The Strong Club System is a set of bidding conventions and agreements used in the game of contract bridge and is based upon an opening bid of 1 as being an artificial forcing bid promising a strong hand. The strong 1 opening is assigned a minimum strength promising 16 or more
high card points
In contract bridge, various bidding systems have been devised to enable partners to describe their hands to each other so that they may reach the optimum contract. Key to this process is that players evaluate and re-evaluate the trick-taking pot ...
. All other bids would therefore be limited to a maximum of 15 high card points. There are several variants of the strong club system and all are classified as artificial because the bids are highly codified.
Strengths and weaknesses
There are two generally acknowledged strengths of the strong club systems:
# accuracy in uncontested slam-strength auctions, because the bidding starts at such a low level when opener has a fairly strong hand.
# the fact that all other opening bids have their strength capped by the strong club means more accurate judgment and scope for tactical operation both in constructive and competitive bidding.
The generally acknowledged weakness of such systems is the fact that the opponents can aggressively overcall the 1 bid to deprive the stronger opponents of their bidding room, and that the loss of the 1 opening bid often causes strain on other opening bids, most often 1 and 2.
Variants
There are several types of strong club systems
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Precision Club
Precision Club is a bidding system in the game of contract bridge. It is a strong club system developed in 1969 for C. C. Wei by Alan Truscott, and used by Taiwan teams in 1969. Their success in placing second at the 1969 Bermuda Bowl (and Wei's ...
- It uses five-card majors (opening 1 or 1 promises five) which makes them very powerful at the cost of opening 40% of hands with 1.
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Moscito - invented by the Australian expert Paul Marston in the mid-1980s.
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Blue Club - invented by Benito Garozzo.
Hybrid Club- invented by Ron Vickery and Billy Handy in the early 1980s
History
The original strong club system was the Vanderbilt Club, invented in the 1920s by
Harold Vanderbilt.
For many years, the most popular strong club systems were the Schenken Club in the US and the Neapolitan and
Blue Team Club
Blue Club is a bridge bidding system, developed mainly by Benito Garozzo. It was used by the famous Blue Team and became very popular in the 1960s. It has gained a strong following ever since.
The main features are:
* Strong club system: 1 open ...
systems in Europe. Both are four-card major systems. The former is patterned closely after the Standard American bidding of the time and the latter is characterized by
canapé
A canapé () is a type of hors d'oeuvre, a small, prepared, and often decorative food, consisting of a small piece of bread (sometimes toasted) wrapped or topped with some savoury food, held in the fingers and often eaten in one bite.
Name
T ...
(bidding the second-longer suit) in many situations.
See also
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Contract bridge
Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions ...
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Bidding system
A bidding system in contract bridge is the set of Glossary of contract bridge terms#agreement, agreements and understandings assigned to Glossary of contract bridge terms#call, calls and sequences of calls used by a Glossary of contract bridge te ...
Strong Diamond
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Strong Club System
Bridge systems