Lets talk bridge…

I was watching the Cavendish Invitational pairs on BBO and the web last weekend. I was following Ireland’s top pair Tom Hanlon and Hugh McGann who finished 16th out of 56. In spite of the quality field, I’m sure they are not happy with the result.

On BBO we were very fortunate to have Larry Cohen and many other commenting. We heard that Larry was not playing this year as he objects to the scoring method. He feels that it leads to too many random results. I’ll try to get more on the specifics of this some other time.

While looking down the entry list I spotted the names of two young hot shots Justin Lall and Gavin Wolpert who were the subject of a bridge documentary posted on YouTube (but since removed). They have since parted ways partnership wise. They were playing with Bart Bramley and John Kranyak respectively. Anyway, I googled Lall’s name and I came across his blog. Some interesting stuff on his pages.

One of Justin’s links was to David Colliers blog (a Manchester based junior). This I found even more interesting as he has adapted and presented some of the methods developed by the likes of Garozzo, Bocchi and others. He talks about treatments of 1M – 2C and 1M – 2D; well worth a look for system heads. This is similar to what Hanlon-McGann use within their 2 way club system (A Carrot Club derivative).

I have spent time in the past trying to untangle the system of two of my favorite pairs Bocchi-Duboin and Versace-Lauria. What I like about they systems is the natural initial actions followed by often precise (complex) investigations.

One of the things I intend to explore here in the near future is the way both pairs dedicate an opening bid to balanced 18-21 HCP freeing up more space for (1 level) openers response. I.e. If you open 1x, you never have to show balanced hands in the 18-21 range. I’m sure this might not excite many of you right now, but I hope to elaborate on this and even make it a bit of fun system you can try with your partner once I post some detail.

Please feel free to comment.