This is an old revision of the document!
The Canary Club system was devised by Paul Heitner and John Lowenthal sometime in the late 50's or early 60's. There is a high level description of the system in The Encyclopedia of Bridge.
The system is really Roman Club
with a strong 1
opening
rather than the Roman weak 1
opening. One of the drawbacks to Roman Club
was the necessity to create the suggestion of strength by bidding two suits
rather than bidding and rebidding one suit. In addition there was no way to
show a one suiter
with the opening bid - one always had to bid a shorter suit first. As a consequence,
there frequently were opening bids in 3 card suits.
Canary avoids that problem altogether. In fact there is no bid in the system of a suit less than 4 cards in length unless the bid is pre-defined as artificial. There is no illusion of naturalness as there is in Roman Club or in so-called natural systems.
A second feature of Roman Club
was the use of a step response to 1
/1
/1
as an artificial
negative. This is part of the description of Canary Club
which appears in The Encyclopedia of Bridge too. It has also been a basis
of Canary Club as described
in earlier versions of this document.
As of version 3, we will substitute 1N as the first relay response. This serves two purposes:
- This puts us more in line with what the ACBL considers legal. The 1N response\\
to 1D being treated as forcing is unique to this system, I believe, but probably causes no “legal”
problems.
- Theoretically it probably is superior as well since it causes the hand which
is more likely to be balanced to be declarer.
<p>There is a problem introduced with this change. Auctions such as 1D
- 1H - 1N (which showed
a D suit with a H
suit at least as long as the D suit) and 1H - 1S - 1N (which showed a H suit with a S suit at least as long as the H suit) served as a way for opener to show that he didn't have "true" reversing values in the old method. There no longer is a means to show the distinction between reversing values and weaker hands. Experience will show whether this is a problem or not. <a name=basis>
<p>