The notes can now be downloaded from this page.
The notes focus only on the 1C opening, and are very detailed, with a particularly extensive section on dealing with interference.
A few things that make our version different from other Polish Club variants such as WJ05 are:
- All balanced hands without a 5-card suit in the 12-14 HCP range are opened 1C.
- Not all 18+ HCP hands are opened 1C: some are opened 1D or 1H instead.
- The 2C and 2D responses to 1C are not forcing; we have artificial sequences to deal with game-forcing minor-suit hands.
- The 1NT response to 1C is invitational.
- After an overcall, we use a mixture of natural bids and transfers by responder.
- There are many other artificial sequences, both in an uncontested auction and in competition, including frequent use of opener's diamond rebids as artificial.
Some of the reasons for these things have already been discussed in this blog. I might write about a few of the other ideas at some point.
9 comments:
Impressive patience to write all that much out. I have a nasty tendency to get bored and declare continuations to be trivial or 'like' something else when I write system notes :)
It all seems to make sense if still awfully cramped for space at times compared to strong C stuff.
I'm reading your notes. On p12 is explained how strong 4441's are bid after 1C-1D-1H. From this I conclude that only 12-14 4441's without a diamond singleton are opened 1D. What I find most surprising is that a 15-17 4=4=4=1 is opened 1C! (what else could 1C-1D-1H-1NT-2S mean?)
No the idea is to open 1D with those hands, up to 17 HCP. 1C:1D,1H:1NT,2S would show about 18-20 HCP.
hi,
Your notes are interesting. I have been playing Polish with my partner for about 4 years now. We started with WJ2000 and WJ2005 and adopted them to ACBL tastes.
Its great to have other non-polish playing and experimenting with PC. Just some comments on what we've found so far.
Opening 2NT for minors is very rare. We have changed this to a 21-22HCP opening. Having this range taken out of the normal 1C opening improves NT definition.
4414 non-1c openings can be taken care of by opening 1M.
1c-1H-1S is ambiguous (it can be 18+ with spades or 12-14 with 4 spades); we were losing too many spade partials after interference.
1c-1d is either negative or 7-12 with diamonds. 1c-2d is game forcing with diamonds and no 4 card major and 1c - 2M is weak. The above modifications help in competition.
Good luck with your system!
I'm confused. I originally thought the Polish Club was a forcing 1C system similar to Vanderbuilt, Shenken, Blue Team, Meckwell, etc. In the Feb 09 ACBL Contract Bridge Bulletin (with Rodwell on the cover) p. 28, para 3,
"Carruthers and Sundelin play a variation of the Polish Club. 1C shows long clubs or a balanced hand in the 12-14 or 18-19 range (as in Standard American), but they play transfer responses to 1C. 1D openers promise at least five cards in the suit and an unbalanced hand. They employ 5 card majors with a 2/1 structure, 1NT is 15-17."
HUH? How is that even close to a strong artificial 1C opening, Polish or otherwise?
No, Polish Club is not a strong club system. The 1C opening in Polish Club is forcing, but it is not necessarily strong: it could be a 'weak NT' type of hand.
But the system described in the ACBL bulletin is not Polish Club either. I would call it a "short club".
No, the ACBL Bulletin's "variant of Polish club" snippet is nonsense - reading that bothered me too. David is right that it is properly called a short club. If I were going to succinctly describe their whole system, I would call it "2/! with Transfer Walsh after a short club". In real Polish systems 1C could be as few as 0 clubs when holding a very strong hand with some other suit.
It seems that Yahoo has deleted all homepages at geocities.com. Can you suggest, if these notes are available anywhere else? I would be very interested to read them.
system notes
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