Nice Treatment

I have been kibitzing a bit of the Yeh Brothers Championship team event on BBO the last few days...once again it is staggering seeing the results you can generate from very solid agreements that can only come from a lot of partnership discussion and experience. It is more evidence of how difficult it can be for some of us with full-time jobs to compete at the top levels with professionals who devote so much time to system refinement. Here is one of the more useful tools that I just picked up from watching the final. It is a very easy understanding to add to your bag of tricks, and i think it gives a decided advantage over standard methods. The pair using the aggreement was Drijver/Brink of the Netherlands.

After a 1NT opening and a 4-level transfer, they play a double as takeout of the reponder's suit instead of as a general lead/direct or sacrifice try in the transfer suit. This adds quite a bit of safety since partner can cooperate after the notrump opener completes the tranfer but doesn't have to...as in the case where you wait for opener to accept the transfer and then reopen with a double. The method is particularly useful at favorable vulnerability, which was the case on this hand--Brink held:
void
T98xx
AKxx
Qxxx
Fredin of Sweden opened a strong 1NT and Fellenius jumped to 4 Diamonds, a spade transfer in their methods. Brink doubled and Fredin completed the tranfer...but Drijver held a suitable:
Qxx
Kxx
xx
KJxxx
and showed excellent judgement in bidding 5 Clubs. The Swedes had a likely 100 penalty coming for defeating the contract one trick doubled, but reasonably elected to try 5 Spades. Unluckily for them, ten tricks was their limit and the Dutch earned a major swing. Without the agreement, Brink would have had to pass 4 Diamonds and face 4 Spades on the next round...now doubling isn't nearly as safe as you could end up going for a large number or losing redoubled overtricks. Well done--great players have their methods down for these big tournaments and are opportunistic about putting them to use!

These methods could extend to doubles of two-level transfers as well and also to doubles of the drury 2 Clubs.