[hrothgar]

inquiry, on Dec 17 2004, 03:22 AM, said:

I am going to start playing NTC with misho (it is his home grown system, available on Dan Neill's webpage). It is based upon a Romex type 1NT opening as the big hand. It uses 2C and 2D opening bids as DONT-like weak opening bids. We use transfer and transfer advances in competition and OUTSIDE of competition too.

Of course, if no one is interested in playing against this I will be glad to just watch you other guys.

Ben

Doesn't present anything too nasty and I already have a good defense against the 2♦ openings...

Amusing to see you playing what is (essentially) the Frelling 2♦ opening

[inquiry]

hrothgar, on Dec 16 2004, 09:26 PM, said:

Doesn't present anything too nasty and I already have a good defense against the 2♦ openings...

Amusing to see you playing what is (essentially) the Frelling 2♦ opening

Well.. good to see we don't scare you... maybe we can match up with you and you can play your defense against us. While I like NTC, I prefer my natural 2/1 ultra light opening system, but i am a romex player from years and years ago, so the foring 1NT opening bid is fine for me.

[Free]

Is Misho still around? I haven't seen him in ages!!

[inquiry]

Free, on Dec 17 2004, 06:45 AM, said:

Is Misho still around? I haven't seen him in ages!!

Hopefully he will be back this weekend...sadly I will not be around to kibiz or play with him. Maybe later in the week.

Ben

[DrTodd13]

hrothgar, on Dec 14 2004, 04:53 PM, said:

scoob, on Dec 14 2004, 06:35 PM, said:

good points

and as i said, it was a learning experience.  and the majority of the problems we had were dealing with the forcing pass in the second round, which we were completely unprepared for.

One last comment

As I noted earlier in the thread, I think that its a mistake to expect the opponents to provide good defenses to their own methods. I very much prefer structures based on advanced pre-disclosure...

I don't mind providing suggested defenses to our systemic openings (I was on the pair playing the forcing pass system). Our suggested defenses are not overly complex and if anything they err on the side of simplicity. I'm sure they aren't the optimal defense. I don't even know what the optimal defense is given that I've never played against my own system! I also don't mind posting the system beforehand and letting people devise their own defenses.

I think it is important to differentiate between problems with our style versus problems with our system. Our style as enabled by our system is to get into the auction quickly and often with limited bidding and to get to the final contract quickly. This often leaves the opponents not knowing who has the majority of the points and the degree of our fit. This approach increases the amount of times people don't compete when they should and do compete when they shouldn't. My opinion at the time was that were some problems dealing with our system itself but that our style is tougher to deal with than the system itself. Then again, I wasn't on the other side so I'd be interested in hearing their opinion. I'd have to look at the hands again but I don't remember thinking to myself during the match that confusion over our system won us anything.

Todd

[Flame]

DrTodd13, on Dec 17 2004, 01:21 PM, said:

I'd have to look at the hands again but I don't remember thinking to myself during the match that confusion over our system won us anything.

Todd

I didnt watch the play but from what i understand here, you won and also free and Richard won, i dont know the players too well but from what i know you are just better player then the other team and also better pairs since you play more together, maybe it was a bad idea to put you on the same team. If the turney was swiched teams then sorry for my stupid comment.

[mycroft]

I don't know, it looks like this was supposed to be "let the air out" and good, plain, serious fun. It certainly won't tell anybody what the best system is (although it would certainly show holes to cover). I don't think anyone's going to complain about lopsided results, unless they were system forgets (either good or bad).

I thought about suggesting me partner and I as a pairing, again for the fun value. I already know how good our system is (we'd play stone-age EHAA) and we'd probably get hammered by the opps (because they're better than we are). I didn't, because I've been out of practise with it, and organizing has been much harder since I moved away and my job is almost normal working hours (pd is a night owl, even more than I). Of course, the fact that we'd rather be playing MP than IMPs was a factor, too.

But we've been pretty effective against "weird systems" by using our defence to standard systems - "play EHAA". I expect that's partly because most WS players we've run across don't handle aggressive interference well - they just don't get that much of it - and that it would work significantly less well against the other pairs here. Would be fun to see it proven, though, still. And I think everyone who played had fun, and got to play their system.

Non-ACBLers can stop reading here :-)

And especially they could play their system without 26 boards of bellyaching from the opponents. As I've said before, with one exception, which I have bid exactly once, stone-age EHAA is playable on the *Limited* Convention Chart - the one suitable for 0-20 MP games (that exception is P-1o; 2NT showing 4441, singleton "o", 10-12 HCP). But if it's "different", it must be illegal, right? Especially if you Pre-Alert ("Why are to telling us this now, instead of just Alerting when the time comes?" or "You shouldn't be allowed to do that." (optional addition: Director!))

Wish I hadn't missed the show, though.
Michael.

[Free]

Is there an exhibition match tonight?

[hrothgar]

Free, on Dec 19 2004, 05:49 PM, said:

Is there an exhibition match tonight?

I'm happy to play today...