barmar, on 2013-August-10, 21:20, said:
Almost no one studies the opponents' CC in the ACBL in any event. Some people will take a quick scan of it at the beginning of a match in a team game, but practically never in short pair game rounds. Everyone just relies on the alert procedure.
I certainly study CCs, and in part this is to protect inexperienced partners. Just last week I dictated the obvious defense to Flannery (X=diamonds, 2H=takeout of hearts) on the spot upon seeing it on opponents convention card; I give it 60% odds that my partner had never heard of it and 95% that he had ever seen this convention at the table before. (It didn't come up, so he still hasn't seen it at the table.)
Should we ever see a strong club pair, partner will be learning Mathe in 30 seconds. We will not discuss it now, because it's very likely to be forgotten in the two or three years that will likely go by before it comes up.