All North American players are taught to play using a strong notrump, but that is not the way of the rest of the world. Even in North America, weak notrump systems, or even Kamikaze notrump systems, are becoming more common. This book discusses the advantages and disadvantages of playing a system with a weaker notrump opening, and shows how the 1NT range impacts the rest of the bidding system. Even those who have no interest in converting to a weak notrump range still need to know how to play against weak notrump systems. For them, the book includes advice on effective competitive methods.
A comprehensive exposition of the Kaplan-Sheinwold (K-S) bidding system, incorporating up-to-date aggressive methods. Advantages of this Aggressive Weak No Trump bidding system include: (1) A greater proportion of limit bids and a higher frequency of bids in general, improving communication between partners. (2) More accurate low-level descriptive bids, making it easier during the auction to envision the probable play of the hand and to find your best contract. (3) Increased use of preempts, making it more difficult for the opponents to find their best possible result in a competitive auction.
Notrump openings, and the constructive auctions that follow them, are two of the most neglected areas in bridge literature. Following on from his popular articles in the ACBL Bulletin, Kleinman discusses the principles behind notrump bids and rebids in a variety of situations, emphasising the ideas and concepts rather than attempting to teach a series of rigid rules. A must for any duplicate player.
The novice and eager-to-learn player will find this book an indispensable guide, and the more seasoned tournament will find this an invaluable source of tips and pointers on bidding and playing. For both, Sheinwold makes tournament play appealing and challenging. It won't be long before his readers score "top on the board" in Duplicate competition.
This book is designed to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the 3 major bidding systems: Standard American, 2/1 and Precision Club as well as the Bergen Raise system. Solutions are offered for each disadvantage. Proposals for additional conventions such as the Weak NT and Jacoby transfers are contained in a model simplified chart of each system. There are also innovative proposals for showing a 5-card major, overcalls and slam bidding. You will also find chapters on the various conventions, irregularities in bidding, probabilities, filling out the convention card, playing in a team event and scoring.
The Precision Diamond system provides a solution to the flaws in the Standard American bidding convention (SAYC). There are 6 notable features of my bidding system. The 1st feature is the ability of the responder to show his 5-card major suit immediately using the Casey-Jacoby Transfer. The 2nd feature is that Precision Diamond permits the opener to show his points within a 2p range from 16-21 points using the Casey Shift and the Strong 2 opening. The 3rd feature is the ability of the overcaller to show his 4-card major suit immediately by assigning 1NT to show 4s. The 4th feature of Precision Diamond is the ability of the Keycard-Asker in a slam contract to ascertain whether the opener has the trump queen using the Casey RKC method. The 5th feature is the ability of the opener to show keycards, including the trump queen, at the 4-level in the case of a minor suit slam attempt using Minorwood. The 6th feature is the ability of the opener to find a slam with a minor suit fit using the Casey Minor Rebid convention.
The 2/1 Game Force System is an improvement over the Standard American System that has been in effect and played by bridge players for many years. The advantage of the 2/1 System is that it allows the partnership to know that game is possible with only an initial single bid. This book is about bridge that incorporates conventions that allow partnership’s to reach game or slam. In this regard, I have incorporated modern methods for hand evaluation developed by Marty Bergen called the ADJUST-3 Method and Zar points, new bidding conventions like SARS (Shape Asking Relays after Stayman) and Quest transfers, and an overview of “Bridge Rules and Laws” that I hope will improve your approach to the bidding structure you may use today. Also included is the bidding structure are Bergen, Reverse Bergen, and Combined Bergen major suit raises, inverted minor suit raises with crisscross and flip-flop, cue bidding, modified scroll bids, and many more methods not used in Standard American or Precision. The bidding conventions in the previous editions have been enhanced, corrected, expanded upon, and reorganized with new ones added. Given the release of the new ACBL convention charts, the chapter with the modifications to Fantunes, in my prior edition, is no longer needed. Fantunes may now be played using the Open Convention Chart. The Mid-chart no longer exits. Hence, I have deleted the chapter and replaced it with a new chapter on Bridge Tips, and Agreements. New conventions include a Modern Splinter Bidding Convention, the Zirconia Convention, Unusual 2-level bids, Jump Transfer bids, a new Two-Way Check-back Convention, 1430 Modified Jacoby 2NT*, additional Bridge Rules with more examples, Four-Way Transfers with the range ask bid and more are included in this edition. Also included is an update of the Minorwood and the Roman Keycard Blackwood Conventions, Two-Way New Minor Forcing with modified Wolff Signoff bids and new bidding sequences using Mini/Weak Notrump. The topic of Offense to Defense Ratio (ODR) is included in this revision as well as expanded bidding sequences when opening and responding to the bid of 2 playing the 2/1 Game Force System and many new Bridge Rules have been added to Chapter 10. A copy of this book is on the web site www.bridgewebs.com/ocala. A hard copy is available from the publisher or from Amazon.com – search on neil timm.
This book incorporates the 2/1 Game Force bidding system whenever the opener bids a major suit. This book is designed to improve your bidding of minor suit openings in 3 steps. The 1st step involves bids to hamper the opponents from finding their 4-4 spade fit. This involves the use of the Casey overcall and the Weak 1NT opening. It also involves the use of the Casey-Jacoby transfer to find a 5-card major in responder’s hand and the use of inverted minors. The 2nd step involves adoption of the strong 2 bid, a bid of 20-21p. This allows the opener to use the Casey Reverse to show a hand of 16-17p by bidding at the 2-level and to show a hand of 18-19p by bidding at the 3-level. The Casey Minor Rebid convention allows the opening to show a 4+ card suit at the 2 or 3-level. The third step involves optimizing your slam bidding with the Casey Trump Queen convention. It also involves the use of the Redwood Kickback convention for minor suit contracts and the use of the Fourth Suit Forcing convention to ascertain whether opener has 5 cards in his 2nd bid minor suit.
