MrAce, on 2016-November-26, 06:53, said:
It needs more than 3-3
♠ to make game to start with. Such as 3-2 hearts. I did not check all of it but just 3-3
♠&3-2
♥ together brings it down to low 20% game.
Of course everything is playable as long as there are people willing to play. But this method is an AWFUL one. Here is why.
In your agreement, there is NO WAY your side can bail out when they (NT opener or his pd) make the wrong choice and run from 1 NT doubled. They bail you and your method puts you right back into the fire. This alone is a HUGE downside.- Forget about making wrong choice, if opponents know your methods, they can and they will set you up as they please.
I'm not sure I understand the criticism (but I think I disagree with it either way). Are you complaining about the forcing pass or the meaning of the X?
Forcing pass I'm fairly ambivalent about, but I strongly disagree it's unplayable - it's a common treatment in England for just the reasons Mycroft gave. Sometimes you overcompete and once in a while you double their making contract, other times you can compete more accurately or double their nonmaking contract.
As for the double, IMO it's a clear improvement over normal 'takeout' or 'penalty' options. With those (and assuming you're playing the same principles regardless of who runs), suppose the 1N bidder runs to 2D nat to your right, LHO silent - whichever you play, you have no good call with such as (hand1) AQxx KQx QTx Kxx. You don't have a penalty X (or if you penalty X on these hands, you'll miss penalties every time you have a diamond holding like KJTx and P can't let you penalise with a singleton), but 'takeout' when the canonical hand would be such as (hand 2) AQxx KQTx x KQxx is horrible too (aside from anything else if P passes under the bidder they might well make).
Similarly, say on the same sequence you hold (hand 3) AQJxx x QTx KQJx. Again, you don't have anything close to a penalty X, but you don't have a takeout X either.
Solution: instead of partitioning desire to X two ways, partition it three ways. You can now X (the middle road) on hand 1 and hand 3, allowing partner to pass with such as xxx xxx KJx Axxx. On hand one, if they run to 2
♥ or 3
♣ you'll make the same kind of X a second time. If they run to 2
♠ you'll make a penalty (or penalty-seeking) pass.
On hand three if they run to 2
♥ you can bid 2
♠ (pulling partner's X if necessary - leaving it in would be a poor idea even if his X was straight penalties IMO).
You have to decide systemically where you expect to find the honours where responder rather than opener has shown the suit and so who is 'under' it (we've found that assuming they're with opener works better), but otherwise the principles are the same.
So you lose pass-and-pull as a strong forcing bid, which costs you something in game-bidding clarity, but in exchange you gain the ability to X them more effectively. I'm not sure what you're contrasting this treatment with, but vs most common treatments it makes it easier to penalise them, not harder! It might well not be the optimal approach, but again I think 'unplayable' is a huge overbid. We've playtested it a lot and got better results than any of the standard treatments.
IMO it's OK to play a forcing pass, provided double is Take-out or Penalty (but not ambiguous). If forced to play Jinksy's method, then I rank
- Double = OPT -- the least evil. Presumably, if you had doubled 2♣ it would have been optional. So your earlier pass denied that possibility. Hence, In view of LHO's 2♦ preference, partner can deduce that you hold a club suit. In a forcing-pass context, double is your best hope.
- 2♥ = NAT, but should show 5 cards or a better suit.
- Pass = Anti-systemic psych. Breaking agreements undermines partnership confidence. Better to suck up a bad result and use the experience as an argument for changing your agreements. Unless, of course, forcing doesn't really mean "forcing" but just "highly invitational"