Competitive auctions are the most difficult in all of bridge. They require the most precise bidding and you and partner working together to land “on your feet.” Fits are an important part of these competitive auctions. We must find our fit and determine the size of it without competing too high in the bidding and without overstating our values.
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.
When partner opens 1NT our primary focus is to look for Major suit fits. When we do not find these fits we will usually bid the appropriate number of Notrump (2NT, 3NT, 4NT, 5NT, 6NT, or 7NT) based on the strength of our hand. However, occasionally we will have a highly unbalanced hand and want to do something other than bid Notrump.
In most auctions, a double shows the values to compete in the bidding, but no clear opinion about what to do: we are “non-committal.” There are many different names for these doubles: Takeout, Negative, Responsive, etc. These doubles are similar in that they are used to compete in the bidding and search for a fit or a better fit. In this lesson, we will examine some more complex situations where we might use double to try to better understand what partner is showing.
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 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.
When we play our hand in a suit contract, we analyze our hand in terms of losers. First, we identify the losers that we have little to no chance of getting rid of. Next, we try to find the potential losers that we may be able to avoid losing. Once we have identified these potential losers, then we need to make a plan for how not to lose these tricks. Often, there is only one way to dispose of this loser. But sometimes we will have options for how we may dispose of losers. Options mean choices. And choices can lead to difficult decisions. Let’s look at some of the options that we may have for disposing of our losers and try to figure out how to make good choices.
When our left-hand opponent opens the bidding and the auction passes around to us, we have a big decision to make – should we get into this auction, or should we leave the opponents to play at the 1-level? We have a variety of bidding tools to help us compete in the bidding, but we need to use our judgment about when to compete in the bidding and when to keep quiet. Here we look at some of the classic bidding situations where we have a difficult decision and then overview some of our bidding tools in these auctions.
