11th EUROPEAN OPEN PAIRS BRIDGE CHAMPIONSHIPS Sorrento,

A Message to Players of the By

Another legendary member of the is now winning Championships on the other side of the Atlantic. Back in 1971 he contributed this amusing story to . uring my stay in would like to congratulate DLondon in January I the readers of my books have been asked by sev- who spotted these omis- eral students of the Blue sions. Club to explain the dif- In general I would like to ferences between the say that before a Blue Club two books about the player may expect to system, which were pub- achieve good results, he lished in Britain. must be prepared to go I would like to ex- through some disasters. I plain that the book I am reminded particularly wrote in conjunction about the time when play- with Yallouze, who intro- ing with Mike Ledeen in duced into the book the Fall Nationals at Pitts- certain gadgets which he burgh, we used for the first used in play with his for- time our version of the mer partner, Claude Blue Club Two Diamond Delmouly. For example, opening. Playing in front of there are the Texas Benito Garozzo and Antonio Sementa a large assembly of specta- against the tors against opponents opening bid of one no- by opponents, the two-suited over- who were somewhat bemused we proudly produced this bidding calls invented by Pierre , etc. which will blend very nice- triumph: ly with Blue Club bidding methods, but are not used by me. Another criticism that was made is that both books appear to 2{ Q.What is this? be incomplete in that certain explanations are missing. For example A. Partner has 17-24 points, 4-4-4-1 distribution. in the book written in conjunction with in the chap- R. Oh, very interesting? ter on slam bidding. 2] Q.What is this? North South A. asking for more information. 1} 2[ Q.What is this? A. Partner's hand is in the 17-20 points region and the sin- 1{ 3{ gleton is in a . etc. R.Why, this is great fun! The book states that this Three Diamond bid shows a club- 2NT Q.What is this? diamond two-suiter with 3½-4½ losers. A. Further relay, asking exact range and which singleton. I must admit that when this book came to be written there were R. Oh, really? over 50 pages of additional material written by me that were not 3] Q.What is this? included in the book.The reason is that it was thought to be too A. Partner has a singleton spade and 19-20 points. complicated and involved for the average reader, and this partic- R.This is excellent! ular sequence is one that was explained in these 50 pages. I 3[ Q.What is this? A. Further relay, asking how many controls. R. Oh brother, this is incredible. 4} Q.What is this? A. Partner has five controls. 4[ Q.What is this? A. Relay asking how many queens I have got. R.This is sensational! 5{ Q.What is this? A. Partner has two queens. R.This is absolutely fantastic! 6{ Q.What is this? A. Final contract. R.Tremendous!

We played in Six Diamonds, holding {Kxxx in dummy oppo- site {Qxxx in declarer's hand and the opponent on declarer's right held {AJ109x in trumps but did not double us. In spite of this the convention proved to be very successful subsequently.

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