Phantom Club

Phantom club is a super-simple, very aggressive bidding system which
is a lot of fun to play. I suggested and named this system sometime
around 2001, and played it with Charlie Garrod in the Philadelphia
nationals (Spring 2003).

The system itself works as follows. We pretend righthand opponent
opened one club, and bid accordingly. Our 1C opening indicates that we
would double a one club opening (either for takeout or a "power"
double). All other bids are as overcalls of 1C. That's the whole
system! Simpler than standard american, since all you need are the
competitive agreements that any partnership requires.

There are a number of useful modifications to the phantom club
principles. The most common is to play weak (11-14) notrump openings
instead of the typical overcall (15-18) range. This is useful because
otherwise balanced hands in this range would frequently have to pass,
and it would be somewhat embarrassing to pass a hand out holding a
pair of balanced 13-counts. The second useful modification is to play
2NT opening for minors; over a 1C opener most people play unusual for
the red suits, but this seems less frequently effective as an opening.

Besides being extremely amusing, phantom club has a number of
interesting properties. Opening bids tend to show good suits, and have
good lead-directional value. The system gets us into the auction early
and aggressively, since most people overcall many hands they wouldn't
open. In many cases there are multiple possible openings on a hand,
and the choice of bid helps locate the values; for example suppose I
hold a 4342 12-count. In most bidding systems I am constrained,
required to open one diamond (or 1NT if playing weak notrumps) with no
other options available to me. But in phantom club, this hand could
open 1C (takeout double shape) or 1D (with strong diamonds) or 1S
(with very good spades) or 1NT (with a strong doubleton). The choice
of opening will depend upon such things as the vulnerability and the
location of values, and the ability to make such a choice can be very
valuable. Phantom club does tend to pass certain hands that most
people would open; typically distributional hands with clubs being the
longest suit. However, keep in mind partner will be opening light. The
hands that get passed this way are often hands where most people end
up opening (in clubs) and being outbid in a competitive auction. I've
found that when I pass a hand out playing phantom and I held twelve or
more points, usually the result is winning three imps (teammates make
a major-suit partial at the other table).

It's possible to play phantom club along with any set of competitive
agreements, to produce different system structures. For example, many
people play michaels cuebids, in which case a 2C opening would show
majors (same as a 2C overcall of a 1C open by opponents). My preferred
competitive agreements with regular partners are not a required part
of the system, but are outlined below for completeness.

My overcall range is about 8-16 hcp, and I play new suit responses to
overcalls as nonforcing. A cuebid (so here a 2C response to an
opening) is either a limit raise plus, or any hand which wants to
force game opposite an overcall. New suit bids are constructive and
overcaller is expected to bid on with twelve or more points. I play
equal level correction, where a double might only show support for the
two higher suits and correcting to the lowest of these suits does not
show extras; thus a hand with 4 spades and 5 hearts could open 1C
(takeout double of clubs) and correct a diamond bid to hearts without
showing extras. Cuebids are top and bottom, showing about 10-16 points
and more length in the lower suit. So a 2C opening shows 5+ diamonds
and 4+ spades. Minor jumps over minor openings show the bottom suits
similarly, so a 2D opening shows 5+ diamonds and 4+ hearts. These
agreements mean that the openings of 1D and 1H rarely hold four cards
in an unbid major, and major suit responses almost always show five
cards. A jump cuebid in opponents minor is natural and intermediate,
so the 3C opening in phantom club shows 6+ good clubs and around 10
hcp. Finally, I play fit jumps in competition, so a jump in a new suit
in response to an overcall shows a fit along with cards in the bid
suit.

Some discussion is needed about phantom club on the general
chart. Assuming a minimum strength of 8 hcp for overcalls, the only
thing which is not allowed by the acbl is the 2C response to openings
showing limit raise or better (this is okay in midchart events of
course). It's possible to simply play new suits forcing in advancing
overcalls, but this is a somewhat inferior treatment in my opinion.

-- Adam Meyerson