[sceptic]

What are your opinions on Bergen raises ?

Are they Good?

Are they Bad?

What are the Pros and cons?

What are the Alternatives?

[Flame]

The concept of having many bids to show support is good.
The exact order of the bids are less important, i play a different order then bergen.
other choices are strong jump shifts, weak jumps shifts, mini splinters, and fit jumps.
My advice play normal bergen.

[han]

Flame forgot my favorite, invitational splinters.

I'm not a fan of Bergen raises. With the good one I just bid 2NT (inv. or better), with the bad one I simply raise. There are hands where it is right to go to the three level immediately with 7 HCP and 4-card support, but usually it doesn't matter. I'd rather have the jump shifts available to unload my forcing notrump response, or to make a more intelligent game/slam try (fit jumps or mini-splinters for instance).

[pclayton]

You need a mechanism to quickly get to the 3 level with 9 trump. Bergen works fine.

Others load the limit and / or mixed raises onto 2N. Others (like Meckwell) ignore the 3 level jump as preemptive and play it as mixed.

[luke warm]

most people forget that bergen raises include splinter bids... you do lose the fit jump, which is reason enough for some people not to play them

[sarcasm mode on] i've always liked them, but that was before lawrence's book proved, beyond doubt, that going to the 3 level with 9 trumps, merely because of a now-defunct LOTT, is losing bridge [/sarcasm mode off]

[sceptic]

next question, whos judgement is best, or who gets better results Bergen or Lawrence??????

[pclayton]

sceptic, on Feb 19 2005, 11:05 AM, said:

next question, whos judgement is best, or who gets better results Bergen or Lawrence??????

Neither of them play much competitive bridge these days.

Better resource it to look at the cc's of the top pairs.

[Flame]

Hannie, on Feb 19 2005, 01:00 PM, said:

Flame forgot my favorite, invitational splinters.

Didnt forget , i wronte mini splinters .
Use to play those, today i have one bid to show 6-9 and a singlton partner can get the specific singleton below game.(boochi doubin cc)

[the hog]

Jlall, on Feb 20 2005, 08:00 AM, said:

I'm a big fan of invitational jump shifts.

I would agree that invitational jump shifts work very well.

[Free]

Playing 5 card Majors, Bergen raises work quite well. Playing 4 card Majors they suck bigtime!

Lately I'm playing a 5 card M system which limits it's openings to 10-14(15), and I have to say they work awsome! Friday we had 2 hands where we ended up in 4M laydown!

[inquiry]

Bergen is not best, but it is better than 3c/3d as strong or weak.

However, depending upon your style, you would do better with 3C/3D as
1) Fit jump
2) Mixed raise fit jump
3) invitational with suit bid

ben

[Chamaco]

sceptic, on Feb 19 2005, 04:36 PM, said:

What are your opinions on Bergen raises ?

Are they Good?

Are they Bad?

What are the Pros and cons?

What are the Alternatives?

Even people who hate Bergen raises generally agree that the 1M:3M preemptive raise is quite effective.
Also, the concealed splinter raise is quite respected.


There is instead a debate on the effectiveness of the complex given by:

a. 3C/3D = mixed/invitational raise
b. 2NT = GF raise.

a1. the invitational raise (3D in direct Bergn raise, 3C in RevBerg) is not so bad; however, it is indeed a little selfpreemptive.
A slammish opener may find himself at the 3-level before relaying for pard's singleton/shape.
The Jacoby+ structure (see ETM Victory and Ben's pots) seems to work better for slam going hands.

a2. The mixed raise
This is the most criticized for many reasons:

1- it commits to the 3 level without being forced to.
If pard opens and we have a mixed raise, often hcp are split about evenly, and the ensuing partscore battle is not always clear. Especially when we hold spades, there is not always the need to go to the 3 level without being forced: many times we can stop in 2S and opps won't dare the 3 level.
Often the 3 level will be in jeopardy, and we are likely to be against the field playing only 2M (unless the rest of the field is playing Bergen too )

2- most important for me: everytime I have a good opening hand, and my pard raises a mixed Bergen, I don't know how to reevaluate my hand. This is because the mixed Bergen raise tells me responder has about 6/7-9 hcp, but it DOES NOT TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE.
Mixed fitshowing jumps work much better in my opinion for that goal.
Minisplinters perform the same goal, emphasizing shortness rather than good sidesuit, but they follow the same principle, e.g. "tell your pard which features we have not just counting hcp"

