[keylime]

We had a weak two in clubs at one time until two directors stated it was not permitted. We therefore changed it to the three suiter. Evidently it's either a strong, artificial opening or a three suited hand. Then again, a lot of directors don't know the convention charts.

[hrothgar]

The directors were completely wrong

Club directors have the option to allow/ban anything that they chose, however, they most provide explicit notice that they are departing from "normal".

[keylime]

Why doesn't that surprise me...then again in Houston they allowed the Wagner 2D opening for 6 consecutive sessions...<shakes head>.

[pbleighton]

Dwayne -

How did you open your 12-15 long club hands in Southern EHAA? Did you use canape?

Peter

[keylime]

Good question Peter. If the hand was let's say (xx)4-5 in the minors it was opened 2NT directly (10-15, minor two suiter, emphasis on clubs over diamonds if 5-4). With a six card club suit and good values the rebid would be 2C (this by implication denies 4 diamonds - 6-4's got placed into 2NT as well).

It wasn't the most perfect interpretation, but there was never really a problem encountered.

[the hog]

Sounds to me like those that are looking at EHAA should perhaps look at playing something like the Hackett twins are playing viz

4 card Majors, very aggressive openings - 10+ with semi forcing NT response. 10-13 openings are canape ie with 4M and longer m, open the M

4 card D opening

14-16 NT

2/1 forcing to game with one exception only, (2C over 1M can be 7-10 with 3 card support)

Lots of bashing of games

This has the sophistication of a developed 2/1 structure while maintaining the aggressiveness of weak 4 card M openings.

This is lots of fun to play. Pd and I used to play this with a combination of transfer Walsh over the 1C opening and 2 way m checkback

[hrothgar]

i used to play something very similar to what Ron was describing
The major difference was that 1C could show any 17-19+ balanced, with 1D as an artificial negative. The 2C opening was"still" storng, art. forcing. Damn effective, especially if combined with the Scanian major suit raise structure.

[pbleighton]

Richard -

You have referred in the past to the Scanian major suit raise structure.

Do you have a link, or can you summarize it?

Peter

[hrothgar]

Major Suit Raises the Scanian Way is an entire book
(athough its certainly a short one)

I don't think that I could do it justice

[mycroft]

A few points (since I am on the EHAA+ side):

1. What Hrothgar says is completely accurate. 8-12 hands are by far the most common for most people to hold - I, on the other hand, played at least one session of EHAA where I passed 5 of 8 hands as dealer.

He chooses to see this as a reason to emphasize getting to the right spot with those hands. A very admirable concept. EHAA says "It's almost certainly a partscore hand, and if not, it's likely their hand - let's try to win it with one bid." Whether it works or not - and it works, often, and it fails to work, often, and sometimes when you do win it, like DONT, you win it in the wrong suit - it's another goal.

H. is also right about 2S+2 (even +3). As I said, -200 isn't the magic death score for EHAA - it's +200.

Would I play it at IMPs? Well, I have, but only IMP pairs with a partner who was okay with it. As I said before, it's not the kind of thing to throw on unsuspecting teammates.

At MPs, I do think the frequency is on my side; though as always, experts will defend better - and "better", against EHAA, is bound to be spectacular (one way or the other).

2. "Responder doesn't know what to do." True. That was the hardest thing to get used to playing EHAA (and I've touched on that before): Responder to an EHAA 2 is pretty much restricted on the first round to vague gradations of strength, and has to be disciplined about it so that opener can decide what to do.

3. LOTT - oh yeah, seriously out the window. If you're a LOTT fan, as Keylime said, run, now, from EHAA. OTOH, it throws off the opponents' LOTT calculations, as well, and many players are much too comfortable with that crutch to remember how to bid without it.

4. Would I play it against experts? Why, yes I would. But I would play it knowing it was high variance, and I would be playing it because it was high variance. Playing in a expert or world-class field, playing the systems they play, would be tantamount to conceding - I'm just not that good (yet). Cohen has decided that ultra-agressive preempts are losers for him, now; when I play the cards as well as Larry, I may also decide that.

5. Why do I play EHAA? Because it is fun, and because I still need bidding judgement practice (a flaw in my game I have spent many hours trying to avoid with system science). I don't play it to become Canadian Champion, I don't play it to become a bridge professional - if it comes, it comes (though Canadian championships would probably find me playing some sort of Precision or Swedish Club). I take bridge very seriously, and I try to do my best in every event I enter. But I primarily play bridge for pleasure, and win or lose, playing EHAA is fun.

Okay, sometimes, I will admit, I play EHAA to annoy the Noguchis :-). Not very often, though. Usually, now, I play EHAA because I've spent a week playing all kinds of science in serious competition and I want to wind down a bit. Once you learn EHAA (provided you have the basics of standard down - and can play 4cM), you can play it again with 5 minutes remembering and 5 minutes hashing out the occasional variances.

I also like it because it's systemically simple - with one exception (the jump shift by a passed hand) it's legal on the ACBL *Limited* convention chart - you know, the one they use for the 0-20 MP games? I want to learn rubber bridge Acol for the same reason.

