balance hands (say 14+ or 15+) or with any hand with 14/15+?

So, all good hands in the double bag and bid suits with limited strenght?
Or double with good balance hands and overcall with good hands?

82 KJ732 AK4 A872 - Double or bid hearts?
8 KJ9872 AK4 AQ8 - Double or bid hearts?

82 KQT987 8732 3 - pass or bid hearts (assuming bidding is weak like you would do over a strong NT with good hands doubling)


b.- Reopening

1NT__p___p___p?

Double with balance hand? with more HCP than direct seat or less?
Overcalls should be strong or weak?

c.- passed hand
p__p__p__1NT
_?

c1.- You are a passed hand in direct seat: double with? overcalls shoud be, what? just pass any hand?


c2.- balance or not? with?

p___p___p___1NT
p___p___?




thank you very much
Kind Regards,
Paul_S

[awm]

Partner needs to know when to pass your two level overcalls and when to bid. If the range of strength is too wide, we either miss too many games or get too high when we shouldn’t.

Double needs to include some strong unbalanced hands for this reason. With exactly 15 I’d tend to overcall with shape and not double, but stronger hands start with double and plan to rebid the long suit. This is not really an attempt to be penalize, just trying to help partner make good game decisions.

Your first example has 14 cards so I’d call the director. The 1633 17-count on the 2nd example is too strong for an overcall and I’d start with double. The weak two in hearts hand is a pass.

Reopening double is the same strength as direct double for me here. Again, the goal is not so much to “get them” (although this happens occasionally) but rather to get to the right level ourselves.

As a passed hand my style is much more like defending strong notrump and in fact I play my strong notrump defense.

[Tramticket]

We start with a double with any 16+ hand (maybe 15+ with a good lead).

As AWM says, this means that a two-level overcall is limited in strength and means that we can overcall on some quite weak hands if we have reasonable suit quality and the vulnerability is right. "Quite weak" might be as few as eight HCP - not the five HCP hand that you give.

The other possibility is a weak jump overcall. If the vulnerability were right and I was feeling frisky, I might venture 3H with that hand!

I don't tend to downgrade requirements for double in the protective seat. Note that you won't be on lead, so a hand with (say) 15 HCPs and a good suit might not be an attractive double because you "know" that partner will lead something else. But a hand with a good spread of values becomes more attractive, because you can offer help in whichever suit partner chooses to lead.

Without discussion, double by a passed hand does not exist. You can of course assign some artificial meaning - some two-suited hand would make sense.

[helene_t]

Having played probably 30-40,000 club games in England and New Zealand where almost everyone plays weak NT, I think it has happened about five times that we have benefitted from penalty doubles and constructive overcall style. A rare occasion was actually last time I visited England:
(1NT)-x-(2♣*)-p
(2♦)-x (all pass)
Without my initial penalty double, LHO would not have transfered to diamonds. P would have balanced with 2♦ and I may or may not have bid 3NT for +430. In real life, we collected +1700.

Meanwhile, I have lost count on the number of bad scores we have got from
- not being able to compete with weak, distributional hands
- not being able to show major-minor twosuiters effectively because double is penalty
- partner making the "wrong" (unlucky) decision whether to take out a penalty double or not
- penalty doubles helping them to a better part-score as they now can show weak hands with a 5-card minor (with or without a second suit)

So I strongly prefer just playing the same wide-ranging but specific-shape overcall style and artificial doubles as you would against a strong NT. You will lose a few games and penalty opportunities, but you will do much better on partscore deals.

[mw64ahw]

As you say there are many defences.
I tend to bid with a variety of strength hands which could be the equivalent of a maximum Weak 2, opening bid strength, somewhere in between or even pre-emptive. This can depend on vulnerability status, but the key is for partner to know the base level.

I play a modified Hello approach, which is primarily transfer based so it is possible to design approaches that show various strengths. It also means that the strong hand is on lead. For example with 6+♥
2N-3♣-3♥ pre-emptive
3♦ - 3♥ Intermediate Jump Overcall
2♦ - 2♥ - 3♥ Strong
2♦ - 2♥ - Pass anything else.

In 4th Seat it would be

3♥ Intermediate Jump Overcall
2♣ - P - 2♦ - P - 3♥ Strong
2♥ anything else.