3- finally, another criticism vs Bergen raises is the ability for opps to double (or nor double) for lead direction. In my opinion this is a minor flaw (virtually any artificial call gives such a chance)

b. The Jacoby 2NT artificial raise

People playing 2/1 in the Lawrence style, and in Gitelman's style, require that a 2/1 bid in response to a major suit opening is a 5 card suit.
Using this agreement, they play hat 2NT is a natural GF with a balanced hand, and find other bids to show the forcing raise in a major (e.g. cheapest jumpshift in Fred's 2/1).

Personally, I like to keep the Jacoby(+) raise, and use 2C as 2-way (either bal GF OR with 5+ clubs)

[sceptic]

ok, curious now, if you keep bergen raises and play 1 H or 1 S then 2nt = 12 - 14ish as a balanced rasie, then you move your jacoby 2nt response to 1H - 2S (now jacoby 2nt) and 1S - 3C (now jacoby 2NT) and your bergen raises now are moved up one place, what are the advantages and disadvantages,

i.e.

what do you lose and what do you gain??

[Chamaco]

sceptic, on Feb 21 2005, 04:54 PM, said:

ok, curious now, if you keep bergen raises and play 1 H or 1 S then 2nt = 12 - 14ish as a balanced rasie, then you move your jacoby 2nt response to 1H - 2S (now jacoby 2nt) and 1S - 3C (now jacoby 2NT) and your bergen raises now are moved up one place, what are the advantages and disadvantages,

i.e.

what do you lose and what do you gain??

Two different issues:

1) what does one gain by the simple "shift" of the responses ?
By having a specific balanced raise, your 2/1 bids in a minor guarantee a good 5 card suit (with a bad 5 bagger there is often a better bid available, such as using the balanced GF response): that makes easier to evaluate the hand in 2/1 auctions, especially for bidding slam in a minor.

E.g.
If you open 1S and pard bids 2D, you know he has a GOOD 5 card diamond suit, and not a crappy 4 card suit in 4333 (with such a hand, he has the balanced raise).

Knowing that pard is balanced vs unbalanced with some fitting honors in pard's 2/1 suit cane make a dramatic difference.


2) I personally do not like the "generic" mixed raise, if that does not communicate any specific feature (shortness or side suit).
This, regardless of whether it is shown via the Bergen structure or the Gitelman structure.

[ochinko]

They are not good. They are great!

Seriously, I really find them very useful, very easy, both informative and preemptive. Especially when your whole system is based upon fast arrival and slow carefull investigation when you're stronger. Not to be able to use them would feel almost like I was returned back to the strong 2's openings.

But Free is right that it's much harder, if not impossible to make use of them, if you open with 4-card majors.

You can't name yourself follower of the LOTT if you don't use Bergen raises. Of course you have to feel comfortable with them so you should first thy them for a month or three. No single system, let alone convention, can win you a match.

[luke warm]

sceptic, on Feb 21 2005, 10:54 AM, said:

ok, curious now, if you keep bergen raises and play 1 H or 1 S then 2nt = 12 - 14ish as a balanced rasie, then you move your jacoby 2nt response to 1H - 2S (now jacoby 2nt) and 1S - 3C (now jacoby 2NT) and your bergen raises now are moved up one place, what are the advantages and disadvantages,

i.e.

what do you lose and what do you gain??

i use them usually... here's the structure i used to use:

1S : 3C=bergen limit, balanced (8/9-11)
1S : 3D=bergen constructive, balanced (7-9)
1S : 3H=under j/s (8/9-11 with a stiff... this was a game force and worked well)
1S : 3S=preemptive
1S : 3NT=over j/s (4C asks, 4S shows heart stiff-shifted up), 12-15
1S : 4C=12-15 balanced with 2 of 3 top spade honors if 4 trumps, A or K if 5
1S : 4D=same but without the honor promises

1H : 3C = bergen limit OR bergen constructive... 3D by opener says "i'll go to game if you have the limit, otherwise sign off"... responder would bid a feature with limit, sign off with constructive... if no feature (control), 4H
1H : 3D = under j/s... same as 1S/3H
1H : 3H=preemptive
1H : 3S=over j/s, same as 1S/3NT except now you can bid the stiff
1H : 4C/D=same swiss bids

1M : 2NT = 16+, 4 card support, any shape

the over jumpshifts (and occasionally the under j/s) often led to slams, depending on whether or not opener's points were outside responder's short suit

different people feel differently, but all in all i like the concept

[awm]

The one-under jump shifts work fine; distinguishing strengths of splinter bids can be very useful and it's hard to do in standard bidding. Jacoby 2NT works well enough as a forcing raise, at least if you add some agreements about which bids show/deny extras (I like serious 3NT for this purpose). The loss of the natural, forcing 2NT bid may adversely impact your bidding in other ways of course.

