Declarer likes to try to win tricks with their little cards — setting up their length. As a defender it is our job to try to prevent this from happening. The way we do so is by keeping the cards in their long suits, called guarding a suit.
(564) Improve Your Card Play: Establishing Length
We usually win tricks with little cards (other than in the trump suit) by setting up our long suits. To establish these little cards in our long suits into winners, we need to play the hand well. This requires using our large cards in the best way possible to establish our little cards. That means we need to play our combinations as best as we can, manage our transportation, and have some good luck in the way the cards divide. Let’s see how we can properly manage our cards to take our tricks.
(563) Improve Your Card Play: Making Use of an Ace
(562) NT and Balancing Auctions: Other Balancing Actions
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.
(561) NT and Balancing Auctions: Jump Overcalls in the Passout Seat
One place that we do not need a jump bid to show a weak hand is in the passout (PO) seat, also known as the balancing seat. In this seat with a weak hand, say 5-8 HCP, and a long suit, we would not bid; we would simply pass the hand out. Bidding here with so few HCP may give the opponents a chance to reach a better partscore or game that they may not otherwise reach. Since we will not bid in the PO seat with a weak hand and we could make a simple overcall with 9-10 HCP and a long suit, then a Jump Overcall in the PO seat is free to be used to describe a different type of hand that can otherwise be difficult to show.
(560) NT and Balancing Auctions: Range Stayman
A balancing 1NT bid can be a wide-ranging action, about 11-15/16 points. This 5-point range is much larger than most notrump bids and leaves partner with a more difficult bidding situation. Range Stayman is a tool that can help Advancer better determine the values of our hand and if game is a possibility.
(559) NT and Balancing Auctions: Balancing Notrump Bids
(558) NT and Balancing Auctions: 14-16 1NT Opening
(557) Competitive Auctions: I Want to Bid Doubles
There are certain auctions where we have made a bid that has “fully described our hand” and we leave the bidding up to partner. In auctions like these we usually are not very sure of what partner has for their bid and we want to leave any further decisions up to them. But sometimes we have more shape than partner expects or our instincts tell us that it is right to bid on. When that is the case we do NOT want to just take over and bid again – we told partner we would not bid any more after our first bid. In an auction like this we can use a double as a conventional bid saying “I want to bid more”. This is called an I Want to bid Double and it applies in very specific situations.
(556) Competitive Auctions: Anti-Lead Directing Doubles
Lead-directing doubles can be helpful in getting partner off to a good opening lead. These lead-directing doubles are common when the opponents make an artificial bid. When the opponents make a cuebid of our suit, a lead-directing double is also very common. Here we focus on this situation in detail to structure our agreements to allow us to communicate in the most effective way we can.
(555) Competitive Auctions: Scrambling 2NT
In competitive auctions where the opponents have found a fit, we compete aggressively – especially at matchpoints. We frequently use double (for takeout) with three-suited hands and sometimes with two-suited hands. To handle these situations, we want partner (Advancer) to have a tool to help us find our best fit. As usual, in competitive auctions our choice of convention will be 2NT. This gadget is called Scrambling 2NT.
(554) Competitive Auctions: Good/Bad 2NT in Competition
(553) Competitive Auctions: 4NT in Competition
When the opponents stay out of our auctions, we tend to have clear agreements about the meaning of a 4NT bid – usually Quantitative in a NT auction and Keycard in a suit auction. But in a competitive auction we are more likely to use 4NT as a bid showing two places to play. Let’s look at some of these auctions so we know what partner is trying to do when they use 4NT in a competitive auction.
(552) Competitive Auctions: More Bidding over 3-Level Preempts
When the opponents open the bidding with a 3-level preempt then much of the tension in our decision-making process comes around “Should we bid beyond 3NT?” This is especially true when the opponents open the bidding with a 3-Major preempt, because when we have one long minor suit then we likely want to play in 3NT or 5-minor. This allows us to use 4-minor in some interesting conventional ways, just as we do vs. a 2-level preempt.
(551) Competitive Auctions: Bidding over 3-Level and 4-Level Preempts
This Week in Bridge
(551) Bidding over 3-Level and 4-Level Preempts
© AiB Robert S. Todd
Level: 1, 2 of 10 robert@advinbridge.com
General
When the opponents open at the 3-level or 4-level they put a lot of pressure on us to make difficult decisions without much room to maneuver or describe our hand. This preempt will force us to either double or overcall at a very high level – we will not have many of the options that are available to us at lower levels. Let’s look at each of these options and see how we need to adjust our thinking and bidding because of the lack of space and options available to us.