X in 2nd seat for me is 15+ catchall or a running minor
In 4th seat it becomes a ♣ transfer, but again you can build in other options such as 5M4+♣ with 2♣ - 2♦ - 2M being 5M4+♦

[P_Marlowe]

We play Lionel.
https://www.blakjak.org/def_1nt01.htm

Basically the first decision you need to make, what do you want to use X for?
Do you want to use X as part of your shape showing method, or to limit the rest of your
hand.
Lionel includes shape information into the X, you loose precision in game going auctions,
but get more hands to show.

Take your pick. It is the common theme precision vs. frequency.

Keep in mind, even if you go for shape, the X still promises some values, so going for blood
is not off the table.

The big downside of Lionel, you dont have a way to show the major 2-suited hands, which
is a big minus, otherwise I would be complete happy with the defence.
There are modifications to Lionel to include the 2-suited major hands, but it gets complicated
and messy.

The precision loss means, you have sometimes to guess the level.
This is similar to the question, do you play Michaels Cue as weak or strong, excluding the mid
range hands, or do you go for continues strength. Do you go for strict 55 or do you allow 54.

[mycroft]

My arguments (note: unlike Hélène, I live in a world where weak NT is maybe 5% of the field) are "standard". That doesn't mean she is not right, but here they are anyway:

• Keep your interference up to strength. Partner needs to know who has the balance of power; responder already does. To apply this to Hélène, even if your interference is "light, shapely", keep to that strength.
  
• I believe in a penalty double. As most here, 15+BAL, unbalanced "too strong to overcall". (Note that the most effective penalty double against me in 15 years was "led his fourth-best J. Of 7. We had 10 of the last 6 tricks.") The reason for this is exactly the above: partner needs to know who has the balance of power. Note: I like Lionel as an alternative, because it has a very common hand with a (lower than "penalty") minimum strength as the double, and partner knows when to pass it. I played Brozel with one partner, and kept it against the weak NT because our "one-suited" double was "one-loser suit"; again, partner had a very good idea when to pass.
  
• You are not going to get rich defending 1NTx (well, except see above). The opponents have played many many more 1NT-x hands than you have, and they have a rescue system, and they know it cold. And it's effectively designed to do what they want (there are many ways to order the priorities; all of them have merit and all of them lose on some hands).
  
• ON NO ACCOUNT play "systems on" when pulling partner's penalty double. In fact, pulling partner's penalty double should happen in exactly two cases:
  • "partner, they're making it, and I have a place to play that should be better than -180." (in which case you want to be able to get out at the 2 level in all four suits!)
    
  • "partner, I don't think we're getting this enough to beat our game." Which is rare enough that you can just start with 2NT and scramble. (Note: this is one of the things where if weak NT is half the field, isn't as critical (because you'll have company in any decision) as in the ACBL where maybe one of the other pairs are going to have been preeempted the same way. Yes, the weak NT is a preempt).
• But do know how far (1NT)-X forces the partnership. It doesn't matter (much) where that is (even "their 2♣ can be passed out" is okay, as long as you both know this!), as long as you have decided on a point and know it. The number of 2♣-2s we've got NV against pairs that have +140 or game in the bag are legion. The number of "I thought my pass was forcing" arguments they had later are almost certainly also legion. Note: here is where "knowing who has the balance of power" comes into play - when they run and you have to decide whether to take the points or look for your own contract. Note 2: if you want a suggestion, I suggest either 2♦ (which is what I play, and may not be most effective, especially at MPs) or 2♥ (-470 is a huge "feel-bad", but -100 against -110 in 2♠ is embarrassing!)
  
• If pass is forcing over the runout, what is double? I like XXX - First double is whatever, second double (by either hand) is cards (letting both people in on "who has the balance of power", third double is penalty. But other systems exist and work well - again, as long as you have discussed it.
  
• You can lay off a bit in balancing seat - but remember that responder will happily pass 1NT with a flat 10 or a quacky 11. And they know what to do when you jump in with your (side's) 13-count...
  
• Especially at MPs, it is *critical* to work out what the contract actually is when dummy comes down. Many times the opponents have left our table chuffed about setting us 1 (vul) or 2 (nv), when we are equally happy about getting our near-top for finagling the 5th(nv)/6th(vul) trick. We knew that was the battle, not the hopeless 7th. You should, too.

