[Shugart23]

What do you do with a 4441 hand with 8+ HCP when partner opens a precision 1C ? Parner and I jump to one below the shortness if 8-14, but are there better options ?

[PrecisionL]

Other options for responder's 4441 GF hand when partner opens a strong 1♣:

2♠ - Opener asks for singleton with 2NT and opener will declare NT if singleton is well stopped. MY FAVORITE VERSION!

2♥ - Opener asks for 1 under the singleton with 2♠. Later bidding of the singleton is Beta for Controls and a suit bid is RKC.

3♣ with black suit singleton and 8-11 hcp

3♦ with a red suit singleton and 8-11 hcp
3♥ = 4=1=4=4, 12+ hcp & 4+ Controls
3♠ = 1=4=4=4, 12+ hcp & 4+ Controls
4♣ = 4=4=4=1, 12+ hcp & 4+ Controls
4♦ = 4=4=1=4, 12+ hcp & 4+ Controls

Note: Using 3-level bids for this distribution is a waste, find something else for 3-Level (HInt: Semi-solid 6-cd Suits) 7/22/25 added

[HardVector]

There are a ton of systems that deal with this particular situation. Off the top of my head, I can point to Viking precision and GUS, but I am sure that there are more. The primary thing you should focus on is the ability to force to game without showing a 5 card suit. If your system can't do this, then you need a new system.

[DavidKok]

We've talked about this before, and I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. But here we go again. Your positive system over 1♣ really does not matter. The 1♣ opening itself, obviously subject to partnership agreements and ranges, is opened around 8% of the time. LHO overcalls about half the time. Conditional on there not being an overcall, partner has a negative response a little over half the time. We're down to 2% of deals for the positive system.

Of that 2%, the 4441-type hands make up around 1/30, or 0.06%. Of that 0.06%, it's a boring game (find your 8cM fit and sign off in 3NT if none is found) about two thirds of the time. The remaining 0.02%, or 1/5000, is where you might see a system profit from having better agreements on what to do with positive 4441's. That's any singleton, of course. It just doesn't matter.

Now I do think there at better ways to deal with the hands than you've listed. If you're really curious I could suggest some alternatives. But do keep in mind that, if you play 25 deals a day three days a week, you likely won't see any gains in the first year and a half or so - and even that's assuming you're currently doing all the non-boring-games wrong and will immediately transition to getting them right.

[Shugart23]

DavidKok, on 2025-July-22, 00:19, said:

We've talked about this before, and I feel like I'm beating a dead horse. But here we go again. Your positive system over 1♣ really does not matter. The 1♣ opening itself, obviously subject to partnership agreements and ranges, is opened around 8% of the time. LHO overcalls about half the time. Conditional on there not being an overcall, partner has a negative response a little over half the time. We're down to 2% of deals for the positive system.

Of that 2%, the 4441-type hands make up around 1/30, or 0.06%. Of that 0.06%, it's a boring game (find your 8cM fit and sign off in 3NT if none is found) about two thirds of the time. The remaining 0.02%, or 1/5000, is where you might see a system profit from having better agreements on what to do with positive 4441's. That's any singleton, of course. It just doesn't matter.

Now I do think there at better ways to deal with the hands than you've listed. If you're really curious I could suggest some alternatives. But do keep in mind that, if you play 25 deals a day three days a week, you likely won't see any gains in the first year and a half or so - and even that's assuming you're currently doing all the non-boring-games wrong and will immediately transition to getting them right.

That's an interesting way to look at it.

[awm]

While I disagree with David on the frequency/importance, I still think there are a lot of other factors to consider:

1. Remembering your system is really important. Something that’s good in theory becomes a big loser with even occasional forgets. It helps to play methods that are familiar from other parts of your system, and of course people vary on their ability to memorize methods.
2. I’d tend to consider 1♣ responses as a whole; for example, do you have another good use for 2♥ response? Assigning a lot of bids to 4441 may cause losses on other hand types and end with a net loss.

[DavidKok]

 awm, on 2025-July-22, 04:15, said:

While I disagree with David on the frequency/importance

The frequencies are based on large sample size computer simulation, with the overcall frequency based on vugraph analysis. I think the main tunable parameter is the strength of the 1♣ opening (and, correspondingly, the strength of a positive response). This particular 1♣ has been shared here before. I'd be happy to rerun some numbers - which do you disagree with?

[awm]

A few points:

1. I’d roughly double the frequency because you also have the 3rd/4th seat 1♣ openings. It’s possible that opponents open in front of course, but less likely when you have the vast majority of values.
2. The methods that you choose here have a lot of impact on your other 1♣ auctions, so even though the 4441s themselves are pretty rare, how you show them might impact other hands.
3. Not every auction is equally important (especially at IMPs, but to some degree at MP too); the hands where you have a slam decision tend to be a particularly swingy, so it’s worth putting some effort there even if absolute frequency is low. Positive responses to strong club definitely live in this category.

[awm]

I’d also observe that how often opponents overcall varies a LOT by who your opponents are, and that in general most opponents are more likely to act when they have some values (and less likely when responder has a GF).

It’s also not the case that the strongest players are more likely to interfere; at the very top levels you actually see slightly more unobstructed auctions than at the lower end of expert (but not nearly so many as you see at intermediate). This has to do with top level opponents being more willing to penalize, and aggressive intervention helping top declarers more in the play.

[DavidKok]

It is simply a mistake to double the number. The 8% is based on Vugraph frequency and computer simulation: the two are in agreement. The fact that you have multiple seats and the fact that someone might open in front of you roughly cancel out. This is in line with the observation that most systems open around 50-55% of all hands, but slightly fewer conditional on us holding a strong club opening. Don't fail to consider that in 3rd/4th we are also conditioning on partner passing, so the fraction of positive responses to 1♣ is drastically lower.

