Here we look at how we give count when we shift to a new suit where attitude is already known - Shift Count.
Constructive: Responder
When partner opens the bidding 1-minor (1m), a jump shift to 2-Major (2M) by Responder can be used for a variety of different hand types. Both the standard approach of a strong jump shift and the common approach of a weak jump shift leave a lot to be desired. The modern style is for good hands to go slow, which makes a strong jump shift less appealing because it eats up valuable bidding space. With players responding to a 1m opening bid with 1M more and more aggressively, this makes using a weak jump shift less common even if it is our agreement. For these reasons many experienced partnerships choose to use these jumps to 2M for other constructive bidding purposes. Let’s look at uses of these jump shifts that can help us with some problem hands for Responder.
Constructive: Responder
When we use Inverted Minors to raise partner’s suit, the traditional approach is to show Major suit stoppers and determine whether we can play a notrump contract. A more sophisticated approach is to use an artificial structure that allows Opener to show their hand type and strength and allow Responder to determine where to play the final contract (and who should be declarer in notrump). A similar approach to this structure can be used in 1♦ – 2♣ auctions as well. Let’s look at some of these methods in detail.
Constructive: Responder
Another approach for using 2♥ and 2♠ responses to 1-minor suit opening bids is to use these bids to show a variety of problematic hands that have length in both Major suits. This method, called Reverse Flannery, is particularly effective after a 1♦ opening bid. It originally comes from Precision where 1♦ is the only “natural” 1-minor opening bid. Let’s look at how this works and see what types of hands these agreements can help us bid better.
Competitive Bidding
When partner opens the bidding in a suit at the 1-level and the next player overcalls 1NT, we want to have a system that allows us to deal with this interference effectively. With a good hand (which is somewhat rare in this auction), we make a penalty double. With a poor hand that is relatively balanced, we likely want to stay out of the auction and simply pass. It is the distributional hands with some values, but less than 10 HCP, where we are likely to want to compete in the bidding. One way to make it easier to bid with these distributional hands is to use a system similar to what we do when the opponents open 1NT. Let’s look at what systems we should use in these auctions and how our system varies based on which suit partner opened.
Constructive: Opener
When we find a Major suit fit and we are interested in game (specifically in the auction 1M – 2M), we want to have a good way to explore or invite game. The traditional way to do this is to ask for help in a side suit, using a Help Suit Game Try, HSGT. We additionally have 2NT available to make a general try for game (some play it as trump suit GT) and a raise to 3-Major to mean 1-2-3 Stop (or generally quantitative/general GT.) This structure is reasonably effective in exploring game. But it has two significant downsides:
