The most important part of constructive bidding (and many times of competitive bidding) is finding fits with your partner. Specifically, the game of bridge is built around Major suit fits. There are many tools that we use to help us find fits with our partner, and we will review these tools below, but the most important tool for finding good fits with your partner is to use what you know from the auction to help you visualize the hand.
When partner opens the bidding and the opponent makes a takeout double, we need to know how to deal with this interference. We first want to consider what is likely to happen in the remainder of the auction. If we have just a few values (minimum hand, less than 10 HCP) then this will likely continue to be a competitive auction – with us having about half the values in the deck and the opponents having about half. In a competitive auction, it becomes important that we are able to show our suits (and find our fits) quickly so that we can effectively compete in the bidding. Thus, we want to construct a system that will allow us to do this!
How to respond to a takeout double is an important topic to discuss with your partner, but a discussion that most partnerships forget to have for many years. The question that you need to ask partner is “What do my bids mean in response to your takeout double?”
2 Over 1 Game Forcing (2/1 GF) bids are the core of a modern approach to bidding. The primary idea is that when partner opens at the 1-level and we bid a new suit at the 2-level (not including jump shifts), this is a game forcing bid – meaning neither Opener nor Responder can pass below game. This allows both players to confidently describe their hands – knowing that all their bids are forcing and they won’t get “dropped” before reaching game.
In bridge there are many things to learn and to remember. We are often taxed in keeping too many things straight in our heads. But even more important than remembering any specific piece of information about how to play bridge is to have the “correct perspective” on the game – to be able to play bridge with the correct philosophical approach. If you approach each situation with the same set of philosophies, both you and your partner will be far more successful.
The most important part of constructive bidding (and many times of competitive bidding) is finding fits with your partner. Specifically, the game of bridge is built around Major suit fits. There are many tools that we use to help us find fits with our partner, and we will review these tools below, but the most important tool for finding good fits with your partner is to use what you know from the auction to help you visualize the hand.
When partner opens the bidding and the opponent makes a takeout double, we need to know how to deal with this interference. We first want to consider what is likely to happen in the remainder of the auction. If we have just a few values (minimum hand, less than 10 HCP) then this will likely continue to be a competitive auction – with us having about half the values in the deck and the opponents having about half. In a competitive auction, it becomes important that we are able to show our suits (and find our fits) quickly so that we can effectively compete in the bidding. Thus, we want to construct a system that will allow us to do this!
2 Over 1 Game Forcing (2/1 GF) bids are the core of a modern approach to bidding. The primary idea is that when partner opens at the 1-level and we bid a new suit at the 2-level (not including jump shifts), this is a game forcing bid – meaning neither Opener nor Responder can pass below game. This allows both players to confidently describe their hands – knowing that all their bids are forcing and they won’t get “dropped” before reaching game.
In bridge there are many things to learn and to remember. We are often taxed in keeping too many things straight in our heads. But even more important than remembering any specific piece of information about how to play bridge is to have the “correct perspective” on the game – to be able to play bridge with the correct philosophical approach. If you approach each situation with the same set of philosophies, both you and your partner will be far more successful.
When we pick up our hand, one of the first things we do is count our high-card points (HCP) and make adjustments for length, location of honors, shape, and many other factors. Once we have a number of points, we need to figure out how to make use of that information and how to effectively communicate it to partner. We usually won’t be able to communicate our exact strength to partner (we can’t tell them we have exactly 14 HCP), but we will be able to give partner a general idea of the strength of our hand – a range. Our range of strength is often referred to as which “bucket” our hand falls into…
The opening bid is the start of our conversation with partner (and often the opponents). It is very important that we get this conversation off to a good start – make the right choice for our opening bid. If we start off with the wrong opening bid, we often have trouble properly describing our hand as the auction progresses. Here we review the basic opening bid agreements and look at some of the classic problem opening situations.
We define bridge hands into two general categories: Balanced and Unbalanced hands. This classification is called Hand Type. Early in the auction, one of the most important pieces of information we can communicate to partner is our hand type. It is easier for the Opener to communicate this information (as the bidding is designed more for this). Let’s look at how this is accomplished.
