As a defender, one way to use our trump is to try and get a ruff. But another way is to force the Declarer to ruff and try to take control of the hand -- this forcing defense is a powerful strategy.
More NT
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.
Constructive: Responder
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.
NT Responses
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.
NT Responses
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.
