Hi all
Last Sunday I played the Compact KO Teams, President’s Day regional. When I entered the playing room I was surprised, I could see something like 150 tables, and this was not the only room. There were several events held simultaneously (pairs, Swiss, senior etc).
We meet our teammates and have a small chuckle over the differences in system. We play our modified Viking Precision and they play some vanilla 2-1 system. I don’t think the difference can be any bigger than this.
First match, first board. We’re in for a ride:
1
2
4571. Big, 16+
2. Game forcing: 8-11 hcp, balanced or at least a 5 card
3. Relay
4. 5 card ; balanced or a sidesuit in
5. Relay
6. Balanced
7. Agreeing , natural continuation
8. Undiscussed, but it sounds like a collection of Queens and Jacks and suggesting a place to play
Greg had forgotten (due to the excitement of playing a new system) about the inversions of 1 and 1. So he had to mastermind his way out of the mess he created. But the trumps had a friendly split, and when the Queen of came tumbling down there were twelve tricks for a push. Luckily the opponents didn’t have the right tools to find the cold slam.
If you play an highly artificial system like this it is like keeping a rhino as a pet. No problems if you treat it nice and with respect, else it will smack you around and leave you broken, beat and scarred.
We were both very awake after this incident, and the rest of the day all relays were flawless. Cheerio!