Frankly, I can't remember the time that system lost me an event (okay, the midnight zip KOs three years ago swung on one hand where Flannery beat 1H-1NT; in 6 boards at 0230, this isn't really a big deal.) The way I lose events is by making mistakes, often stupid ones.

6. I've never tried Southern EHAA - I don't think I'd enjoy it as much. As H said, the point behind 1NT and the EHAA 2 bids is to give the one-of-a-suit openers some meat. The penalty double seems to be going the way of the club suit these days, and people playing "2/1, but we'll open pretty much any 12, most 11s with shape, and the occasional 10, with or without defence" is part of the reason for that (too many PDs let through, and too many situations where you need a conventional double to save your auction). I just don't see the reason to play a weird system, but restrict my constructive bidding with the same hobbles the field has!

I have, however, liked the idea of some sort of "strong or natural 1C" - I do worry about opening 26-point 1S hands. So I'm exploring :-).

7. Yep, there are 3-bids in Northern EHAA. They deny 6 HCP :-). Actually, that was a style that got subsumed by my reg. pd and me into our "normal" system - not the HCP limitation, but 3M bids were EHAA-style:

8-9 losers, 6+ (occasionally 5!) card suit at favourable
7-8, 6+ all white
6-7, 7+ all red
5-6, 7+ unfavourable.

Yep, the opps will guarantee a profit if they double every 3 bid we make. They would get a fair number of zero MP plus scores, though!

In case you're interested, according to system, 4m bids and game bids are similar, one less loser, one more card in the suit; however, the 6HCP restriction is waived for game bids (but you shouldn't have more than one defensive trick - else open 2 and keep bidding).

8. Let me add my voice to the throng - of course you can play 2C as a weak 2 on the GCC. It's NATURAL - therefore it by Law must be allowed, it cannot be regulated (yes, conventional continuations can be, and the ACBL has the dreaded *Disallowed, 7* to do just that, but an EHAA 2 bid fits the "conventional bids OK" rule - barely). Sure, if it was a conventional bid, they could disallow it, but if they were allowed to deny an EHAA 2C opener, they'd have to disallow all natural weak 2s - you don't see the GCC explicitly allowing those, do you?

No, Dwayne, I'm not screaming at you - you do the work and read the books. It's the illiterate TDs out there (or, more correctly, the TDs that won't read - either the GCC, the Alert Pamphlet, or the Laws out of the FLB). Luckily, all the tournament Directors I've run into (club Directors are another matter) have been the "you know, I'm not sure. Let me check" type. And not only that, at least twice, they've come back with the GCC in hand to show our opponents (who were never impolite about it, they just said "I really don't know about this, can we call the TD and make sure it's legal?", by the way) what the restrictions were.

Have left mail, Peter, on BBO, with contact information. Let's hook up a time!
Michael.

[EricK]

I have played EHAA a few times at BBO with Mycroft, and I can honestly say that I don't recall there being many bad hands as a result of the system - certainly no more than one would expect if one is playing any anti-field system.

On the other hand, I wonder if EHAA would be improved if 5332 hands were counted as balanced (as is the modern tendency in many other systems). So 10-12 hands are opened 1NT, and weaker 5332 hands are passed.

This would mean that 2 level bids are either 6+ or two suited which must increase your chances of landing in a playable suit.

Eric

[keylime]

Folks I have at least a partial link that might shred some light on the Scanian approach of bidding the majors:

http://www.chemistry.ohio-state.edu/~heng/.../conv/scan.html

I haven't looked at it at great length, so you'll have to tell the members how detailed it is for us.

[keylime]

I want to tell a funny story if I can about EHAA while I'm thinking of it...

My good friend Nigel Stevens and I one day went to the club here in the Tampa Bay area. We get there and all and Nigel says, "Hey Dwayne, I want to play something different for a change...let's play Southern EHAA!". I thought to myself, "Oh my ^&*%^ God he just didn't break out THAT acronym..." but I said "Sure why not.".

First hand, Nigel breaks out a 2H opening on 9xxxx. We had agreed to use Modified Ogust so I wheel out 2NT, where guess what, I hear 3C. A 5 carder and probably not a lot of stuff to go with it. So I bid 3H...only to have RHO double. I started thinking about a possible runout but he's my partner and I do have 4 trumps headed by two honors so I sit for it. Making for a nice 530.

Middle of the session, and we're driving people nuts. I get to open a proud 2S on....yep, 108xxx with a 5 count. LHO passes, Nigel passes, and RHO passes....dummy drops with 9xx of spades and 13 HCP. Things didn't sit right for me but down one wasn't a bad score.

Next to last hand, 1st seat 10-12 NT by me (remember, no runouts discussed). LHO doubles, and Nigel goes into the tank for about 2 minutes. He redoubles (he wanting to play the hand, I thinking he's got clubs). I promptly bid 2 clubs, only to play a 4-2 fit going down one for a bottom. A lesson learned about runouts over the micro NT...

We ended up 2nd with a decent score. However, some of the "old-timers" were pretty miffed at our "active" preempting style.

I admit that I am a lot more structure in approach than Nigel is -- the man will just bid game on a whim, but it works for him more often than not.