Hi all
They haven’t fixed their initcap problem, and their mailing room isn’t quite up to speed, but Oracle finally sent me my OCP certificate.
Together with Geoff Hopcraft I’ve been experimenting with a homebrew big 1
opening: Beowulf. A 1 opening shows 15-17 balanced or any stronger hand. There are just two responses possible to 1: 1
showing any 6+ and 1
showing a bust. After that the bidding takes a surprising natural turn. So the relays and asking bids I’ve always been so very fond of have been sacrificed to robust natural proceedings. I can’t tell yet whether this is systematic imp positive, but if so, our competitive agreements more than make up for it. As always the 1 is the Achilles heel of conventional systems, ours being nebulous to the n’th power, for it can be as short as zero.
Here’s an example of Beowulf in action:
12
- 15-17 bal, or any 18+
- 6+ hcp
After 1 the auction switched to natural mode and Geoff launched himself to slam.
During the auction Geoff figured the side fit would provide enough tricks for slam. As the cards lie slam barely qualifies as questionable. In order to enjoy the long Geoff needed to discard one on the top . Then the two top would have to survive before ruffing a third one high. After that he had to draw the remaining trumps ending in dummy to enjoy the . But at that point there are still only eleven tricks (four , five and two ). The twelfth needed to come from the suit, but when the Ace proved to be off side we wrote -50.
I enjoyed the 3 bid best, I could show a big hand and my exact distribution, and we were just at the 3-level! I’ll keep you posted with more Beowulf action.
Congrats on the certificate, but they left the “Viking” part out. That’s inexcusable.
Hmm, I don’t think North found the best line of play here.
Ace has to be in West. I think the better play is to try this immediately instead of trying it in trick 10. Because if you play club in trick two or three and the ace of clubs is in east, you can still try to grab 12 tricks via another route (ruff two clubs and try some squeeze). Here the other route wouldn’t have worked also, because the only squeeze you can play for is a spade/club squeeze, which is not gonna work.
For this line of play the
The only squeeze I see that will work is a double squeeze, but you need the heart entrance in South for that and to make the club ruffs you have to cross to the North hand by ruffing hearts.
@Dave: Thanks for the kind words.
@KJ: The plan of ruffing a couple of
in dummy was a dead end when East led a small trump at trick one. But on any other lead ruffing your 
losers is a winning plan.