Balrog49

I need technical advice and help from someone who has experience running stratified IMP pairs games using predealt boards, ACBLScore and, if possible, Bridgemates. I'm not a certified director but I want to demonstrate that IMP pairs can run as smoothly as the local club's stratified 9-11 table matchpoint game using the same Mitchell movements that everyone is familiar with. How the IMPs are computed isn't important at this point. I just want to prove that it can be done by both of our alternating directors and that everyone will get the masterbeans they're entitled to.

I just rewrote the Wikipedia article on canapé. Not all canapé systems were (or all) the same, as implied by the previous article, the examples in particular. What you (the OP) play sounds vaguely like Roman Club except that 1♣ is artificial in that system: 12-16 balanced or a very strong hand. Everyone who plays canapé should read the Roman Club book along with the Italian Blue Team Bridge Book (Blue Team Club) by Garozzo and Forquet. Even if you have no desire to play those methods, the thinking that went into the systems is still valuable.

I would never play in that game. You reap what you sow. I know of at least one major cheating incident that was the result of players experimenting at a club game just to see if they could get away with it.

Some of you may remember playing in the Individual when it was held at the Copley Plaza in Boston and included most of the best players in New England. It was a real treat to play a couple of boards with players that good. It's a shame that it changed. Some of you may remember Ethel and Bill Keohane, the people for whom the Individual is named. They were Mr. and Mrs. Bridge in New England for many years. I didn't know Bill very well. He was directing when I started and passed away not long after, but I knew Ethel. She was a great player and a delightful person. She truly cared about other players whether they were novices or world champions. No one will ever be a finer ambassador for the game. Ethel played on the great Boston teams with Frank Westcott, Norm Humer, and Mary Bright that dominated the inter-city championships, which later became the Grand National Teams. She and Alberta Albersheim were a famous and highly-successful partnership. Alberta was also a delightful person and mentored some of today's top New England players. This will be the last Regional Individual and the last chance we'll ever have to honor Bill and Ethel by playing in it. I intend to play and I ask anyone who remembers them to play in it one more time. Let's make it a great event like it once was before it's gone forever. Barry Rogoff http://web2.acbl.org/Tournaments/Ads/2016/01/1601001.pdf

It's a "picture bid." Partner is showing spade honors and shortness in diamonds.

Every partnership has a point of diminishing returns with respect to system notes. For "serious" partnerships, a few pages of notes may be enough. Long-term, world-class partnerships, however, often need hundreds of pages of notes. The organization of system notes depends on the players. Some people think about bidding very differently from others so the notes must be organized in a way that's acceptable to everyone who uses them. Very complex systems usually require two sets of notes: - complete system notes with openings, responses, rebids, relays, etc. in nested tabular format in order to be sure that everything is covered or intentionally undefined. They must include passed-hand bidding, contested auctions, slam bidding style, defensive bidding, carding, etc. - condensed system notes intended to be reviewed often, that contain agreements that have been forgotten or have gone off the rails. For example, my old Superprecision notes are hundreds of pages but my 2/1 notes are a single, five-page document. They're short enough to review for a single-session club game. I have a template with my own preferences that I give to each partner for modification. There's a matching, online convention card for each of course. I'm a retired technical writer and once thought about doing professional-quality system notes and convention cards for a fee, but the truth is that working on other people's system notes can be terribly boring.

Thanks to everyone who answered! This partner and I need a simple agreement based on logic that we can work out at the table if one of us has forgotten. stoppiello's suggestion makes a lot of sense to me: 1♣ (P) 1♦ (2♣) is a club suit and 1♣ (P) 1♦ (2♦) is Michaels, the logic being that an opening 1♣ on xxx is fairly common. A "sandwich" 1NT is strong. BTW, my hand was ♠Q9732 ♥KQ1062 ♦J ♣53 . Partner's hand was ♠AJ4 ♥75 ♦A875 ♣K976. We can make 4♠ if played by South. Yes, partner should have bid something even if unsure what I had.

You have 5-5 in the majors and it goes 1♣ (P) 1♦ to you. Which cue bid is Michaels? How do you play the other one? We had no agreement and got a bad board.

Here's what the captain says: Each pair will have a sitout in one of the last three rounds, based on--statistically--who's doing best. If we play in the consolation on Sunday, which I think is only seven rounds, the "best" pair will have one less sitout. Except for when ... and I are skipping a whole session, or possibly on Sunday based on the final arrangement, nobody will play three matches in a row. ... and I will always play North-South. ...and ...will always play East-West. ... and ... will be seated alternately; I'll remind them before each match. ... posted some thoughts about deciding before each match whether we're playing to win, to survive, or to win big. I won't be around Friday evening. For the first six matches, let's just play bridge. Based on our standing, it should be clear what's needed in the last two. I looked at last year's bulletin to see what it had to say about qualifying; 92 of 181 teams Q'd, so it looks like an average score will be good enough. This is changed since the last time I played in it (perhaps due to the introduction of the 10K Swiss), when the cutoff was around 88 VP. And since this was ...'s concern, plus he's the one buying the entry, he can be the substitute captain in my absence.

