1 - 1 - 1NT with 4-card Spades...
...C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le Precision!

I always say that partnership agreement is king, and it's true. OCP is a system you can tweak to your heart's content, but there are some fundamental things about Precision, and particularly about OCP, that you change at your peril.

The simple 1 responses are geared to make it really hard to miss a 4-4 (or even a viable 4-3) Major fit when we're not strong enough to play beyond the 2-level (which is quite a lot of the time, let's face it).

One of the major criticisms of the Complex 1 is that it can make it much harder to find a 4-4 Major fit at a low level. Jason and I accepted that (albeit with some reluctance) because of it's perceived advantages in some other areas, but in reality there isn't much to choose between the Simple 1 and the Complex 1 .

Rebidding 1 on that hand does not preclude playing the hand in 1NT, but rebidding 1NT does make it almost impossible to find a 4-4 or 4-3 Spade contract when partner is fundamentally weak.

Brian
I think I agree with you about the scale for Beta after a 4 /4 Opening. Typically Namyats is a 4-level pre-empt with an outside Ace, or something along those lines, so I'd be perfectly comfortable with using the normal scale.


Jimmy
I think (given my comment above) that I'd be heading for the following sequence as Responder:
4      -     4 (Beta)
4NT(3)   -   5 (Epsilon)
5 (2nd) - 6
All Pass


4 agrees Spades so Epsilons are available over the 4NT response. You even just punt 6 over the 4NT Beta response.

One thing: Don't forget that the OCP system specifies Transfer Lebensohl over Doubles of their weak 2's (whether the doubler is 2nd-in-hand or protecting). Now the bidding would start:

(2 ) - No   - (No)   - X
(No)   - 3 - ??

If West doesn't come in with 3 , North will bid 3 and now his King is protected. If West does come in with 3 you're no worse off if North passes or bids 3 .

The ability to move freely between the two hands is a really precious commodity. Sometimes, entries to one hand or another are few in number and on such occasions you need to protect those entries like mad, and work hard to create other entries where possible. This was a simple hand, but it shows the difference when you do the above rather than using up entries needlessly or squandering them:

Love All, Dealer East

Bidding
East     South     West     North
1       No           No         X
2       No           No         3
All Pass

South (Dummy)
K76
J1062
J74
J83

Queen led

North
A53
KQ7
AQ652
A9

I knew Eszter had a strong hand from her bidding, and clearly the King was well placed, but I didn't feel my motley collection justified any movement over 3 (rightly as it turned out - the Spade lead gives the defence a tempo and a Club lead would have given Declarer real problems in 3NT, since West had Q10xxx).

East led the Queen. How do you assess your chances and how do you play?

Firstly, Declarer needs to recognise that the majority of the outstanding high cards will be with East rather than West, so the chances of the Ace and King being with West are greatly reduced. You have only one sure entry to Dummy, which is the King and even that will be under threat if the Spades are 6-1 (which is a serious threat given the bidding).

Safest, therefore, to take that entry while it's a relatively sure thing, so win trick 1 in Dummy with the King. Now what? There's absolutely no incentive to delay attacking trumps, but how is it best to play the suit? With no other considerations low from Dummy to the Queen is the best play, but you might play differently in this situation when it's more likely that the finesse of the Queen will lose (eg: Small to the Ace and small back towards the Jack, which might gain you a tempo when East ducks with Kxx in case partner has the doubleton Queen). One thing is sure, there are two very good reasons why you should not lead the Jack here:

• You inevitably lose an extra Diamond trick when West has the singleton King, and lose a trick unnecessarily when West has Kx
• More critically, when the finesse loses, you have not gained back an entry to Dummy. If the finesse of the Queen loses, the Jack becomes an entry

(2) Above pretty much determines how you should play, which is the standard "best line" of small to your Queen. If East has the King, Dummy's Jack is now an entry. Why is this important? Well the Jack of Hearts is why: You want to enjoy Dummy's 4th Heart in order to be able to discard either a losing Club or a losing Spade from your hand. You cannot rely on an entry in Hearts themselves if whichever defender holds the Ace holds up twice and takes the 3rd round.

Eszter led the Jack of Diamonds, which lost to East's King. East now solved our problem, however, by promptly leading out the Ace!. Now what? If you just played the 7 from your hand, then this post is aimed at you, because there is absolutely no reason not to play the King or Queen under the Ace, thereby gaining an entry to Dummy's long Heart in the Heart suit itself. If you play the 7 on auto-pilot you've blocked the Hearts and can never get rid of a black suit loser.

If you were leading the Heart suit yourself, you'd start with the King and then the Queen in order to force out the Ace. Why play any differently when Opps freely play the Ace of their own accord? Okay, we're only talking about a relatively insignificant overtrick on this occasion, but if you don't get into the habit of unblocking suits like this automatically and actively seeking to create entries at every opportunity, then you will find it much harder to do so when it's critical to the success of your contract.

