Bridge
Table Bridge
Table
Forcing Pass systems are illegal in North America. But the extra room created by assigning a positive message to a first seat pass is intriguing. Trident is a system I would like to test drive if the ACBL were less conservative. What follows may seem at first glance to be very detailed. In fact it is just a sketch of a complicated system and if it were going to be played in earnest there would be many gaps to fill in.
The basic approach is to have the forcing pass (1st or 2nd seat) show 0-7 HCP or 16+ HCP. That leaves all the bids from 1
on up for defining the 8-15 HCP hands. For every 10 times you are the "opening" bidder, expect to make a forcing pass 4 times (3 of those times you'll be weak); the other 6 times you will have 8-15 HCP. This system is weighted towards defining the 8-15 HCP hands and scrambling with the weak and strong hands.
With the first seat pass taking care of both weak and strong hands, we have one more constructive low level bid than most systems. So what should we do with it? The usual approach is to cater to the strong hands. My choice has been to have the extra bid describe a frequently occurring distribution: 1 shows an 8-15 HCP hand with three suits of 3+ and a singleton (or void) in the 4th suit.