I've been playing with Elwood a lot
more regularly, usually once a week. Conversely, our system tinkering
and email volume has dwindled, after a couple of big spasms to get
some complicated stuff in place. So, I think it's time I put some
documentation out there for what we're playing.
The basic set-up of 2/1 with a weak
no-trump is still there, of course. A couple of gadgets have been
added to the responses. The most complex item is Muppet Stayman.
We had been playing a relatively simple
version of Puppet Stayman over the 2NT opening all along. Muppet
Stayman involves switching Opener's 3H and 3NT rebids. The purpose of
that is to handle Responder hands that include 5 spades and 4 hearts.
The other way round, Responder can transfer to hearts and then bid
3S. Playing Muppet, with 5 spades and 4 hearts, Responder can start
with 3C, and if Opener bids 3H (denying a 4- or 5-card major)
Responder has room to continue with 3S. Of course, that loses the
transfer effect if Opener chooses to play in spades, so Elwood
suggested a further reversal, swapping 3S and 3NT from Responder in
this sequence. Needless to say, when you try to map out the
ramifications of all this, not forgetting that, as Responder, you
also want to know what to do with a 4-major 5-minor type of hand, you
finish up with some sequences that are disasters waiting to happen,
and a severe headache from trying to remember it all.
To make the effort worthwhile, we
decided to play the exact same thing over 1NT. So while regular
Stayman is still in place and handling a lot of stuff, with a
game-going hand Responder also has 1NT – 3C available as Muppet.
This fits with our revised philosophy for opening 1NT. I started out
with the traditional British attitude, that 1NT shouldn't include a
5-card major, except for odd cases. But influenced by results (and by
Fantunes, I admit), I have let the pendulum swing towards the
opposite extreme. We now explicitly open all 5-3-3-2s and most
5-4-2-2s (especially with 4-major and 5-minor) 1NT if they are in
range. As a result, checking for a 5-card major is very much a good
idea. For example, if Responder has a game-going hand 4-3 in the
majors, the right choice is Muppet rather than regular Stayman. That
way, he can find a 5-3 fit as well as a 4-4 or 5-4 fit. The one time
we had a memory lapse that should have resulted in disaster, we
actually dodged the bullet by both having the same failure. We both
forgot the second inversion, and I passed Elwood's 3NT bid that
should have shown 5 spades to find that he actually only had 2. If I
had remembered, I probably would have corrected to 4S, to play in a
3-2 “fit”.
We are still playing 4-suit transfers
over 1NT, and they can handle single-suited and wildly 2-suited
hands. To complete the system of responses, we wanted to provide some
tools for less extreme hands with both minors and a shortage in a
major. Using 3H and 3S as the usual splinter responses, with a
3-suited hand and exactly 4 in the other major, takes care of quite a
few. And we have defined the 3D response as showing both minors in a
hand with a 3-card major. Then 3H asks, and Responder bids his
shortage (3NT with short hearts). Of course, there are follow-up
sequences, and the end result is (hopefully) that we can choose
between 3NT, 4major and 5minor (or 6minor) on some sensible basis.
This 3D response is quite cute (and original, I think), but rare. So
far it has only come up once, steering us to 4H somewhat
anti-climactically when Elwood showed short spades and I had opened
with a 5-card heart suit. The real payoff for that bid will be when
we get to a nice Moysian game, or to 5- or 6-minor, when no-trump
doesn't make.
The other toy we have adopted is a
mini-Roman 2D. This shows a 3-suited hand, 4-4-4-1 or 5-4-4-0.
Commonly, this is played without much more definition, with some
strength range around 11-15hcp. Some strong club pairs play a version
where the the short suit is always diamonds, to handle a variety of
hand that is difficult for their system. I started out somewhat
skeptical about this bid's worth, feeling that it might be OK as a
pre-empt, but would be difficult to use constructively, while if you
finished up defending, declarer would have a blueprint for the play.
Having run into it a few times, I changed my mind, conceding that it
is annoying and sometimes quite awkward to defend against. So I
decided to look into adopting it, and I produced some original ideas
that have been run through Elwood's brain, and I think the result is
quite interesting.
The ACBL's GCC insists on a minimum of
10hcp, so we are playing the opening as 10-14, which (as with
Fantunes 2-openings) is weak enough to be quite pre-emptive, but
strong enough to have some punch. To provide a constructive
framework, I suggested some things to make our approach very
major-suit oriented. Making the shortage always a minor is the first
change. This does some good things to your response structure, but
carries the penalty of reducing the frequency of occurrence. To help
with that, and also just why not, Elwood suggested allowing 5-card
hearts but not 5-card spades. That includes some “Flannery”
hands, without screwing up our relays. Next, the usual set-up is to
have 2NT as the strong response, whence Opener shows his shortage.
Instead, I have Opener bid the minor suit he holds, and Responder can
pass that or place the contract wherever he likes. Next, the 3C and
3D responses are not usually well-defined, as far as I can discover.
So I suggested using them as proxies for hearts and
spades. Elwood came up with the game-forcing relay sequences to follow, whereby
Opener defines his strength and exact distribution. And then we have
the 3H/3S responses as natural and invitational, and the 4H/4S
responses as natural and to play (either weak or strong, like after a
weak two opening). Almost all the time, when we play in a major,
Responder is declarer. This is policy, since Opener's hand is
well-known from the bidding (so if he becomes declarer, the defence
can play double-dummy).
So far, it seems like the mini-Roman is
occurring about once every other session. That doesn't sound like a
lot, but I think it's comparable to the frequency of the weak two
that we have given up – that didn't seem to come up all that often,
either. And we've had at least a couple of good results from it.
