ent001387-121

September 11, 1966 Hr. Howard Schenken 140 East 56th Street New York, NY Dear Howard and Bees We expect practically everybody to enter the sweepstakes. We will qualify about half the field for the knockouts, so it is a virtual impossibility for all sweepstake entrants to be eliminated. It is a long thing to go over in a latter, but we have a simpler condition in the Gin" Rummy tournament and work it out very easily. X will explain it to you in two minutes when I see you in La3 Vegas. The whole idea of limiting conventions is to attract people who are not tournament players and who would be scared of systems that they don't understand. This includes your system-as''well, as Roth-Stone, Kaplan-Sheinwold, of any other named system. X think you can gat the essential features of your system within three conventions. The forcing club opening and the negative diamond response would count together as oaex deviation. You have no problem with standard notrump and standard Stay roan. Your weak 2-bid and 2NT as the only forcing response (is that the way you play it/?) would count as a second deviation ?╟÷ but you would not be able to use step rebids over a response of 2 NT unless you wanted to count that as your third daviatioh. An opening bid of 2% to show a fairly good 1* opening would be a third deviation. Do you need anything else ? We are very eager to have you two there, so we will stretch a point to let you count a bid and its response as a sxingle deviation ?╟÷ but we cannot favor you by allowing you to use a strange system that might aeara away thevery players we want to attract. Don't let this concern you. After all, you have both played tons of rubber bridge and can play Pappa-Mamma style very expertly if you have to. This will be a marvelous tournament even if you can't play every little wrinkle of the Club System. I'm looking forward to welcoming you there. You are, of course, guests of the Sands -- as Sandy has doubtless assured you. Best regards. Sincerely, Alfred Sheinwild