How about challenging the Acol club to a teams match?

[wackojack]

It is good to hear that we have a definite "All countries team"  and a likely "OCP" team.
I am trying to get names for at least 2 further teams but some are finding the pre-arranged date and time not possible.  Also with the names I do have I could either try to get a strongest possible team with the strongest regular players for an "A" team or play known regular partnerships with not necesaarily the strongest players to form 2 teams of roughly equal strength.  I think the latter will be the most practical.

Sadly Joe + Todd are unavailable.  Here are partnerships who have declared interest not necessarily in any order of strength:
 
Blubayou + Palych
Fleurette + Neha
Myself + Veeree
Also :Postmortem + Quarky may be available/interested
And possibly Kenberg + CCr3 who at present are uncertain
If Donna can find a good partner that would be an asset

Also Foxtrot  (intermediate) would like to find a partner to play. It looks like we can get 2 teams but maybe more names will come to field 3 teams. 

[brian_m]

Change of teams

After saying they would play, the two Easterners in my first team have decided it's too late for them (it would be a 2200 start time in Bulgaria, and 2300 in Turkey). That leaves us with four players, and Oliver cannot make the first match. With May's team and my second team, I am about out of OCP players to ask. I will try to find a substitute, but I think it likely that we will be down to one team.



I have one OCP team for certain, and I am trying to get a second. Can't announce them yet as it depends on whether or not I manage to get the extra players. BTW, I have grabbed Postmortem to play with his regular OCP partner, Iamadeus. One team is likely to be those two with OliverC and Servetd plus Podlecii and myself, which is the strongest team I can put together.

Update: The second team is
Epee9 (captain) & Eszter5
Bfortune & sjAldan
arda85 & soko52

[kenberg]

Organizing things is always difficult and this is no exception.
Here is my current situation.

I play in the online acbl games with a partner, jeschca1 (Carl) that I played with in clubs before covid shut everything down. He and I could play, except he is not in the iac. I assume we could add him into iac?

If we get through the hurdle of him not now being in iac I think the rest will work. It sounds as if different people will be playing at different times. We will be flexible with time. We will need a pair to form a team with us, We are flexible as to who joins with us.

I hope this all works. Carl and I might be the only pair who play that the auction 1NT-2NT is invitational to 3NT, I hope that's ok. [Note:, Becky, my wife and not a bridge player, chuckled at this 1NT-2NT comment She has heard me ramble on about conventins.]

[palych]

Carl and I might be the only pair who play that the auction 1NT-2NT is invitational to 3NT

I hope it is not true. ,  p?

[wackojack]

Progrees so far after BBO chat:
 Team (not necessarily the A team)
Ken + Jeschca1 (Carl)
Vee + me
Team:
Blu + Palych
and another pair.

At present I could choose from Neha + Fleurette who are interested but I think Fleures availability is now in doubt.  Also perhaps Toasterin + Tislafi who have not contacted me but I understand they are interested. 

Also Donna is interested but so far has no partner. Any other adv/exp pair interested?  I am excluding the precision players who are organising their own team.
We need to firm up in the next few days. 

[Curls77]

I just love forums for deleting message when I typed it all, just coz another get posted meanwhile

Ken- you asked and I replied to you, as well stated here in forums. You can have non IAC member in your team. And of course, if they want to be IAC member, they are most welcome.

Brian - we acknowledge Eppe9's team, we only need a team name for it, I asked Eszter to contact Jeremy.
I am still waiting to see if any ACOL team would take 1200utc slot, so that your 1st team can join too. We will let you know. There are more IAC teams from India  and Turkey that would prefer this slot.

[kenberg]

Ok, it's progress, great progress.

Jescchca1&kenberg with Vee&Jack

That's great. 

The time can be however it works out.

I will talk to Carl about joining iac, but that's up to him of course.

Thanks to everyone for the help. The message I deleted was the one saying that Pat and I were definitely playing. I deleted it because it was no longer correct. I apologize if that caused any confusion.

[Holden47]

I know some who would be interested but the timing suggested is not possible.  How about having a couple of different times, could be called the early session, say noon UK time, and 20.00 for the later teams.

[kenberg]

I was reviewing the above posts and I saw this from feb 12:
"Even though we play all kind of systems in IAC, ACOL players usually play just ACOL, and would not be fair to expose them to a team where pairs play different systems, they do not have enough time to prepare defense. So IAC can have 2/1 team, SAYC team, OCP team, etc., but not a mixture of them."

carl and I do not play 2/1. I doubt that this would require any special adjustment from the acol players. If our auction begins 1H-2C, the 1H shows hearts and the 2C shows clubs and a decent hand, just not a game-forcing hand. We are SAYC like.

No doubt Jack and vee play 2/1. So in some sense the CardKen-JackVee team would be a mixture but it's not like one of us is playing a big club and the other playing Montreal Relay.

We will go quietly if this presents a problem, my assumption is that it doesn't, but I thought I should check.

