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.
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.
This month we return to discussions of Bidding Philosophy. We begin by examining the differences in natural auctions (also called specific auctions) and step-based auctions. In doing so, we try to understand how we communicate with partner and why we have different approaches for different situations.
Just as it is important for the Opener to make a plan before they open the bidding it is also important for the Responder to make a plan before they respond to the Opener. Thinking ahead about what you want to communicate, what you expect from partner, and how the opponent's might make life difficult can greatly help our constructive bidding.
