[rbforster]

Nicolas L'Ecuyer and Zygmunt Marcinski are a Canadian pair who play a complicated strong club system with lots of artificial relays and relay breaks (5 card majors, nebulous diamond, variable NT). I've seen hints at their general systems in the Bridge World, where they are the reigning champions in the "Challenge the Champs" bidding contest.

I've been quite impressed with their bidding results in the last few BW issues as they continue to win decisively against various challengers. Can anyone point me to where I might learn more about what they play? I'm sure we'd all learn a lot by studying such a successful strong club system.

[glen]

This is the system Nic will be playing in the Bermuda Bowl:

Kamel Fergani - Nicolas L'Écuyer 2007 Convention Card

When Nic and Robert Lebi, a new partnership at that time, won the National (NABC) Fast Open Pairs in Chicago in 2006 (see: 2006 Bulletin), it was said "The two played a 2/1 game forcing system with 12-14 1NT openers".

mikeh, on Aug 9 2007, said:

Those who subscribe to the BW will have seen some of our ideas used by L'Ecuyer - Marcinski in the Challenge the Champs.. altho I am not really saying they used 'our ideas'.. since the concepts have been widely available for many years, and the L'Ecuyer-Marcinski method is quite different from ours. But they use some of the compression approaches we used, in particular the denial cue-bid structure. This is an example of convergent evolution, not plagarism.

That last quote is in: 2/1 or big club poll thread

[Robert]

Hi Rob F

You might want to get a copy of the Ultimate Club book. That system holds the BW record with 13 wins in a row. A record that it has held since the late 70s(?) and the number of wins 'in a row' has not even been approached.

The scores were normally in the high 70s and some 80s.

Regards,
Robert

[Aberlour10]

Rob F, on Aug 30 2007, 02:26 AM, said:

Nicolas L'Ecuyer and Zygmunt Marcinski are a Canadian pair who play a complicated strong club system with lots of artificial relays and relay breaks (5 card majors, nebulous diamond, variable NT).  I've seen hints at their general systems in the Bridge World, where they are the reigning champions in the "Challenge the Champs" bidding contest. 

I've been quite impressed with their bidding results in the last few BW issues as they continue to win decisively against various challengers.  Can anyone point me to where I might learn more about what they play?  I'm sure we'd all learn a lot by studying such a successful strong club system.

Nicolas L'Ecuyer & Kamel Fergani will play on Monday 9/3 (19.00 CET) at the BBO in 2x16 boards match Canada vs Poland as a training for Bermuda Bowl ( according to the information from the site of the Polish Bridge Union )

Robert

[han]

Robert, on Aug 30 2007, 08:26 AM, said:

Hi Rob F

You might want to get a copy of the Ultimate Club book. That system holds the BW record with 13 wins in a row. A record that it has held since the late 70s(?) and the number of wins 'in a row' has not even been approached.

The scores were normally in the high 70s and some 80s.

Regards,
Robert

That the record has not been approached is not surprising. In these days you automatically were invited for next month's challenge the champs if you won your match. After the 13 consecutive wins they changed the format and the record will never be broken.