I'm Alan Williams, and I started developing the White Club system in 1997 with partner Michael Booker. We were curious as to how small a complete tournament system could be. We were also spurred on by offstage cries of "It can't be done".
For several years it was far from complete, and didn't look much like today's Chilli. The cycle of development was innovation from me, then critical editing from Michael. And it was working – we started to win things at a level commensurate with our general bridge skills.
The whole project received a big mid-project boost when the lovely Rob Covill pronounced that it was 'deeply flawed'. Bless him, that was enough to push us onto completion, and by the time Michael left for China to teach, we had 90% of the system in place.
I had just started playing with university friend Geoff Lacey, and I took the chance to ask him to switch from Acol. He was apprehensive at first, but soon became the system's biggest fan, and took over the critical role from Michael. It was about this time that I changed the name of the system to Chilli.
Together Geoff and I have pushed the system on, sometimes adding and then enthusiastically taking away again. Michael returns every year from China and gets to try the latest model, and one of his skills is that he can quickly assess how well we've done with the year's changes.
For such a small system, the rate of change over the years has been great, which I think reflects my own artisan approach to problems: try something plausible, and then keep working away at it, adding here, cutting there and polishing it all in the light of use. Right first time didn't figure.
In 2006, we launched Chilli Two – a big change to to meet the main deficiencies of the original system that were identified by my partners and Chilli's small but enthusiastic international following. Chilli Two has been a big success … the number of operator errors has fallen, and we are arriving more often at the correct game or part-score. I attribute this primarily to the simplified bids to play and the forcing and disturbed rules. And for that reason I love playing it even more than the original system.
In 2008, we made a large and unusual change to disturbed bidding, and for the first time this least loved child has become as exciting and distinctive as its neutral and fit siblings. Going into 2009 we continue to tidy and polish what is looking like a very happy system.