Author

Eugeen Vannuten

Hello, it's nice to meet you here.

I was born in 1953 and live in Geel, Belgium.
I started to learn bridge in '90 with a few friends with 'Strong Clubs or 'Squeeze' , a variant of Precision.
Due to the lack of any serious documentation about Strong Clubs I wrote in 1998 and released in 1999 a first book on this system
- to fill the gap
- to have our system documented and creating a reference for system discussions
- to help others that like to read/learn more about Strong Clubs

In early 2000 I wrote a 2nd edition, taking care af some errata notes and system improvements.

Then, in the spring of 2000 , I designed together with my bridge partner and brother, a derived system ("RISC" : Revised and Innovated Strong Clubs) , aiming to introduce the weak 1NT into our bridge system. Before, we were often impressed, or shall I say bothered, by the weak 1NT opening used by opponents.

It was the start of a long journey, a discovery tour along existing bridge systems and conventions trying to built a new system, trying to create an optimal mix of existing systems or parts of them. We encountered and tried out many possibilities and conventions. We had to adjust existing and even to design new conventions to cope with the new environment.

Designing a new system is sometimes a matter of taste and many times choices had to made in one or an other direction. We constantly chose in favour of the major suites and for the mathematics of statistics. We also tried out some concepts of Creative Thinking where we left some basic bridge principles or dogma's and where started on a new road. Often we came back on the original road but in the meantime we learned why some things s are what they are.

We went so far on the discovery tour that our system got a 'red' label from the Flemish, Belgian and Europeal League so that we sometimes could not exercise in tournaments or competitions. Although is was never meant to swim upstream, we learned that in order to play this beautiful game we had to adjust to some existing Rules, even when those rules are sometimes contradictory and unlogical.

In 2007 we took a big turn when looking back and overlooking the past journey . A new MUTOS-version was created in 2008 and remained stable until the end of 2008 when we decided to take up attention for the minors again, at least where we could.

We designed the system with great joy. It helped to be system engineers from profession. All together the operation to design,to build, to test, to document in several iterations of redoing these steps, RISC and MUTOS took about 9 years.

Also building these Web pages was fun. While doing it I learned a lot about html, java and php.

When not playing bridge or thinking/writing about bridge, I like to play music (trombone in Big Band ) and sport a little bit, be it squash, be it jogging, be it tennis.