- PRINCIPLE 25: Beginners need simplicity. In particular, they should not have to learn their opponents' bidding system in order for their own system to work well.
- PRINCIPLE 0: Almost always open, overcall and respond with your clearly longest suit. (That is, except when responding to an opening/overcall of Three of a Suit, when it is often better to bid one's cheapest 4+ card suit.)
- PRINCIPLE 4: There is no difference in the requirements for opening bids and overcalls. They share the same point-count range and the same suit-length requirements.
- PRINCIPLE 9: Simplex is a fundamentally natural bidding system. The only gadgets used are 2♣ Redshift, 4NT Blackwood, and 2NT.
- PRINCIPLE 10: Hands with trump support but less than 10 HCP bid immediately to their total trump level.
- For example, after a 1♥ opening by partner, a hand containing 6 HCP and four cards in the heart suit would immediately raise to 3♥. (Partner is known to have at least five hearts. Add those five to the four that responder has makes nine. Take six from nine means a raise to the 3-level.)
- PRINCIPLE 11: If a bidder cannot make the first-round bid his hand merits (because the opposition have already taken the auction too high), the bidder simply doubles, with an implied message to partner: "RHO has just taken my opening bid away, and I believe it is safe for you to bid at this or one level higher."
- PRINCIPLE 14: Simplex is designed so that the contract reached is, on most occasions, dealer-independent. That is, if all four players are Simplex bidders, the same contract should be reached, irrespective of who opened the bidding.
- PRINCIPLE 24: Apart from the use of double, Simplex never keys its bids off the opponents' bidding. (There is, for example, no concept of a jump overcall relative to an opponent's bid. And a bid of the 'enemy suit' is always natural, showing at least three cards in that suit.)
- The philosophy of Simplex is that each hand is worth a particular bid, or sequence of bids, and if one of those bids cannot be made because of opposition bidding, the appropriate bid is usually to double.
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