Canapé only with both majors
I like to design bidding systems for fun, and an innovation I came up with recently was a system in which canapé was used, but only when holding both majors. So, for example, 1!h would show either 5+ hearts and 3 or fewer spades (it could have a 4-card minor), or else 4+ hearts and 5+ spades (with 1!s showing the holdings with majors the other way round). In effect, this is a 5-card majors system, because opening a major guarantees you hold a 5-card major; it just doesn't guarantee which major. (The system is EBU level 4 legal because opening bids in the majors always guarantee at least 4 cards in the major opened.)
It seems obvious to me that this should be alertable. However, reading through the rules for alerts, they seem to exclude this case:
- Blue Book 4D1 states that canapé 1!c and 1!d should be alerted. It doesn't say the same about bids in the majors.
- Blue Book 4H2b states that canapé agreements in which the shorter suit in a two-suited hand is always bid first are alertable. But in this system, the longer suit is normally bid first; most hands don't have both majors.
The potential-canapé here is more than just "potentially unexpected" for most players; however, the examples in 4H2 are intended to help players interpret what "potentially unexpected" means, and thus presumably the qualifiers on 4H2b are intended to explicitly make some bids unalertable.
It seems strange that the examples in the alerting rules seem to have qualifiers specifically to exclude this case! I'd expect all potential canapé bids to be alertable, possibly with an exception for bidding a 5-card major in preference to a 6-card minor. But in that case, it's hard to see why the qualifiers (the restrictions to alerting minor-suit canapé, and mandatory canapé only, exist). Were they meant to handle situations like Walsh over 1!c (in which a responder who bids diamonds and subsequently bids a major is showing a game force, so weaker responders will bid majors before longer diamonds)? I'm not sure that really counts as canapé, especially as the term normally applies to opening bids.
This looks like a situation where the alerting rules need to be tightened up somewhat, or made more clear, because the current situation is quite bizarre.
Comments
"however, the examples in 4H2 are intended to help players interpret what "potentially unexpected" means, and thus presumably the qualifiers on 4H2b are intended to explicitly make some bids unalertable."
No.
I don't think 4H2b is intended to make your system unalertable because I agree it should be alerted.
And 4D1 definitely doesn't stop 1M canape opening being alerted.
What was intended with the "always" qualifier in 4H2b was to remove the need to alert (say) a 1H opening as "potentially canape" if you play fairly standard openings but would open 1H with 5 hearts, 6 diamonds and a hand not strong enough to reverse. It was trying to distinguish systemically opening the shorter suit first, from specific strengths/shapes where you have agreed with your partner that you are allowed to.
Now you bring it up I can see how the wording could be interpreted differently, so perhaps the wording needs tightening, as you say. We've struggled to put into a short statement what we mean, which is "alert it if opponents will be surprised at your suit lengths"
Perhaps a different way of putting it is that it's alertable when there is at least one suit rebid which shows the second suit is longer than the first (if at a higher level) or at least as long as the first (at a lower level). But that takes quite a lot more words!
That definition wouldn't even help for this particular system, because all the follow-ups are artificial and don't have much resemblance to the suit actually bid.
I guess this goes some way to show how hard it is to define an alerting policy that covers all cases!
(For what it's worth, I think the correct solution is "alert any bid that could be canapé, except in the case where it shows a major but could conceal a 6+ card minor if the major is at least 5 cards long". I think any other set of suit lengths would be surprising.)
There's an approach, more popular in America, but known here, which likes to open 1D on a 1345 and rebid 2C.
Do you think that should be alerted? The 1D opening is otherwise 'normal'.
Playing Precision, I'd open 1D on a 1345 hand but, of course, that would be alerted. In a supposedly natural system with an agreed 1D/2C handling of that shape, 1D is the start of a potential canapé and should be alerted.
I think at least the 2C is alertable there. I don't have a strong opinion about the 1D.
Presumably a 1354 uses the same bidding sequence, so it isn't the same thing as regular canapé (which always bids a particular pair of suits in the wrong order).
"For what it's worth, I think the correct solution is "alert any bid that could be canapé, except in the case where it shows a major but could conceal a 6+ card minor if the major is at least 5 cards long". I think any other set of suit lengths would be surprising.)"
We started only talking about opening bids.
We haven't got onto responses yet.
It's "normal" to play that a 1-level response could conceal a longer second suit if responder is not strong enough to bid the second suit (1D - 1H could be 4 hearts and longer clubs if responder does not have a game force).
But it's not "normal" to play that 1D - 1H could be 4 hearts and longer spades. And it's not normal to play that 1D-1H could have longer clubs if responder is game forcing - although some people do play that way.
There are also two different approaches here: playing that 1D-1H-2D(say)-3C explicitly shows more clubs than hearts - in which case I think 1H should be alerted. The other is to choose to conceal the club suit hoping it will make the defence against 3NT/4H harder. In that case it's not really a systemic agreement but is a matter of style. However most people who bid like that, their partners are unaware of it anyway.