Eszter and I got into a slightly dodgy slam on this hand (entirely my fault, I concede), but Declarer's tactics in the play of the hand is a point well worth making as it potentially applies to many other hands:

EW Game, Dealer South

South (Dummy)
J
A85
AKQ9
AQ864

5 led

North
A83
Q10976
J72
KJ

Bidding (Opps silent)
South     North
1          1
1NT⁽¹⁾     2 ⁽²⁾
2 ⁽³⁾     2NT⁽⁴⁾
3 ⁽⁵⁾     3NT⁽⁶⁾
6 ⁽⁷⁾     All Pass

(1) Beta
(2) 3 Controls
(3) Gamma in Hearts
(4) Hxxxx in Hearts
(5) Epsilon in Clubs
(6) 2nd and 3rd round control.
(7) A little risky. Good when North has Ace and QJ10xx, but hopeless when North has the King and Kxxxx. Not a great slam when North has what they actually had, either. I probably should have gone quietly here, but decided not to...

The Play
On a lead, how should you approach the play? It's a given that you need something nice to happen in Hearts, but even if you assume that something nice is going to happen there, the hand still needs some care.
The important question is this: Do you need to worry about trying to ruff North's losing Spades with South's short trumps?.

On some hands the answer would undoubtedly be "Yes!", but on this hand, with a Diamond lead rather than a Spade lead, the answer should be a resounding "No!". There are lots of tricks available in the Minor suits on which North's losing Spades can be discarded. Even on an initial Spade lead, it's arguable that drawing Opps' trumps is the overriding concern. Yes you might end up -3 when East turns up with KJx, but you're probably off regardless if that's the case and the difference between -1 and -3 in 6 when most people will be in 4 is not that great.

Eszter took a middle road: Winning trick 1 in Dummy. at trick 2 she led the Jack, took her Ace and ruffed a Spade. Now a Club to the King (maybe originally intending to ruff another Spade) but then she changed tacks and played a Heart to Dummy's Ace, before cashing 2 more Clubs, discarding her last Spade on the 3rd before leading a second Heart towards her Q109.

This worked out okay: The Minor suits were both 3-3 and West turned up with KJx, so had no winning options on the 2nd Heart and 12 tricks were duly gathered for a very good score, because few NS Pairs bid to a making slam.


The thing is that after trick 1, Declarer has the tempo: her control of the Spade suit is still intact and Opps have to gain the lead twice in order to be able to (1) attack Spades and (2) to be able to cash any Spade tricks. If Declarer didn't have all of the Minor suit winners waiting in the wings to take care of her losing Spades, or if her control of Spades had already been removed (at trick 1), it might be a different matter. Here, though, since we need to get the Hearts sorted out for only 1 loser, it's not the right tactics to voluntarily give up our control of Spades.

Better to attack the Hearts straight away and not touch Spades at all. If the Hearts come in for 1 loser (ie: West has one or both of the missing Heart honours and we guess right), even if either opponent wins the 2nd round of Hearts, they are not in a position to cash a Spade trick. All they can do is to force out the Ace and we still have the tempo to complete drawing trumps and enjoy our Minor suit winners.

This sort of principle applies on many hands. Ultimately it comes down to counting winners and losers. Here we have umpteen winners in the Minors and there's no need to gain any extra tricks by ruffing Spades in the short hand. If we keep Dummy's trumps intact, we can potentially still come to our 12 tricks when the Hearts are not ideally placed but still catchable (eg: West with KJxx) as long as we retain the ability to lead Hearts twice towards our Q109. Ruffing a Spade in Dummy early on takes away that option.

Aces are generally worth their weight in gold in a trump contract. Indeed many people favour variations on Milton Work's 4321 method of counting points that give more precedence to Aces and less to Jacks. Marty Bergen, for example, favours a scale of

Ace     = 4.5
King    = 3
Queen = 1.5
Jack    = 0.75
10      = 0.5

Anyway, there's no doubt that the bullets really pulled their weight in this contract. It's also very true that final contracts of 1 and 1 are much more common when a Pair is playing Precision. This hand shows off Precision at its best in staying low:

NS Game, Dealer South

North (Dummy)
6
5
Q763
Q1087632

^{4 led}

South
J109832
A109
A82
A

I had opened the South hand with 1 , and everyone passed (Eszter apparently without a care in the world and not a moment's hesitation LOL). I decided to play West for the King and went up with Dummy's Queen at trick 1 (and it held the trick). A Heart to my Ace and a ruff, a Diamond back to my Ace and the Ace saw me with 5 tricks, and I'd not even touched trumps yet.

In practice nothing could stop me from making an overtrick in this unpromising misfit. I knew it would be a decent result: EW can make 3 , but an amazing number of NS Pairs just kept on bidding all the way up to 4 . Even the handful of NS Pairs whose EW Opps overstretched to 4 and were doubled, going -1 weren't getting quite as good a result as our +110.

I love this System!

As it stands at the moment, the issue of asking for possession of the Jack only applies when the original Delta/Theta/Iota got a response that shows xxxx or HHxx (ie: the only two responses that always show one particular holding rather than one of two alternatives).


The immediate answer to your question, therefore, is that no, that wouldn't be an alternative response.


However, it would be quite a neat idea, potentially, (Asker might have AKQxx or AK109x, for example) and logically there is absolutely no reason not to allow the same 2 responses in the following situation only:

• Teller has shown a balanced hand
• Iota (whether an initial Iota or a repeat Alpha, Delta, Theta or Iota in a different suit) got a 1-step response showing what in practice has to be xx in the suit

This could easily be managed by a subtle re-wording of the rules for Iota to something along the lines of "...any time that the original Iota got a response that shows only one possible alternative" rather than the existing reference to 4 or 6-step responses.