[foobar]

Congratulations to the Zhang team, and it was great to see a TOSR pair (Daniel Korbel and Sylvia Shi) come out on top.

[pilun]

I get the SR part, though they only play relay after 1♣, which in my view is hardly worth the effort.

There is a loose connection to Mark Abraham's 30-year-old Transfer Opening Symmetric Relay. Looks like they use his preferred responding structure (1♠ = balanced or a red 2-suiter)

[foobar]

Fair point, but in ACBL land, the restrictions on 1-level openings pretty much makes the rest of transfer structure implausible.

However, whether it's a big loss comes down to a somewhat religious debate on whether 4CM canape openings are better than a 5CM system (especially a structure like Upmark-Nystrom). IMO, something like AEC arguably nets most of the advantages of 4CM in a strong club system, along with some of the upsides of a 5CM.