2/1 System Philosophy

If you play 2/1 Game Forcing, you are really playing two systems. The first system applies from first and second seat, when a 2/1 response is indeed forcing to game, and the second system is for third and fourth seat, when it isn’t. I find this arrangement somewhat unattractive, for a number of reasons.

First of all, the first system doesn’t really suit me. To make the basic premise possible, you really need to play sound opening bids. In order for a 2/1 response to stay within reasonable limits, responder has to be able to count upon good high-card strength being part of the opening bid. Otherwise, the requirements for making the response have to be higher, and the strain placed on the forcing 1NT response (etc) is going to be too great – your ability to bid hands where responder isn’t strong enough for a 2/1 will suffer. (And note that the higher the requirements are, the more hands there will be where responder doesn’t meet them.) I much prefer to start bidding when I have a hand, rather than lie in wait and hope the opponents haven’t bid game before the bidding gets back to me. When sitting down to play Standard in a pick-up game, I’m inclined to tell my partner I will open any 12-count, and with the right distribution, 11-counts and 10-counts get opened too. I don’t think you can do that and play 2/1 Game Forcing. Listen to strong-club players: they will tell you that a big advantage of their system is that the other bids are limited, and they can open a ropey 10- or 11-count 1S without worrying that partner will go ballistic on small values. Getting into the auction is good.

Second of all, I’m not convinced that the first system really delivers the benefits claimed for it. The major advantage claimed is that after the 2/1 response, since you are in a forcing auction there is no need for jumping around to show strength, and both partners can relax and explore the correct strain and whether there are slam possibilities. Whereas, in a typical Standard auction, neither opener nor responder is immediately sure whether game or slam is in the picture, and bidding space gets wasted as one (or both) jumps to show strength. I will concede there is some truth to this picture – some truth – but the overall assessment is not nearly so one-sided as advocates make out. For some slam hands where the auction starts 1major – 2something, having the response be game-forcing does make life easier. But those hands don’t crop up as often as you would wish, and if the response isn’t game-forcing, that doesn’t mean that you can’t bid the right game or slam anyway. Much is made of the fact that many bids and sequences are discussed and carefully defined, whereas in Standard they typically aren’t. Well, hello – you can discuss and define your bids playing any system. That doesn’t actually count as an advantage for 2/1, especially since if you question any random pair of 2/1 players, their interpretations of some bids and sequences will differ, sometimes quite significantly. Much is also made of the many gadgets that 2/1 users typically play. Again, that doesn’t actually count since you can play almost every such gadget without a 2/1 response being game-forcing.

And there is a down-side to the system. Responding hands that are pretty good but not quite strong enough for a 2/1 response are an obvious weak point. Such hands will be good enough to make game if opener is just a little better than minimum, and not being able to make a natural 2/1 response to start the ball rolling will make such games harder to find. As a matter of raw probabilities, I think these cases will occur much more often than the slam hands that are made easier. Then there is the issue of auctions that start with a 2/1 response and where one (or both) of the hands has some extras, but not too much. It is not unknown for a 2/1 pair to get too high by simply failing to stop, because (since there’s no jumping going on and many bids are unlimited upwards) one (or both) of them was unsure that he had actually shown his full values. I grew up in the Acol world, where the catch-phrases were stuff like “get the hand off your chest” and “bid what you think you can make”. Sometimes we jumped too high, but we didn’t putter around and stumble too high. That’s just undignified.

Then third of all, consider the difference of approach needed for the second system, the system for third and fourth seat, and realize that it is basically Standard. But here, rather than sound opening bids, the rule is that unsound openings are encouraged, as weak as 7-9 points at favorable vulnerability, especially in third seat. But there is nothing to stop a third or fourth seat hand from holding a maximum opening. So the 2/1 Game Force has – maybe – made life a little easier when first or second seat opens, but at the expense of making the “Standard” system unmanageable when third or fourth seat is the opening hand. Most pairs try to handle this situation with the Drury convention, to give responder a mechanism to identify under-strength openings. (Considered rationally, this is nothing more than a psychic control. Although the ACBL considers psychic controls to be anathema, they love Drury for some reason. Consistent logic is apparently not one of their strong suits.) This helps, but still leaves constructive bidding in the second system crippled, in my opinion. And I believe that many players fail to appreciate the difference in psychological approach necessary between the first and second systems.

So what’s my point? Well, in this little essay, I guess it’s just that I don’t really like 2/1 Game Forcing, but I think I have legitimate reasons for my gut reaction.