3NT is our favorite contract. That makes bidding it a requirement as often as we can – we cannot play there unless one of us bids it. If we are going to bid 3NT in a variety of different situations, with a variety of different hands (to allow us to play there), then we need to have good agreements about what a 3NT bid shows. Responder is most likely to be the one bidding 3NT, so let’s discuss many of these possible bids.
One of the most common misunderstandings about Opener’s hand concerns rebidding 3NT. What does it show? As we would expect, the answer is different in different situations. It is key for us to make the right interpretation of partner’s bid and to make sure we don’t make false assumptions. These kinds of bidding mixups can lead to playing the wrong game or missing an “easy’ slam. Let’s look at some auctions and make sure we have good agreements with partner.
When partner opens the bidding 2NT then it gives us less space to investigate a Major suit fit (or any fit) and keep the auction below 3NT. That makes it important to make use of our space efficiently and determine if we have a fit and then determine if we belong in game or higher. Here we look at how to balance communicating with partner and a lack of bidding space.
When partner opens the bidding 2NT they eat up a lot of bidding space. As the Responder we need to search for a Major suit fit (or even a minor suit fit) while keep the auction from getting too high. Our most common action will be to start with a 3♣ Stayman response. Let’s take a look at these auctions in detail and make sure that we are on the same page as partner.
In general, we use jumps in competitive auctions as weak bids (0-5 points) applying the Law of Total Tricks (LOTT) -- (though sometimes the modern approach can be to use mixed bids, 6-9 points). The key is that we jump to our Law level, eating up bidding space, to quickly and narrowly define our hand.
When we are a passed hand and partner opens the bidding, we must be careful in trying to describe our hand. Partner’s opening bid in the 3rd seat can be light in values, trying to be destructive or lead-directing, so we cannot respond to it in the same way we would a normal opening bid. Specifically, if partner opens 1-Major in the 3rd seat, we should not go jumping around without a very special hand. Let’s look at how we should respond when partner opens in the 3rd seat.
The modern expert 2NT response to a 1-Major opening shows a limit raise or better (LR+), instead of game forcing values. This has many different inventors, advocates, and variants. In Europe, it is known as Limit Sternberg while in America, Larry Cohen popularized a similar approach. The idea of using 1M – 2NT as LR+ accomplishes a couple of goals. First, this opens up 1M – 3M to always be a weak call (a valuable tool for making life difficult on the opponents). Second, 1M – 2NT as LR+ approach gives away less information about the Opener’s hand (and soon to be declarer’s hand). Let’s see how this works.
When partner opens the bidding with 1§ or 1¨ then our primary objective is to look for a Major suit fit. We do so by responding to 1-Major when we have a 4-card Major suit. We do so if we have 6 HCP or even enough for game (a good 12+ points). If we do not have a 4-card Major suit, but we have a balanced hand with enough values for game, then our most common action is to just bid the game we are likely to make, 3NT! Let’s look at this 3NT response in more detail and see what is going on with this response.
When partner opens 1-Major and we play 2/1 GF, then a 1NT response is used with most hands that have minimum or invitational values without a fit, showing 6-11 points. A 2NT response to a Major suit opening is not used as a natural bid because it is Jacoby 2NT, showing game forcing values and at least 4-card support. So the question is what should a jump to 3NT in response to a 1-Major opening show?
One of the most common opening leads is to lead 4th best from our longest and strongest. This opening lead can allow us to take tricks in a variety of different ways, especially against a Notrump contract. Here we look at the ways this lead can help us and see how we use many of the techniques we use when declaring in similar ways when we are defending. Let’s see what parts of the card play similarly and what parts are different.
One of the ways that we develop additional tricks (beyond Quick Tricks) as declarer is by using our long suits – Length Tricks. These tricks usually depend upon good luck or “suits splitting well.” This can sometimes be done immediately (without giving up the lead) or sometimes requires some work to develop these tricks. As a defender, when we are on lead (especially opening lead against a NT contract) we use a similar technique for developing tricks from our long suits. Let’s see how we use our long suits to develop tricks as a defender.
We develop a lot of techniques and skills for taking tricks as Declarer. In this case, we can see the dummy and our hand (and thus all of our sides assets). Many of these techniques have parallels for how we take tricks on Defense. These skills are used in the middle of the hand (when we can see our hand and the dummy) and they are used on Open lead, even when we cannot see anything other than our hand. Let’s take a look at some techniques we first learn as a Declarer and see how we use them on Defense.
