The weather has been a little tough so I have been thinking. I have played the Walsh style of 1
- 1
if pard wants. On simple hands it has its advantages but I have always felt there were some problems lurking. I can see where skipping over the spades on balanced hands might solve one of them.
Imagine responder with an 8 count ( or a 9 count or a 7 count, I have no fixation on the number
. Imagine he has six diamonds and four hearts, and his partner opens 1
. IN the Walsh style he respondes 1
. A 1NT rebid by opener could be easier for him to handle than a 1
rebid. It seems to me that anyone who plays Walsh pretty much play 2 way new minor forcing or some variant of that. After 1
- 1
- 1NT responder invokes 2 way with 2
, forcing a 2
rebid from opener, and then responder passes. If opener, after 1
- 1
will only rebid 1
with an unbalanced hand this will first of all make the 1
response less frequent and secondly make it, perhaps, easier to deal with when responder has bid 1
holding a weakish 1=4=6=2 shape.
Not playing Walsh, the response to 1
would have been 1
and the problem does not arise.
Just something that occurred to me on a rainy day.
Added (or a few more words, not much new): I think that the biggest advantage of the Walsh style is that after 1
- 1
- 1NT opener can have 0, 1 or 2 four card majors. This is definitely an advantage in the play. I am not so sure that there is any advantage in the auction and I can see problems. In non-Walsh, after the auction begins 1
- 1
it is unlikely that the hand should be played in diamonds. Playing Walsh, we cannot be as confident of that. And then, after the standard auction 1
- 1
-1NT it is unlikely that the hand would have played better in spades. If we take the souped up Walsh where we skip over spades to rebid 1NT then it may well be that spades would have played better. Maybe these problems can be handled, but as I think about them it reinforces my thinking that the biggest feature of Walsh is the advantage mentioned above for the play. I do see that advantage as substantial.
Another thought: Consider the opposite approach, that after 1
- 1
opener, with four spades, always rebids 1
even if he is 4=3=3=3. Ir's true that then responder cannot be sure if opener is unbalanced. But there is compensation. Suppose the auction goes 1
- 1
-1NT. Responder knows that opener has four clubs and probably five. He has to have four of something and clearly it is not a major. If he had four diamonds he would have opened 1
unless he had five clubs. So responder,with a balanced 10 count, passes the 1NT but if he has a bit of shape, four card club support is perfectly adequate to place the hand in clubs. If 3
over 1NT is to pay, and it is often played that way, this could be a good call if he has some decent shape. If opener might have four spades and three of everything else, t3
will be less likely to work out.