System Summary Form (SSF), 2025 Open USBC
| Team: | Kovachev | Last Updated | Jan 9, 2025 at 08:52 |
| Players: | Charlie Wilkins - Val Kovachev | ||
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Bids that Require Advance Preparation
| None |
General Bidding Style
| Precision in the Meckwell Lite style.
5520 1st-2nd-4th seats, 4420 3rd seat. 1  opening can be singleton King in theory but hasn't occurred at the table.
We open almost all balanced 11s and a few balanced 10s. 3rd seat can be 9 balanced. Unbalanced hands below 11 HCP will be seven losers or better. NT range is 14-16 1st-2nd and 15-17 3rd-4th. Our preempts are aggressive; frequent five-card weak two bids not vul; all preempts may be two-suiters with less than traditional length in the suit bid. |
Opening Leads AND Leads in the Middle of the Hand
| Opening: 3rd and low vs suit; 4th vs NT. From 3+ low cards: 3rd and low vs suit, top or 2nd vs NT.
Mid Hand: 4th from strength, high if we don't want the suit returned. Honor Leads vs Suit: Ace asks attitude, King asks count. Otherwise high from touching honors. Honor Leads vs NT: Ace asks attitude (partner assumes AKxx), King asks attitude (partner assumes KQxxx); Queen asks attitude about the Jack or Ace. |
Defensive Signals
| High-low = even count. High-low = encourage. Standard suit preference. No Smith.
Normal: attitude to partner's lead, count to opponents' lead. Exception: in 3rd seat, vs suit, if not contesting for the trick, spot card is suit preference. (vs Suit) Switch to suit preference when dummy has a singleton. If attitude is clear, switch to present count or suit preference (both partners have to work out whether attitude is clear and which alternative signal is more important). Trump suit spot card is suit preference. At trick one, 3rd seat spot card tends to be a true card. Later, we often play false cards / random cards. |