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.

Thanks for the response! I've been trying to use your method with Omnipage 18 but I can't get training to work. If I scan a page at 300 dpi and draw a text zone around a single suit symbol in the page view, "train character" is greyed out. It seems to me that Omnipage should be able to recognize any character in any specific font, including Arial, which has suit symbols. But according to their support line, it can only recognize "standard" characters. What a disappointment! Am I missing something?

It's easy to replace control responses or whatever with a simple or complex Precision 1♣ structure. 1♣ then becomes 16+ unbalanced or 18+ balanced. Responder showing a suit and game values on the first round of bidding can be a huge advantage if there's interference. Having recently been victimized by them, I consider the Meckwell-style responses to 1♣ to be better than traditional Precision because they're designed to right-side the contract. Unfortunately, I've never been able to get my hands on the Meckwell notes and have only a general idea of opener's rebids. If anyone has information on this, please let me know.

I have some printed system notes that I want to convert to an online format. Does anyone know of an OCR tool that can recognize suit symbols and that does a decent job with hand diagrams?

Here's a hand that Garozzo and Forquet bid in a Challenge the Champs contest. You are Forquet (responder). [hv=pc=n&e=saq832hj85daqtca8&d=w&v=b&b=4&a=1dp2cp2dp2sp3sp4dp4hp4np5cp]133|200[/hv] When opener bids 5♣, you can count 12 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? I would bid 5♦ hoping opener will bid 5♥. A repeat cue bid guarantees first round control. But Forquet bid 5NT and the auction proceeded 6♠ - 7♠. So what was 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♠ Garozzo couldn't have had five spades, but 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. Has anyone had a similar auction?

I agree that a natural, limited 2♣ opening bid is a tradeoff and can be problematic in any strong club system. It's something you have to accept. But 2♣ has advantages as well and is not much of a handicap when played properly. There's a big difference between what strong club system books say about 2♣ and how it's actually played by top experts. The books show you examples of easy situations, not difficult ones. We all know that experience is the best teacher and that reading bridge books is important, but there are lessons that can be learned only by studying how the best players play and that's particularly true of Blue Team Club. Unfortunately, that can be costly in terms of time and effort. There's not much material available these days unless you're really determined and dig for it. I wish the ACBL would republish the World Championship books from the 60s but that would not be profitable and thus will never happen. There are however, collections of The Bridge World from that era that appear on the market now and then. Forquet's book "Bridge With the Blue Team" has some examples. And even the Bulletin has some. Lastly, I stongly recommend kibbizing world-class players who play strong club systems. You can learn a lot.

If you're referring to my posts, the only thing I'm guilty of is disagreeing with you. > The 13-17 no trump was mind bogglingly clever with its intricate 2C and 2D responses I'm sorry but I disagree. My partners and I found it easy to learn and play. Sure, it was a vastly over-engineered solution to a trivial problem (3-3-2-5) but the rules under which the Blue Team played in various Italian and other European tournaments may have required it. > The 2C bid was another horror... Again, I'm sorry but I disagree. Your opinion goes against the vast majority of people who have played the system. You may have had bad results from 2C openings but it's wrong to assume that anyone else had the same experience. And you never answered the question "how the Acol 1NT is different from the Standard American 1NT with non-forcing Stayman, Transfers, etc." > Mingoni... If you see a book with an author you know and a second author that you have never heard of you can bet your bottom dollar that it was the unknown who wrote it and the expert card player may or may not have checked it carefully. Attributing the Italian Blue Team Bridge book to Enzo Mingoni is ridiculous. Why do you find it necessary to blow smoke at everyone? > It appears that the ethos of this website is to dismiss other people’s ideas as summarily as possible...antipathy is the norm on this web site... If you've ever been in a typical Usenet forum, you would know that the best way to provoke a flame attack on yourself is to whine when people disagree with you. These BBO forums are like a formal tea party in comparision.

