Partnership Understandings Level 4
A reading of Section 7 B 1 of the Blue Book leads me to understand that a partnership playing Standard American, with a 1D opening guaranteeing min 4 cards, therefore a 4-4-3-2 distribution will be opened 1C with only 2 cards in clubs, is not allowed.
Is that right?
Comments
No, that's not right. What leads you to conclude that? Do you not think it is covered by "Any distribution that satisfies the requirements for a natural 1NT opening"?
Yes, I had thought it would be covered by that, but the sub-section for option (i) starts with ‘ Forcing or not, showing ANY COMBINATION of the following hand types:
A) at least four cards in the suit bid
B) at least four cards in the other minor
C) any distribution that satisfies the requirements for a natural 1NT opening.
Does this not mean that C has to be in combination with either A or B?
That is what confused me.
B) has got replaced by an emoji, don’t know how!
Should be b), computer!
Any combination includes any single one.
That section has always seemed unnecessarily complex to me.
Isn't it mathematically equivalent (at level 4) to "any hand is allowed, unless it contains 7 cards in one major with no 4-card minor, or it contains 10 cards in the majors combined"?
A quick proof of this: in order for the opening to be invalid as an NT opening, it either needs seven cards in a major, a void, or ten cards split between two suits:
Incidentally, this seems ridiculously permissive. I guess that's probably not a problem in practice, but the way the Blue Book is written at the moment, it looks less permissive than it actually is. (It took me a while to come up with a plausible bidding system that could violate 7B1; the most plausible I can come up with is "1!d shows an unspecified major of at least 5 cards and no 4-card side suit", in which case the system would attempt to use 1!d to bid 7222 and 7321 hands in a major, violating the rule.)
That sounds to me as though you think it is permitted to open 1C with a 7141 hand. If that's not what you meant, it might be an indication that writing watertight regulations is harder than you might imagine!
It'd be a pretty silly bidding system, but imagine a canapé system with minors reversed, i.e. 1!c shows a single-suiter in diamonds or 4 diamonds with another, longer, suit, and 1!d shows a single-suiter in clubs or 4 clubs with another, longer, suit. Such a system, as far as I can tell, is entirely compliant with 7B1 in the Blue Book (because the minor suit bids show "at least 4 cards in the other minor", as allowed by 7B1(i)(b)), and it would open a 7=1=4=1 hand 1!c.
If this bidding system is not permitted at level 4, what rule would it violate?
Perfectly permissable.
Thank you for the clarification.
Though I would have thought that the language would be clearer if it said ‘any one or any combination....’ (Like ‘joint and several’ in legal parlance).