The Useful Space Principle, or USP, was first articulated in a series of six articles in The Bridge World, from November 1980 through April 1981. (The International Bridge Press Association awarded its 1981/1982 award for Best Article or Series on a System or Convention to Jeff Rubens for this series.) The USP is expressed succinctly in The Bridge World glossary as: "a partnership's assigning meanings to actions so that the remaining bidding space matches the needs of the auction."
The articles on the USP were the genesis of widely used conventional methods such as Kickback and transfer advances of overcalls. The USP tells bidding theorists that bidding space should be allocated where it is most needed.
Read more about Useful Space Principle: A USP Example: Kickback, The USP At Lower Levels: Transfer Responses To Overcalls
Famous quotes containing the words space and/or principle:
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)