For defense against the 12-14 point NT I like a double to be a penalty double with at least around 15 hcps, but that's a matter for discussion. Carl and I play in the acbl games and, in those games, the weak nt does not come up often enough that we have spent much time talking about it.

[dblqueen]

Please can I clarify that the match is going to be on Sat 26th february, 8pm GMT.
The ACOL club is giving different info.
I have a team and will be submitting to the email suggested.
Thank You
dblqueen

[dblqueen]

Are we going to have team names? when we did the teams league many years ago, team names were fun
 
We were mad dogs and Englishman

[wackojack]

There is no such thing as "just Acol"  ken.  I think there is likely to be far more system variation with Acol players than with iac players except of course OCP. 
However, I don't want to alarm iac players who are unfamiliar with Acol that it is so different.  Here are some key points about Acol:

Opening 1NT is almost univerally played as 12-14.  A 1NT rebid is usually 15-17 and thus the opening 1NT and its rebid are switched.  The main implication to iac players is that DONT is not a very good defence because double should be used for penalties and 15+ is a good threshold.  Otherwise you can use any defence that has double as penalty.  So Capp would be fine athough Landy or MultiLandy I believe is technically better.
Also new minor forcing after a 1NT rebid is ruled out.  Some including Cedar and Poco use a 2C checkback so 1C-1any-1NT-2C is a check back.  Some Acol players play 1NT rebid as more wide ranging and then 2C is also a range enquiry but I doubt if you will come up against that.  The convention there is known as Crowhurst after Eric Crowhust who taught me bridge.

Most but not all Acol players play 2 levels of strong bids unlike most of the rest of the world that just plays 2C as the only strong opening bid (OK 2NT is strong)
Very old fashioned Acol opens 2D/H/S as a natural 8 -9 playing trick hand.  and 2C as an artificial game force. 
Nowdays most Acol players have embraced weak 2's in the majors, but they dont want to give up their 8-9 playing trick opening bids.  So they play a system that they announce as "Benji" 
Aside When I sat down against Zia and Robson at a tourney about 20 years ago and announced "Benji"  he laughed and said it sounded like a Disney character.
 Of course he knew what it was in reality
Benji is named after Albert Benjamin a Scot who proposed 2H/S to be a weak 2, 2C to be the 8 playing trick hand and 2D to be the game force (except for rebid of 2N) and all the no trump ranges wher shifted just a little because you had 2D followed by 2N and 2C followed by 2N to be strong. 
Albert Benjamin then decided that he didn't like this variation and I am not sure where he landed.  However, many in the Acol tribe stuck with this and some reversed the meaning of the 2C and 2D opening bid.  This is called "Reverse Benji"  and is what both Cedar and Poco play and I beleive many of their "Acolytes".
 

Anothe aside: Acol is not an acronym and so is not spelled in capital letters.  It wasinvented in a London bridge club on Acol Road knowd as the Acol club


My point is tht the difference in SA and 2/1 is small compared withn the differences in the way Acol is played.  I have detected some alarm amongst some iacers who think they need special knowlege to play against Acol and special bidding tools.  I don't think this is so.  Bridege is bridge and intelligent bridge is intelligent bridge.  It is also fun 

[drac]

I will make myself available for Feb 26 @20:00 UTC if needed (provided reasonable notice)

[kenberg]

Jack, what you say is all very reasonable. I completely agree that no great advanced study is necessary for acol opponents. Playing against Precision can be more of a problem since they have a lot of relay bids, so even with the best of intentions, their explanations are often a bit mystifying unless studied in advance. In acol after 1C-1H-1NT, we know the opener has a balanced hand with 15-17 (or approximately that) and a shape that warrants opening 1C rather than 1D. Good enough.

I think the only gadget Carl and I play that opponents need to know about in advance is Flannery, the old fashioned version where there are exactly five hearts and four spades, with a minimal point count, usually 15, but a Jx in a minor might not be counted as a hcp. Assume a max of 15 highs, allow for an extra useless J somewhere. We do not play that the auction 1H-1S promises five, although responder might choose to skip over a four-card major on occasion.

I like the general idea of trying to get this basic stuff straight. And I like accepting that there is a limit. Not for a long time, if ever, have I had a partnership with highly detailed knowledge. For example, with one partner he opened 1NT, my Rho asked if he could have a five-card major, I said we had no agreement that it could not be, but while I often did it I had never seen him do it. Meckstroth and Roswell do not bid exactly alike although I am sure they are more likely to demonstrate clone-like bidding than I and any pard are apt to display. Steve Robinson's Washington standard says that holding a 3=2=4=4 minimum hand you can open either minor. Ok, but I tend to open it 1D.  I try to be straightforward about these things but there are cases where I could not give more detail without making it up. We don't have fifty pages of bidding understandings, we try to make sure we know whether a bid is artificial or natural and go from there. Any gadget I do play I like to just find it written somewhere and play it that way rather than re-invent the wheel.


I expect this to be interesting and fun. That's the way I like it.

[wackojack]

 "Meckstroth and Roswell do not bid exactly alike"

I didn't know Meckstroth played with aliens