A New Partner

OK, I have a new partner, and she can play, but her bidding is rather basic and she is interested in working with me to develop a detailed system that we can play. Good! And she is happy for me to take the lead in suggesting things that she can learn. Excellent!

Thirty five years ago, I learned to play the Flint-Pender system, described in Tiger Bridge by Jeremy Flint. This book was printed in 1970, and is rather dated now. But the system was somewhat ahead of its time: the key features are five card majors with 1NT response forcing, weak no-trump opening (12-14), and an extended range to the 1NT rebid. We can still use all that as the base for a system of our own. We make the responses to 1NT to our own liking, and update the opening two-bids to a more modern arrangement, and we have a solid overall framework for a complete system.

Secret Agent 99 (to pick a random pseudonym) is happy to switch to a 12-14 no-trump. The responses she knows are based around three-suit transfers, and I can work with that. All that was necessary was to add some definition to some sequences. The basic scheme is:

2C Stayman, guarantees 4-card major, may be weak
2D Transfer to hearts
2H Transfer to spades
2S Transfer to the minors
2NT 11-12hcp balanced, invitational
3C Invitational with a broken 6-card suit
3D Invitational with a broken 6-card suit
3H Splinter, holding strong 4-4 or 5-4 in the minors
3S Splinter, holding strong 4-4 or 5-4 in the minors
3NT 12-18hcp balanced, to play
4C Gerber
4D Transfer to hearts
4H Transfer to spades
4S Undefined
4NT 19-20hcp, invitational to 6NT
5NT 21-22hcp balanced, forcing to 6NT, invitational to 7NT
6NT 20-21hcp balanced, wants to be in 6 but not 7
7NT 23+hcp balanced

I can elaborate on some details behind this in a future post.

There was some discussion about major suit openings and whether 2 over 1 responses should be game-forcing. In the original Flint-Pender system they weren’t, and I’m inclined to think that way too. I do like using 1NT as a forcing response, and that means a 2 over 1 can be meatier than in old-fashioned Standard (or Acol or whatever) systems, but I don’t think they need to be unconditionally forcing to game. We both prefer weak jump-shifts all the time and 99 doesn’t know Roman Key-Card Blackwood yet, so it looks at first glance as though slam bidding would be a bit dicey. We’ll see how it goes, but so far we aren’t having any trouble, and we haven’t missed much at a high level. We do have a Jacoby 2NT response and splinter bids to help out.

We do need to play this a bit, and work through some practice sessions too. I will try to post some discussion pieces about the system as it evolves, as well as interesting hands.