The Tangerine Club Jan Eric Larsson ToAnu Palo Alto California April th Preface Ihave had great times playing it though Together with Soren Romare who herebyisacknowledged as a Which of all op ening bids is the least ecient and causes coauthor of the system we ended up in hearts dou most trouble in the subsequent bidding A strong bled and vulnerable resulting in tricks and A Roman A p oints points out in a pairs comp etition in Lund Sweden but My opinion is clear the op ening bid one of a suit in over the years we found literally hundreds of slams that the standard system is the worst of all bids Op ening no one else even susp ected to b e there In short Tan one of a suit I tell my partner that I have somewhere gerine can improveyour bidding a lot in b oth pairs and between reasonable p oints and almost a game on my teams comp etitions b ecause it is simple aggressive and own hand In one fell swoopIhave managed to half the go o d at nding games and slams total span of p ossibil iti es With partner holding around So read and b e inspired Mayb e you can nd some p oints wemayhave trouble making a part score or idea to b orrow and improve or mayb e you will even a grand slam may b e easy wanttoplayTangerine Now it has b een presented in Strong systems remedy the main disadvantage English and you may do with it whatever you want with the standard systems the wide p oint range of Hop efully you nd it interesting and inspiring or at the one level op enings The op ening is used to show least a nice piece of history And that was the main stronger hands usually from around p oints and up reason whywe wrote this b o ok aside from wanting to wards This allows the rest of the op ening bids to b e b ecome so wealthy that we shall routinely leave mo limited and the subsequent bidding b ecomes b oth easier tor yachts as tips to quote Dave Barry from his b o ok and more precise ab out American historyDave Barry Slept Here It is my opinion that strong systems are sup e FinallyIwould like to dedicate this work to Anu rior to standard systems esp ecially if the opp onents let Uus my life companion wife and b est friend the partnership bid without interference after which they shouldnt but usually do Even the go o d Goren has Palo Alto April th the following to say ab out Precision and other strong Jan Eric Larsson systems Except for Club op ening which is conventional similar to Clubs in standard metho ds almost all other Precision bids are also played as part of Ab out the Author Standard American Therefore it is easy to learn But the player who adopts the Precision System Iwas b orn in Sweden in and Im currently working as a enjoys the enormous advantage of knowning often Postdo ctoral Fellow ie a researcher in Articial Intelligence from the very rst bid whether the partnership is at Stanford University in California During my student and Ph in part score game or slam territory D years in Lund Sweden I played Bridge in lo cal clubs For a while I b elonged to the junior elite of southern Sweden and Goren C H Gorens New Bridge Complete later I played on an average club level Doubleday Garden City New York p In addition the bidding may use asking bids and other sp ecial slam metho ds The p otential weakness Jan Eric Larsson of strong systems is the op ening itself There Knowledge Systems Lab oratory are two slightly dierent reasons for this First opp o Stanford University nents using systematic weak overcalls will decrease the Welch Road Building C bidding precision Secondly many opp onents use psy Palo Alto CA USA chic overcalls The latter may not b e a particularly Phone go o d idea but it will takeaway lots of reliabili tyinthe Fax bidding Email LarssonKSLStanfordEdu The idea of weakstrong systems is to remove the reason for destructive and psychic overcalls of the op ening This op ening nowshows either the strong variantoraweak hand typically a balanced or semi c by Jan Eric Larsson All rights reserved balanced hand around p oints If an opp onentin terferes with a psychic bid he risks to sab otage the subsequent bidding for his own side Tangerine was b orn out of my distrust for the stan dard system I had some inspiration from other sys tems the Neap olitan Club the Blue Team Club Pre cision and the Swedish system Hjortron Cloudb erry Tangerine was invented at the same time as Cloud b erry and precedes the weakstrong Carrot Club with more than veyears All in all Tangerine is noth ing new though only a simple systematic version of aweakstrong and light card suit op enings Contents Defensive Bidding General Defense Principles Tangerine Op ening