The fact that we are conditioning partner's positive response on a lack of an overcall is the same as conditioning the lack of an overcall on partner having a positive response.

I choose the pairs de Wijs-Muller, Bramley-Woolsey and Nyström-Upmark for my analysis. For the last pair, for example, I combed through a little over 900 recorded vugraph deals for them and found 55 unobstructed positive 1♣ auctions. Your doubling rule would predict 144, if I'm not mistaken.

[bluenikki]

Shugart23, on 2025-July-21, 04:50, said:

What do you do with a 4441 hand with 8+ HCP when partner opens a precision 1C ? Parner and I jump to one below the shortness if 8-14, but are there better options ?

How bad was CC Wei's original "Impossible negative"?

[mycroft]

Not great. Especially combined with "positives can stop in 2NT". Having said that, I think I played them for 2 years and they came up once, so...

Playing the SMP "2♠ is 4441" game, it's a real stretch for a hand that never comes up (the end signal routine is also, shall we say, "easy to forget"?) Is there a good way to deal with this hand, or should you just do the absolute minimum and pay off when it does show up?

Well, how much can you (and partner) remember?

[bluenikki]

mycroft, on 2025-July-22, 17:57, said:

Not great. Especially combined with "positives can stop in 2NT". Having said that, I think I played them for 2 years and they came up once, so...

Playing the SMP "2♠ is 4441" game, it's a real stretch for a hand that never comes up (the end signal routine is also, shall we say, "easy to forget"?) Is there a good way to deal with this hand, or should you just do the absolute minimum and pay off when it does show up?

Well, how much can you (and partner) remember?

Are we talking about the same convention? I meant negative followed by splinter. How hard is that to remember?

Precisely because of the rarity, it doesn't need to be great, merely halfway decent.

[mycroft]

Yes. Well, the first sentence was talking about it. After that I switched to a more modern take on it and was commenting that maybe "not great, but works" is at least as good for a rare case as "works really well if both players remember it, and remember all the crazy after it."

But as far as "Impossible negative" goes, 1♣-1♦; 1♠ and you hold JT953 6 KQT72 82. Sure wish you had that 3♥ call that shows a very different hand, don't you?

[awm]

DavidKok, on 2025-July-22, 07:43, said:

It is simply a mistake to double the number. The 8% is based on Vugraph frequency and computer simulation: the two are in agreement. The fact that you have multiple seats and the fact that someone might open in front of you roughly cancel out. This is in line with the observation that most systems open around 50-55% of all hands, but slightly fewer conditional on us holding a strong club opening. Don't fail to consider that in 3rd/4th we are also conditioning on partner passing, so the fraction of positive responses to 1♣ is drastically lower.

The fact that we are conditioning partner's positive response on a lack of an overcall is the same as conditioning the lack of an overcall on partner having a positive response.

I choose the pairs de Wijs-Muller, Bramley-Woolsey and Nyström-Upmark for my analysis. For the last pair, for example, I combed through a little over 900 recorded vugraph deals for them and found 55 unobstructed positive 1♣ auctions. Your doubling rule would predict 144, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm not doubting that, in 1st seat, with relatively "normal" definitions of the bids, a strong club comes up on 8% of hands. This is easy to measure. Where I have more doubts is:

1. We can potentially open a strong club in any seat. This should increase the number of boards where we open strong club above 8%, although not all the way to 16%.
2. I think your estimates of "negative response half the time" and "interference half the time" are both too high, especially since these things are not independent.

If we look at your results for Nyström-Upmark, your estimate would be that they have 900 * 2% = 18 unobstructed positive strong club auctions, while they actually had 55. This is off by quite a large factor. My claim was that your estimate was too low by around a factor of two, which looks better (36 vs. 55) but at least in their case my estimate was still too low. And none of this considers the fact that these tend to be "high scoring" auctions (often slam decisions) which might be worth more discussion than (for example) the large percentage of very straightforward 1NT auctions.

[DavidKok]

Thanks, I fully agree with the 2% prediction being 18, and this is in disagreement with my findings. Thank you, I had overlooked this.

For the second point, I do take the conditional odds into account when looking at the frequency of positive responses. You have to - the opening and the lack of an overcall have a significant impact on the probabilities. I'll look into it more in the hopes of reconciling my hand distribution simulations with the vugraph frequencies - currently I am misinterpreting my numbers.

[foobar]

FWIW, my approach to these hands is to club them with the 1M responses. This is systemically consistent with opening 1M with the 4441M hands (which are 5+ a vast majority of the time). The advantage of this approach is that one can play the exact same relay responses over 1♣ - 1M - (relay) as 1M - GFR.

[straube]

foobar, on 2025-July-23, 09:56, said:

FWIW, my approach to these hands is to club them with the 1M responses. This is systemically consistent with opening 1M with the 4441M hands (which are 5+ a vast majority of the time). The advantage of this approach is that one can play the exact same relay responses over 1♣ - 1M - (relay) as 1M - GFR.

I've always hated that approach. You've no guarantee either that the 4-cd major is a strong suit, capable of pulling trump.

[foobar]

 straube, on 2025-July-24, 11:15, said:

I've always hated that approach. You've no guarantee either that the 4-cd major is a strong suit, capable of pulling trump.

How frequent are these hands, how often are we playing in a 4-3 fit in 4M (instead of say 3N), and how frequently do these fits play poorly?

IME, it almost never has been an issue but YMMV.