[pescetom]

Douglas43, on 2021-May-13, 01:38, said:

This is nothing to do with the OP (sorry Pilowski) but the phoney club goes back to the 1930's. The Austrians won a world championship playing Vienna Club. 1♣ was 1+ , 1♦ 1♥ and 1♠ were all 5+. And 1NT was a strong hand, any distribution.

Some of the top Austrians escaped to the UK before WW2, including their captain, Paul Stern, and Rixi Marcus. That's why Vienna Club was popular in the UK in the 40's and 50's. I used to play a modernised version in the 1970s and 80's. It was OK.

Sounds simple and effective to me. I have a friend who teaches something similar to beginners and he has them up and playing in their club in a fraction of the time it takes for a "natural" system to sink in. The only problem is convincing them to switch later.

[pescetom]

pilowsky, on 2021-May-12, 15:47, said:

The only place that refers to "preparatory club" is Italian (pescetom?): in "a few words with Valerio Giubilo" from the Neapolitan Club (the magazine).

What Giubilo says here is logical, but it is actually quite unusual in Italy to refer to a 2+card club (what Helene_T calls 5542) as "preparatory": most people prefer to consider 2+card just a minor distorsion of natural bidding induced by 5-card majors.

The term "preparatory" is usually reserved for a 1♣ (in some systems also a 1♦) opening which can contain multiple hand types - to be revealed next round - some of which do not promise clubs or may even deny them. So in many ways similar to a Polish club opening, although Italian "club" systems usually have canape' style developments and different ways of distinguishing balanced hands. Almost every city has its own "club" system. The 1♣ opening is usually forcing, although you may already have trouble extracting that fact and it often requires a dental degree to obtain minor details, such as the fact that 'balanced hand' also denies a 4-card major. Plus of course the people playing these systems are the least likely in the room to have a Convention Card because "everyone here knows the local system".