Recently, I have been working on 5-card major bidding systems:

• Muscat Walsh
• Watermelon Dutch Doubleton
• Strawberry Polish Club

These systems somehow work on the same problem. As Richard Granville puts it, “the 1♦ response to 1♣ is severely underused.” Each system hands 1♦ a new job, and the job decides how strong 1♣ can be.

Transfer Walsh rearranges responses to a natural 1♣—1♦ for hearts, 1♥ for spades, and 1♠ for hands without a 4-card major. The 1♠ response needs some points (about 4+) so that an 18–20 opener can bid beyond 1NT and land on 2NT. The ceiling of 1♣ is roughly the same as in plain 2/1 because we still pass 3-counts, especially those without a 4-card major.

Polish Club takes the most radical way. The 1♣ opening is home to all strong hands, where 1♣ - 1♦ serves as a negative relay. The 2♣ opening is freed up for preemptive uses.

Dutch Doubleton is a lawyer’s Polish Club with a quasi-natural 1♣. Since 1♣ can hold 21–23, responder passes only a 0–5 hand with 4–5 clubs, a hand that cannot survive 1NT anyway. Every other weak hand goes through 1♣ - 1♦, a negative relay to park it. Otherwise a 3-count would respond 1♠ and push an 18–20 opener past 1NT.

The real lever is how often responder passes. The fewer hands pass 1♣, the more 1♣ can hold, and vice versa. Walsh still passes weak hands, so 1♣ keeps a natural-ish ceiling. Dutch Doubleton passes only a sliver of hands, with 1♦ as the parking spot for the rest, so 1♣ reaches 23. Polish Club never passes 1♣, so 1♣ has no ceiling at all and contains all strong hands.

I used to boycott IntoBridge because Taiwan was not in its country selector. A country dropdown looks trivial until your country is not in it. So I closed the tab and played bridge elsewhere.

Recently I gave it another try, and there it was: Taiwan, flag and all. So I stayed. Two weeks and 549 ranked games later, I became Taiwan’s first Ace, ranked #1 in Taiwan and #338 in the world.

Naturally I wanted to know when Taiwan was added. I found no announcement, so I asked Codex to investigate. I even disclosed my ulterior motive up front:

Humans are not completely rational and would waste tokens on showing off.

The investigation went considerably further than the brag required. Codex compared archived copies of the country list in the site’s JavaScript. The old list had 195 options; the current one has 197. The only additions are Taiwan and Hong Kong. Their flag files (tw.svg, hk.svg) carry exactly the same server timestamp, 25 February 2026 15:34:12 UTC, while most other flags date back to 2022. That is not an official release date, but it strongly suggests both were added together that day.

Was it rational to spend tokens on this? No. But the flag is there, my name sits on top of it, and now the date is on the record. Tokens well spent. 🇹🇼♣️