[blml] ACBL LC Detroit minutes

[Robert Frick]

On Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:52:06 -0500, Alain Gottcheiner <agot at ulb.ac.be>  
wrote:

> Eric Landau a écrit :
>> Was it?  Nothing in TFLB forbids a pair from entering a bridge event
>> without having "covered the bases".
>
> I know of some pairs who don't have any forcing opening bid. They claim
> game forces are too uncommon to bother about them, at least at pairs.
>
> I played relay systems about 20 years, and we hadn't any bid to describe
> 7-6-0-0, 8-5-0-0 and 9-carders. We never needed them, either. Once
> partner had 0580, but he was the opener, and he improvised a sequence (I
> even understood him), but as a responder he wouldn't have been able to
> describe his pattern. Once I held 9013, but they opened in front of me.
>
> And I don't think understanding "impossible" bids means you have a
> "background agreement".
> An "impossible" bid may be understood by using bridge logic. If the
> bidding goes pass-1NT-4NT, and it means partner has found an Ace back,
> so be it. You need no agreement to be able to decipher that.
>
> Say you're playing a relay system, where all non-game, non-relay,
> non-2nd-step bids by relayer are splinters agreeing the last suit
> partner has shown.
> So, if the bidding goes 1C - 2D (13-15, 44+ in diamonds and another
> suit), a 3C, 3H or 3S bid is a splinter agreeing diamonds.
> Now, what about partner's 3D bid ? It is obviously impossible to have
> both a singleton diamond and a diamond raise. So it has to be ... 4414,
> a splinter telling that whatever parner's second suit, we can raise it.
> I manufactured it. Partner understood it. Some players, when asked about
> the sequence, decoded it, even not knowing the first line of our system.
>
> Of course, this made the sequence part of our agreements for the future,
> but it wasn't at the time I made it.
>
>
> Best regards
>
>
>    Alain

I think the point is that if you don't have any forcing opening bids, you  
cannot describe a 1 Spade opening as showing 12-21 HCP, even if that is  
your partnership agreement.

You can claim that you are just improvising when you open 1S with 23 HCP,  
but your system in a sense demands it. And the opponents are not required  
to study your system well enough to predict when your system demands  
misbids.