The parts of Bergen's raise structure which never worked so well for me are the mixed raise (especially over spades) and the four-level (inverted trump swiss).

I really don't like the bergen mixed raise. After an auction like 1S-3C, a lot of space has been lost (as opposed to 1S-2S). This means opener's decision of whether to bid game will be correspondingly less accurate. I believe in the law of total tricks and that it's normally right to compete to the three level with 9 trumps, but there's more to it than that. I'd rather play 2S than 3S because even with 9 trumps we may have only 8 tricks. This probably means the opponents can make something at the 3-level, but they have to bid it before they can make it and we can always compete to 3S after they balance (people sell to 2S sometimes). So especially when opener has spades, we've jammed our own constructive auction so as to prevent the opponents from bidding when they might've passed us out in 2S anyway. And all this jamming really accomplishes is to prevent them from competing to the FOUR level. If the opponents were balancing over 2S, we can always bid 3S later, and as long as they don't have FOUR of their suit we will do just the same as if we played bergen. The bergen mixed raise is a bit more useful in hearts (since we may prevent the opponents from bidding 3S over our 3H via fast arrival) but I still think it's a net loser.

As for trump swiss (1S-4C/D as balanced game forces with varying numbers of trump honors) this eliminates virtually all room for cuebidding auctions below keycard. This seems like a pretty big loss to me in exchange for removing some hands from the 2NT response. Much better to use something like serious 3NT after jacoby to distinguish values.

Another treatment I like is to use some direct jump to show a three-card limit raise. There are several problems with bidding forcing notrump on these hands. First off, opponents may enter the auction, creating some tough competitive decisions. What do you do with a 3-card limit raise after 1H-P-1NT-2S-P-3S? The law of total tricks seems to indicate that 3S and 4H probably aren't both making (although they could be -- especially if partner has 6 hearts and didn't want to stick his neck out at the three level with a minimum). But doubling 3S has an awful lot of ways to lose. Tough decision here -- isn't this easier if we had some auction like 1H-P-3C (3-card limit raise)? Opponents might not even find their spade fit, and if they do partner is well-placed to decide whether to bid on, defend, or double. Issues also arise when opener rebids at the 3-level, especially after interference. Every few months I see a "bidding problem" hand that goes something like 1H-P-1NT-2S-3C-P... and we have the 3-card limit raise. Unfortunately after the interference, 3C is not game forcing so 3H is a simple preference, but bidding 4H could easily miss a good slam. Even after a game-forcing jump like 1S-P-1N-P-3D, will correcting to 3S necessarily show the limit raise, or could it just be a "punt" trying to get to 3NT if it's right? The direct jump also prevents opponents from getting lead directional bids in, and makes it harder for them to count out opener's hand in the play (because opener needn't show his longest side suit as he normally would after the forcing notrump). Eliminating the three-card limit raise also means one can play semi-forcing notrump, which can be a win in a lot of different ways.

-- Adam

[keylime]

I've never liked Bergen because it's so overused and underappreciated. It's almost like 4NT Blackwood, where the users just go to themselves, "Hey, I got 4 trumps, 8 points, BAM! Raise time.". To me it doesn't encourage active hand evaluation. That, and many folks bid with way too many losers/lacking controls/wrong shape and get themselves in trouble.

Inverted Swiss isn't that bad on paper, but suffers from lack of a "picture bidding" setup. I've seen good slams missed here.

I'm an over/under jump shift fan.

[dogsbreath]

hi all
..initially i tht bergen excellent in a 5-card major system, but in results lead me to believe it's ineffective .. also pointless in a 4-card major system like Acol. I have no real statistical data but 'feel' that bergen is less effective in practice than it seems to be theoretically ..
Regards Dog