Karmen, Denise and Lisa's Style of the Precision Club System


This site is a reference for Karmen Armoudjian, Denise Wreede and Lisa Walker, who use a form of Extended Precision.  as the cornerstone of their bridge bidding. they have several modifications, as do most modern Precision systems.  You are welcome to read about their agreements.  Some of them may appear a bit strange to you, but blame them on their mentor, Roy Wilson, who doesn't know everything about bridge, but even so, his ideas are fun to play if one can remember them.

This is an explanation of a modern and effective bidding system based on many of the Precision bidding agreements.


A bit of history...
In the early 1920s Harold Vanderbilt devised a strong club system which came to be known as the Vanderbilt Club.  A few years later, it was surpassed by the Schenken Club, which became an alternate for the Standard American system used by most players in the U.S.  In Europe, the Neapolitan and Blue Team Club systems were the preferred forcing club methods.  All of these older systems were built around a strong one club opening and four card majors, although the Europeans tended to favor a canape style of bidding, where their second bid suit was longer than the first one.  Strong club systems were never a popular choice, though, in either Europe or the United States.

In 1963, an improved system was developed by Mr. C.C. Wei with some help from Alan Truscott and several friends.  It became known as the Precision Club, and was used successfully by the Taiwan team for three consective years in 1967, 1968, and 1969 in the Far East Championships.  That team also reached the finals again in 1970.

C.C. Wei sponsored a number of top-level teams in the United States so he could popularize his Precision bidding system, and in 1972 the Famed Italian Blue Team came out of retirement to enter the World Team Olympiad where the entire team used versions of Precision.  Giorgio Belladonna and Benito Garozzo, the top pair in the world for many years, had a modified version called Super Precision.

Today, the two highest ranked players in US history, Jeff Meckstroth and Eric Rodwell, play their own heavily modified version of Precision.  Paul Soloway, now passed, preferred Precision also, but most of the players in the American Contract Bridge League today are using either Max Hardy's version of Two-Over-One, or Mike Lawrence's slightly different version of the system.  Strong club systems are still not very popular in the world, with perhaps a third of the top players in the world playing Precision..    (Players say... Too complicated!    It's not.  It's a series of Asking Bids with step-bid responses.)  If you do a little research, you will find that four of the top five teams in the world use Precision.

Anyway, this system is KDLbridge, and is another form of the strong club.  We find it's not only effective, but also lots of fun.  after you look this over, you can decide.


What are the advantages or disadvantages?
Primarily the major strengths of any strong club system are:
  • Highly accurate in auctions where there is a possibility of slam.  This is because the bidding starts at the lowest level of bidding, and provides better methods of exchanging information.
  • All opening bids, other than one club, have a narrower range of points than standard forms of bidding, making judgments easier in both constructive and competitive situations.

  • And the acknowledged weakness of these systems is that opponents are prone to bid aggressively with weak hands over a 1 opening so as to take away bidding room.
  • Another systemic problem is that since the bid of one club is reserved for strong hands, there is a lot of ambiguity when the opening bid is 1, which may be as short as a singleton.  Unfortunately, players who use a forcing club system find that perhaps as many as 40% of the hands are opened 1.
The bidding agreements described here are either standard Precision bids, or modifications of them, but they are all compatible with most Precision agreements.  Many of them are Wilsonisms... played only by Roy Wilson and his partners, and now also by Karmen, Denise and Lisa.  However, you will find they are effective and are often good improvements over older and similar agreements.

Perhaps, though, the single most important reason to adopt a strong club bidding system is that it is just plain fun!

Click on this image to see the convention card we use...            
       


Below is a short description of our opening bids.  The suit symbols on the left side are links to more detailed explanation of each one.
  Click on the convention card above also for explanations.


1-Level Opening Bids

    
       17+ HCP with any distribution - Alert as "Forcing"

       11-16 HCP and may be a singleton - Alert as "May be short"

       11-16 HCP with at least a 5-card suit - A simple raise is game forcing!

       15-16 HCP - Natural 2-level responses and game forcing natural 3-level responses

2-Level Opening Bids
       11-16 HCP with 5+ clubs - May have a 4-card major

       11-16 HCP with 5+ diamonds - Denies a 4-card major

         8-10 HCP with a good suit
5-5 Majors or 5-5 Minors - Opening Bids

These are fun bids because the opponents have never played against them before.  The are both descriptive and preemptive as well.
       10+ HCP with at least 5-5 in the majors
    A Forcing Club system does not need a 2NT bid to show 20-21 points, so there is a better use for the bid.


       10+ HCP with at least 5-5 in the minors
    (Note:  A very popular agreement for an opening bid of 3NT is called the Gambling 3NT, and shows a long and solid minor, but two-suited hands occur far more frequently than such hands.  (Besides, the contract is always played from the wrong side!  (The lead should come up to the other hand.)
A Very Unusual Agreement

       Responding Over Our Diamond
    The Precision opening bid of 1 is the worst bid in bridge, and many Precision players have tried to solve the problems it creates by agreeing to play weak notrump opening bids, but ROOD is better.

    ROOD is a unique agreement used by KDL in Extended Precision for bidding over partner's 1 opening bid.

KDL Asking Bids

       Major Suit Keycard:   A Better Blackwood - It's not Roman...

       The Control Asking Bid (An ace is two controls and a king is one control.)

       The Trump Asking Bid

       The Support Asking Bid

       The Honors Asking Bid

       Transfer Stayman
    When partner opens a 17+ 1 and then rebids 1NT, we want the stronger hand to be declarer.  A modified Stayman with Transfer rebids insures it.


Leads and Defensive Signals

       We use Parity Ace-King leads as well as Rusinow honor leads.  We also use Odd/Even discards, and suit-preference signals.  (The majority of good players are either using standard discards or odd-even discards, but a large minority are using Upside Down Carding and Attitude.  Nobody else is using Parity leads.)

Losing Trick Count

       Losing Trick Count is relatively new to the bridge world, and combined with Point-count evaluation it makes a much better method for finding the proper level of a contract.
    Use point-count to decide whether to open a hand, but switch to LTC when you find a fit.



Practice Hands With Questions and Answers

Okay, many of these bids are new to you and may seem a bit strange, so perhaps you want to see some examples.  It's important that you are comfortable with them and understand why they are used.  These examples and practice hands should help.






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