Bids Defense against One of a Suit The Takeout Double The Op ening Delayed Takeout Doubles and Negative Resp onse Defense against N and Positive Resp onses Against Weak Two Op enings and SemiPositive Resp onses Against Weak TwoTransfers N Forcing to Game or Slam Against Multi and PreemptiveResponses Interference over Against High Op enings in Third and Fourth Seat Against Strong Against Threesuited Op enings A Relay Slam System Defense against Flannery Relays after Against Unusual N Against AlternativeTwosuiters The Strong Against Gambling N Resp onses to Strong Against Preempts Interference over a Strong Against Transfer Preempts The Op enings Articial Op enings Op eners Second Bid Against Strong N Trump Asking Bid Against Forcing Pass Jump Shift Supp ort Asking Bid Against Weak Interference over and Against Weak Against Transfer Op enings The Op ening N Against Short Op enings Interference over N Against Articial Op enings When the Opp onents Double N Bidding after N Psychics System Sp ecic Psychics The Op ening General Psychics The Op enings Variants of the System Choices to Make The Op ening N Some Statistics An AlternativeN Short Op enings Preemptive Op enings The Op ening N The Op ening N Romex Invitations Slam Conventions Blackwood Cuebids Free of a Ma jor Free N Trump Asking Bids Supp ort Asking Bids Control Asking Bids Top Control Asking Bids Distribution Asking Bids Tangerine Opening Bids Tangerine Op ening Bids balanced The Tangerine Club is a Bridge bidding system based any shap e onaweakstrong op ening followed by simple but diamonds ecient asking bids light op ening bids of one of a suit exactly distribution showing p oints and at least cards in the suit a hearts N op ening of hcp and a balanced hand without spades ve card ma jors a natural op ening showing N balanced no card ma jor points and at least clubs and weak two op enings of clubs p oints and at least cards in the suit Tangerine is diamonds based on the following principles hearts spades It is a tactical advantage to op en as often as p os N card suit sible In Tangerine the onelevel op ening bids x preemptive except show p oints and a card N solid card minor suit The p oints limit for op ening comes from x preemptive the fact that at p oints you have a hand of at N preemptive with b oth minors least average strength In addition the weak two op enings are very aggressive All these light In third seat the op ening bid range is in fourth op ening bids gives a tactical advantage on almost seat it is and the op ening is unambiguousl y every b oard played Few systems in the world are strong Since a hand that has passed do es not as aggressiveasTangerine have strength enough to try for a game against an Tangerine uses hcp and distributio nal p oints Of op ening bid the third seat op enings maybepsychic course you mayyour own favorite p oint count and if the lo cal Bridge laws allow it this is part of the metho d to evaluate your hands Tangerine system The use of a strong op ening combines tw o advantages It enables the rest of the op ening bids The Op ening to contain a narrower p ointrange making most auctions easy to control and it allows for Italian The resp onses to are either negative semip ositive style asking bids which are easy to use but quite or p ositive A p ositive resp onse is gameforcing against ecient in nding and avoiding slams a strong op ener and the resp onse N is forcing against the weak variant A strong op ening may b e a tactical weak ness at least when it is only mo derately strong Responses to as in Tangerine Opp onents are often eager to anyshape use psychics whichtendtomake the bidding hearts more random than usual In order to avoid this spades Tangerine has an ambiguous op ening showing N balanced either p oints and a balanced or semibalanced clubs hand or with any shap e If the opp onents diamonds try any psychics they risk fo oling themselves exactly hearts Tangerine adheres to standard natural bidding exactly spades principles as often as p ossible Thus you can NT anyshape play most of Tangerine using your knowledge and exp erience from other systems The bidding after and Negative Resp onse and N may follow most standard metho ds After the bidding is natural but the op eners jump in a suit is a support asking bid Note that the Tangerine never acknowledges the distribu bids and do not clearify whether op ener is weak tion Instead such a hand is treated either as a or strong They can b e made with b oth variants or usually with the card suit in a minor Bidding after The Tangerine op ening bids are N balanced N balanced natural nonforcing