New Partner

I haven't been blogging much lately, as you may have noticed. At least part of the reason is that I haven't been playing all that often, and when I do play, I play badly. I find I'm not motivated to write about being a putz.

Not playing so often is partly a function of my schedule and partly that of my favorite partners. Both Elwood and Agent 99 have had personal issues that have cut into their playing time (Elwood especially), and I haven't been inclined to seek out new partners. That may be changing. Agent 99 is more or less back in the swing of things, and one of the teachers at the Manhattan has had a couple of games with me. She has been trying new partners because she wants to play more, so if this works out, there is at least the possibility of more games in the future. I will call her Rose.

So far, we are playing a very standard version of 2/1 Game Force. I am trying to let Rose drive the system selection. Going forward, that will probably become 2/1 with a weak notrump using forcing and non-forcing Stayman. She is currently learning that set-up from another partner, and promises to teach it to me when she's a bit more comfortable with it. But for now, we're using 14+ to 17 and four-way transfers.

There are one or two little glosses that have been added.
* Her chosen defence to 1NT is Cappelletti, not my favorite, but reasonably effective most of the time.
* We also play Capp in the sandwich seat after the opponents have started 1minor – 1NT.
* The balancing 1NT overcall is 11-14, as usual, and she likes to play checkback with it, answering as normal with 11-12 and bidding 2NT with 13-14. Responder can then repeat Stayman with 3C, if necessary. (This is the same treatment that Elwood and I were using after our 15-18 1NT rebid.)
* After an auction that starts 1m – 1M; 2M Rose likes to play 2NT as an artificial inquiry, with Ogust-style responses, so that Responder can discover whether Opener has 3- or 4-card support, and whether he is at the 11-13 or the 14-16 end of his putative range.
* Our 1NT rebid is 12-14 at the moment, so Rose has us playing New Minor Forcing by a passed hand, and Two-Way NMF by an un-passed hand.

So far, I have restricted my input to suggesting using Capp at the four level after the opponents open a Gambling 3NT (seems like a no-brainer to me, given that Capp is our NT defence, but I had to argue for it). And I'm also arguing, not yet successfully, for using the Woolsey double against opponents' strong 1NT openings. It fits in perfectly well with Capp, but Rose is unfamiliar with it, and rather suspicious.

Still, let's see what develops – it's very early days yet.