Ambra: 5-card Majors with a Twist

Benito Garozzo of Blue Team fame is without a doubt one of the greatest bridge players and bidding theoreticians in the world. In addition to his contribution to systems like Blue Team Club, Roman Club and the Precision, he also crafted a natural two-over-one system for the Italian Junior Team to be used in 2000 World Junior Champs based on 5-card majors. Davide Tavoschi has taken it up and incorporated it into Ambra.

Like Terence Reese, I am not a big fan of 5-card majors although I had to play it through all these years thanks to my ever-insisting and always-resisting partners. No, I am not hostile towards the idea and have no intention of creating a system like Reese's Little Major where a major opening shows either four or 6 cards but never five (British humor can go to extremes)! Leaving this discussion to bidding theory, let us quickly have a look at the opening bids of Ambra:

With the exception of 1♦ one-level openings are pretty standard, a strong notrump (15-17), 5-card majors and a catch-all 1♣ bid. Ambra, rather bidding the best minor a la French where a minor bid can show any number of cards from three upwards, did the right thing and packed some of the minor suiters in 1♣ to have a natural 4-card diamond opener. Having witnessed too many losses due to the ambiguity of minor suit length in competitive auctions, this is not a small improvement.

Another big step forward is the development after two-over-one responses (major openings). Garozzo, tried to overcome the crippled sequences like 1♥-2♣ by changing the natural meaning of the opener's bids at her second turn where,

2♦ : a minimum hand without 4 spades,
2♥ : 5 hearts and 4 spades, any strength,
2♠ : 5 hearts and 4 diamonds, 16+ high-card points (hcp),
2NT : 5+ hearts, 16+ hcp,
3♣ : 5 hearts and 4 clubs, 16+ hcp,
3♦ : 6 hearts and 4 clubs, 16+ hcp.
...

It is a clever idea with a small burden on memory.

A similar trick is also employed by Garozzo after one-over-one responses. All strong openers respond 2♣ which can also be natural and rest of opener's responses show minimum or mid-range hands as naturally as possible. For example, after 1♥ - 1♠,

1NT : natural,
2♣ : either 5 hearts and 3+ clubs any strength, or all hands with 17 hcp upwards,
2♦ : 5 hearts and 3+ diamonds, limited,
2♥ : 6 hearts minimum,
2♠ : 5 hearts and 4 spades, minimum,
2NT : 6 hearts and 4-any with 4-5 losers.
...

Garozzo and later Tavoschi have added a few tricks to most of the sequences and if you want to play a natural (it is hard to play purely natural these days) system with 5-card majors and two-over-one game forcing, Ambra is definitely worth checking.