ark (12/01/82)
I have occasionally played the following convention to help cope with opponents who play forcing club systems. It was devised by Stu Blickman, as far as I know, though he may have gotten it from somewhere else. The theory is that when an opponent has opened a forcing club and you make an overcall, LHO doesn't know where his partner's strength is, so penalty doubles are hard. They are even harder if your overcall is conventional. So: your rho has opened 1C, strong and forcing. Your responses are: double: clubs and spades 1D: diamonds 1H: hearts 1S: spades 1NT: clubs and hearts 2C: clubs 2D: diamonds and hearts 2H: hearts and spades 2S: diamonds and spades 2NT: clubs and diamonds With a balanced or three-suited hand, pass and await developments. Ditto with a bunch of trash. Believe it or not, these bids are designed to be easy to remember. Here are the rules: a non-jump suit bid is natural. A jump in a suit shows that suit plus the next higher-ranking suit, excluding clubs. That leave two-suiters with clubs. 2NT is the good old-fashioned unusual notrump. That leaves clubs and either major for 1NT and double. The reason you use 1NT for clubs and hearts is that that way, you shut out the spade suit which you don't have, forcing them to bid at the two level whichever major you've got. I would tend to play the entire three level in this position as a conventional pre-empt -- a long suit with a bunch of playing tricks.
halle1 (12/01/82)
This is a minor modification of Truscott (orinverted Truscott, i forget which). AT invented it to counteract the Italian club systems when he was playing for England. I do find interesting the modification with clubs excluded from the string. It seems workable.