[kenrexford]

About 12-13 years ago, my father and I started using a "strange" technique where a 1♦ opening showed 4+ diamonds and unbalanced (4441, or 5+ diamonds and a side four-card suit, or 6+ diamonds, or 4♦/5♣). 1♣ openings were either unbalanced with clubs, or balanced with any minor shape, including 2♣/5♦ and an occasional/rare 6-card diamond suit (6322). A weak five-card major was even plausible for a 1♣ opening. All of this in a standard or 2/1 GF general approach.

At the time, this was deemed "weird" by most people.

Recently, however, I have noticed a few of the top pairs using this approach, including notably Weinstein-Garner in the USBC. I recall seeing another pair doing this recently, as well, but I cannot remember who did this. W-G apparently adopted this relatively recently (their 2000 WBF card lacked this).

I am researching this issue and am curious if anyone knows who else might be using this approach and how it came to emerge recently.

[winkle]

I don't think this idea is new. I've certainly seen many variations of this idea, especially in non-standard systems. I have no idea who came up with this idea first.

The idea of lumping all balanced hands of a certain range into one minor suit opening can be seen in Nightmare, some Swedish systems, or systems based on kamakaze NT.

The idea of having 1D promise diamonds unbalanced can be found in the 2000 version of Polish standard. Its 1C is of course a little different from standard.

In recent years, there is an increase in popularity of playing transfer over 1C openings. This gadget gives pairs who play them the incentives to open 1C more often, and some pairs have decided to lump all balanced hands in the right HCP range into 1C. Examples of USA pairs who now do this include Garner-Weinstein, Fallenius-Welland, and Fout-Roman.

[Free]

Fantoni-Nunes use a very similar structure. The only difference is that they open 1♣ with 5-4 or 4-4 ♣-♦ (they still open their longest/lowest suit first).

Polish club and several real ♦ precision systems use this approach for 1♦ openings as well.

[FrancesHinden]

I've seen this method around for at least 15 years on and off.

[MickyB]

Opening all balanced hands with 1♣ is certainly not uncommon, but I wasn't aware that any top pairs were opening 1♦ with all minor 2-suiters in a short club system - it has always been to remove those hands from the natural 2♣ opening (Polish Club, Swedish Club, Strong Club etc). IMO it is clearly superior to open these hands 1♦ in this structure. Does anyone know where I can find Weinstein-Garner's CC online?

[kenrexford]

I could only find the CC for Garner-Weinstein for 2000, when they used 3+/3+ minor openings. I am tickled to see that this idea has actually been around a while, in good circles, as a vindication to offer nay-sayers. Thanks for the responses.