Finally, and critically, know that it doesn't matter what you play, sometimes the weak NT will beat you. It will always be a guess, and some choices will be (sometimes disastrously) wrong. Know also that sometimes they've already beaten themselves, and all you have to do is not let them off the hook (oddly enough, this is rarely "disastrously". 200 or 300 into partscore at MPs is just as big a zero as the 800s and 1100s players dream of, and, frankly, "never" get. Frankly, the biggest losses in a "only we play weak NT" field is +90 or +120 into the room's +110/140 because we miss our 4-4 major fit). Sometimes you have an unsolvable choice, and you just have to hope to guess right this time. Play your system, trust your system, accept your gifts when they come and don't yell at partner when the system bit them this time.

Finally, know that the benefit of the weak NT is not only in the 1NT call - it's also the fact that when they *don't* open it, they don't have a flat minimum. Don't forget to take that into account when playing the weak NTers and they open 1♣ or 1♦!

[DavidKok]

helene_t, on 2024-October-11, 04:17, said:

Having played probably 30-40,000 club games in England and New Zealand where almost everyone plays weak NT, I think it has happened about five times that we have benefitted from penalty doubles and constructive overcall style.

[..]

So I strongly prefer just playing the same wide-ranging but specific-shape overcall style and artificial doubles as you would against a strong NT. You will lose a few games and penalty opportunities, but you will do much better on partscore deals.

Very interesting! I did not expect that. It makes a lot of sense.

P_Marlowe, on 2024-October-11, 09:27, said:

We play Lionel.

[..]

The big downside of Lionel, you dont have a way to show the major 2-suited hands, which
is a big minus, otherwise I would be complete happy with the defence.
There are modifications to Lionel to include the 2-suited major hands, but it gets complicated
and messy.

I've played Lionel against a strong NT (only in direct seat) for a year or two and liked it a lot. You mention the downside of putting both majors in the double, there is a second one I want to highlight. In my experience the 2♣ and 2♦ bids were close to a wash - sometimes we profited big, but the lack of relative length information as well as telling the opponents our approximate shape and also that we don't own the boss suit was not great. You say it gets complicated, but can't I play for example Lionel but 2♣ shows the majors?

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

we play Lionel against weak and strong NT in all seats, the only diff: we req. a certain amount of strength against weak NT 11+,
and against strong p assumes less than 11/12. It works. You just have to accept, that you have to pass with a strong NT and 4333.
We allow a X with 18+ NT shape, which never (rarely) comes up.

The big adv. is, that the suit bid are natural, esp. 2H and 2S.
I was only looking closely into, if one could make Lionel Work, showing the majors direct.


You could go with WINDA.
https://www.blakjak.org/def_1nt31.htm

Which makes X as major 2-suited, and 2C gets clubs and major, this reduces the chance to make a pen., but incr. the constr. auction, finding
a major suit fit, and you have even room to find out 4+,/4+ what the + are.

The important thing is to decide up front, what your main goal is, and than take it from there.
Having suit bid showing the suits is nice and compensates a lot for a lot of downsides.
And a method that works against weak and strong NT in all seats without big modifications, is also a plus.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: Lionel is rarely played, but people to play it, are happy.
... In our club we converted some pairs. they reg. pull it out against us, which is ok ....

[pescetom]

helene_t, on 2024-October-11, 04:17, said:

Having played probably 30-40,000 club games in England and New Zealand where almost everyone plays weak NT, I think it has happened about five times that we have benefitted from penalty doubles and constructive overcall style. A rare occasion was actually last time I visited England:
(1NT)-x-(2♣*)-p
(2♦)-x (all pass)
Without my initial penalty double, LHO would not have transfered to diamonds. P would have balanced with 2♦ and I may or may not have bid 3NT for +430. In real life, we collected +1700.

Meanwhile, I have lost count on the number of bad scores we have got from
- not being able to compete with weak, distributional hands
- not being able to show major-minor twosuiters effectively because double is penalty
- partner making the "wrong" (unlucky) decision whether to take out a penalty double or not
- penalty doubles helping them to a better part-score as they now can show weak hands with a 5-card minor (with or without a second suit)

So I strongly prefer just playing the same wide-ranging but specific-shape overcall style and artificial doubles as you would against a strong NT. You will lose a few games and penalty opportunities, but you will do much better on partscore deals.

5 in 30k+ is one heck of a datapoint for those of us used to strong NT