> Some things I consider almost mandatory to change to have a competitive system these days: Two-over-over with four-card majors? Please. What you're describing sounds a lot like modern Precision, which is essentially two-over-one over a five-card major. That's a competitive system but it's not Blue Team Club, even if you replace the responses to the Precision 1♣ with control responses. > People speak highly of the Italian Blue team book. If you see a book with an author you know and a second author that you have never heard of you can bet your bottom dollar that it was the unknown who wrote it and the expert card player may or may not have checked it carefully... I don't know anything about Enzo Mingoni but I think it's safe to assume that he was the editor or "ghost writer," who is a necessary participant in virtually all books ostensibly written by people who aren't writers and may not be able to write at all. > It appears that the ethos of this website is to dismiss other people's ideas as summarily as possible in order to mount one's own hobby horse as quickly as possible. I thought it was a discussion about Blue Team Club, not a discussion of ways to change Blue Team Club into something it's not. I think of the system as a 1969 Ferrari 312P. If you've never seen one, take a look at http://wall.alphacod...g.php?i=270549. An original 312P wouldn't be able to compete with today's Le Mans prototypes. Of course there have been advances in automotive technology. You could modify the car to the point where it's competitive but it wouldn't be a 312P any more. If I owned a 312P (fat chance), I'd keep it 100 per cent original because it's a work of art. If I intended to race the car, I'd replace some parts, but I wouldn't try to make it into an Audi R18. As to Italian cue bidding, the historical record stands for itself. Read the World Championship books and you'll see how it actually worked. Yes, it required a great deal of situational logic, judgment, practice, and experience. That's an investment very few players are willing to make these days.

Please describe how the Acol 1NT is different from the Standard American 1NT with non-forcing Stayman, Transfers, etc. I've never had a problem with the Blue Team 13-17 notrump other than convincing people to play it, which I gave up a long time ago. Having a 1♦ opening guarantee three cards is nice but I'm happy give it up in order to play a notrump structure that everyone understands. In these days of the nebulous 1♦, which some people play as a possible void, who really cares whether or not 1♦ can be 3-3-2-5 once in a blue moon? And I've never had a problem with the 2♣ opener. In fact, the auction 2♣-2♦-any-4♣ (forcing to 5♣ or slam) often results in slam swings on hands where the natural bidders stop in 3NT. 2♣ also has a preemptive effect. Responding to 2♣ is an area where the World Championship books provide great examples. A few awkward auctions occur when opener has something like ♠Kxxx ♥Ax ♦x ♣AJxxxx and the auction goes 1♠-2♦. You have to bid a space-consuming 3♣ and hope for the best. Not meaning to pick nits, Terence Reese didn't write the "Blue Club" book. He "adapted" the Garozzo-Yallouze book, which was probably written in Italian. Leon Yallouze was a member of the famous "Omar Sharif Bridge Circus" team along with Garozzo, Belladonna, and Claude Delmouly.

Here's one of the strangest situations I've ever found myself in playing Blue Team Club. It was a regional Flight A Swiss against a top seed. [hv=pc=n&s=sakqt32hk8dk832ct&w=sj987654ha93dck43&n=shjt762dqt95caq96&e=shq54daj764cj8752&d=s&v=0&b=11&a=1d1s2hp4h4sdppp]399|300|2♥ was not forcing X showed a preference for bidding rather than defending[/hv] I had no idea what to do. I tanked for a while and bid 4♥, hoping partner had a good six-card suit. I didn't realize that the opponents would assume I had a reverse with diamonds and hearts, not diamonds and spades! We collected 800 at our table (dropped a trick) and 50 at the other table when declarer went down in 3♠. I wasn't thrilled with partner's 2♥ "negative free bid." I would have doubled, leading to a very different result. Fortunately, we were playing "high-tech" doubles in forcing pass situations in which the meanings of pass and double are reversed. Oddly enough, the only makable game our way is 3NT. In retrospect, it would have been a reasonable decision, even with a club void.

The sequence 1♥-2♦-3♦ shows a minimum hand with four hearts and five or more diamonds. To show a reverse with longer diamonds, opener would bid 3♠, 4♣, or 4♦. 1♥-2♦-3♦ may not be defined as forcing but the logic of the situation makes it forcing. Usually, when these 1M-2m-3m sequences occur, responder intends to make a game forcing reverse.