When you're on a six-person team in a multi-day Swiss event, what do you think is the best way for the captain to determine who sits out and when?

With all due respect, kiss my a.. I've moderated a lot of forums and this one clearly needs someone to keep it on track. What's rude is to go off-topic and stay off-topic, then go off-topic again when someone politely asks you to stay on-topic.

Perhaps you've forgotten the topic of this thread. It's not about "modern bidding methods" and emphatically not about relay systems. Those topics belong in other threads. The topic here is Blue Team Club and the bidding contest hand I presented has everything to do with Blue Team Club. Anyone who has ever played the system seriously knows that cue bidding (and superb declarer play) is how the Blue Team won all those slam swings over all those years. It was effective then and it's still effective now, when used by people who are willing to sacrifice the time and effort required to study the limited materials available and practice the system until it's thoroughly understood. And even then, there are many subtleties in the logic of cue bidding that go totally unnoticed by those who have not played or studied the system. Blue Team style cue bidding is both an art and a science. Only students of the history of the game have an appreciation for just how incredibly effective it was. The bidding contest hand demonstrates how accurate Garozzo and Forquet were and shows some bids whose meanings aren't entirely clear even to those who've played and studied the system for decades. Lastly, you have to reach a certain level of play for Blue Team Club to be effective. Otherwise, it's like trying to handle a Le Mans Prototype car when you've never driven anything other than a cheap passenger car. If there are not already threads about those systems, I encourage you to start them.

The raise to 3S does indeed promise primary support (Qxx). When did Turbo come into existence? It must have been after the Blue Team retired. There's one point I failed to mention. Garozzo and Forquet knew that it was a bidding contest hand and that getting to 6S wasn't going to be the top score.

Yes. Now that we seem to have finished with all the whining, deliberate misinformation, and boring discussions of other methods and systems, we can get back to the real topic of this thread: Blue Team Club. I'm going to repeat a bidding problem that was ignored the first time. Garozzo and Forquet bid this hand in a Challenge the Champs contest. It involves some unusual cue bidding. You are responder. [hv=pc=n&e=saq832hj85daqtca8&d=w&v=b&b=4&a=1dp2cp2dp2sp3sp4dp4hp4np5cp]133|200[/hv] You have to start your reverse into spades by bidding a two-card club fragment. Partner's 2♦ allows to you make a game force on the two level and to count diamonds as a source of tricks. When partner shows primary spade support, you know the hand is a double fit and a possible grand slam if opener has first-round heart control. You cue bid 4♦ and partner cooperates with 4♥. What do you bid now? a. 4NT b. 5♣ c. 5♦ 4NT (DI) clearly shows interest in a club control. You started your reverse by bidding clubs so you've implicitly shown a club control - right? Or could you have QJx? If you've shown a control, bidding 5♣ now would show first and second round control. When opener bids 5♣, you can count 12 likely tricks off the top, barring bad splits: five spades, five diamonds, and two clubs. Opener has shown a heart control but is it first or second round control? How do you find out? I would bid 5♦ hoping opener will bid 5♥, guaranteeing first round control. But Forquet bid 5NT and the auction proceeded 6♠ - 7♠. So what was the meaning of 5NT? General grand slam try? I don't think so because Garozzo would bid 5♥. Grand slam force? Maybe. The Italian version of the grand slam force (aka "Josephine") works like this: If spades will be trump: with J or less, partner bids 6♣ with the Q, partner bids 6♦ with the A or K and less than five cards, he bids 6♥ with the A or K and at least five cards, he bids 6♠ with AK, KQ, or AQ he bids 7♠ Perhaps the responses are different when the 5NT bidder has the long trump holding. Here's the full layout: [hv=pc=n&w=skt9hadk9542ck743&e=saq832hj85daqtca8&d=w&v=b&b=4&a=1dp2cp2dp2sp3sp4dp4hp4np5cp5np6sp7sppp]266|200[/hv] 7♠ was the best contract, of course. Would you have bid 5♦ or 5NT?

Success! Thanks! I didn't think the suit symbol character combinations in the text editor were consistent enough to train but apparently they are, although some number-symbol combinations produce several different results. I can now save a Word file containing 1C, 2D, 3H, 4S, etc. and I have a macro that transforms those into red and black suit symbols. And I didn't realize that you have to manually save the training file each time you repeat the recognition step. It's still going to be a lot of work to get everything formatted correctly but at least the job can be done. I was ready to blow it off.