Changes coming to Inquiry 2 over 1

As you may know, I have a fairly complete bidding system, termed inquiry 2 over 1. It has gone unchanged for about 2 years, but not untested. A few changes (improvements) are now ready to be described. The areas of improvement include ditching criss-cross, as being too wasteful of space. This makes 1C-p-2C no longer game force but responder can easily separate the limit raises from the GF raises. Experience suggest this is a much better use of bidding space. Same situation exist for 1D-p-2D.

Another twist is more variation in Reverse Flannery by responder. We had used 1m-p-2H and 1m-p-2S both as reverse flannery by responder. With freeing up 1C-p-2D (no longer needed for criss-cross), we now use this as the weakest reverse flannery response, and now that frees up 1C-p-2H as the better (but non-forcing) version of Reverse Flannery. This leaves 2S free to be almost anything you want. One idea is preemptive. Another is a natural 2NT bid where the 2S bidder doesn't wnat to be the declarer in NT (no positional advantage), making 2NT being a positional 2NT bid. I am thinking a better use is 2S is a Reverse flannery bid but with 6Spades and exactly 4H. I have tried all three, and found the balanced 1NT can most often go through 1C-2C (new response schedule used as well, since it is no longer "GF").

I still like the Jacoby 2NT Plus concept, and I have finally found true happyness with the NEW MINOR forcing concept. It was rough around the edges when it was suggested to me by Mishovnbg. I think I will add the little pieces here, and also update the inquiry2over1 system blog.

After two years of experimention. the biggest winners are the layered raises of majors that we play after 1m-1M-raise, and the three way 2C response to 1M. The Kaplan Inversion has been both sucessful and disaster. The disasters are mainly due to one partner forgetting either that KI is being played, or forget the unusual opener rebids to take into account that KI is played. I have not made any changes to the KI part of the system.

Here is a hand we Misho and I played

S-AQJ2
H-A3
D-KQ943
C-K9

S-T843
H-T84
D-A65
C-AQT

1D -- 1S
2N -- 2S (2NT = strong spade raise)
3D -- 3H (3D = GF, no slam ambition, 3H = show shortness)
3S -- 4C (3S = no short, 4C = cue)
4D -- 4N (4D = cue, 4N = rkcb)
5H -- 6S --all pass