Overcalls
When we overcall vs. a 3-level or 4-level preempt we face more danger than when the opponents open at the 1-level.
First, we are at a higher level, and
Second, the opponent behind us might have a good hand and be armed with a penalty double (as opposed to a negative double if our RHO had opened at the 1-level.)
Thus, when we make an overcall at a higher level we want to have a good hand and a good suit.
If we have both a good suit and a good hand, we should be able to “survive” (not get heavily penalized) if partner has a doubleton in our suit and about 6-7 HCP. We usually want to have a 6+card suit with good texture and a hand with good playing strength; a simple opening hand is not enough. This means that we will not be able to overcall at a high level on many hands we would have opened with if we had been the opening bidder.
Doubles
As we are under more and more pressure to act at high levels and as we can overcall on fewer and fewer hands we will need to double (our other strength-showing action) more often to get into the auction.
Example 1
Versus a 3♥ preempt with
♠ K9843
♥ 7
♦ AQT6
♣ AJ4
We will double instead of overcalling 3♠. If the opponents had opened 1♥, we would have overcalled 1♠.
A takeout double becomes more flexible and needs to contain more hand types as the auctions get higher.
Example 2
Versus a 4♥ preempt with
♠ AQ74
♥ 83
♦ AQ
♣ KT962
We will be forced to make a takeout double (and hope that partner does not bid 5♦ or if they do, that they have a decent 5-card suit.) If the opponent had opened 1♥, we would have started with a 2♣ overcall.
Example 3
Versus a 4♠ preempt with,
♠ 4
♥ AQ97
♦ AQ3
♣ KT965
We use a double as more penalty-oriented (or card-showing) and 4NT is the call used to force partner to bid – similar to a takeout double. This 4NT bid for takeout, and it could be all three of the other suits or could be a “two-suited” takeout.
Jump Overcalls vs. a Preempt
We do not Preempt a Preempt! Thus, we will define a jump overcall vs. a preempt to show a good long suit and a good hand.
Example 4
3♥ 4♠
This shows a very good 6-card to 8-card ♠ suit and some HCP – generally about 8.5 to 9 tricks. We have a good chance of making 4♠ if partner has one useful card. An example hand on which to bid 4♠:
♠ AQJT864
♥ 3
♦ AK8
♣ K7
These are hands that are almost good enough (or in some cases are good enough) to double and bid ♠ if RHO had opened 1♥. But partner is much more likely to pass our double at higher levels, so we don’t want to double with these very shapely offensive hands. By taking these hands out of the list of hands that make a takeout double, we also make it so that double contains more defensive hands and increase our chance of scoring well when partner passes our double, converting it to penalty.
Conclusion
Acting over high-level (destructive) interference from our opponents is difficult. It requires judgment, table feel, and experience to be successful in these auctions. You will notice that we have avoided putting HCP requirements on acting over interference at each level – vs. 2-level, 3-level, 4-level, etc. This is because HCP are important, but general playing strength (shape) is even more important when we are thinking about offense. Many of these auctions will have multiple very shapely hands at the table and times when both sides can make a lot of tricks declaring. Thus, dealing with this interference is a balance of risk and reward – should we come in or not? In these auctions, we will frequently be faced with difficult choices and we will be forced to do our best to describe our hand and allow us to land on our feet. These auctions will be a challenge and we will occasionally go for -1100 when we are unlucky or judge wrong. But with practice and judgment, we expect to do it less often than the other players!
(550) Competitive Auctions: Leaping Michaels
When RHO opens a 2-level preempt, they have started eating up our valuable bidding space, but this is just the start of their attack on us. LHO may join in the attack and raise the preempt, making our life even more difficult. When we are bidding over RHO’s 2-level preempt we should keep this in mind. We need lots of tools to deal with this situation. Let’s look at these options.
(549) NT Bidding: Slam Tries After Stayman
One of the most common gadgets that we use when partner opens 1NT is Stayman. We primarily use Stayman to search for a 4-4 Major suit fit. After Stayman, sometimes we want to have a way to raise partner’s suit where they cannot pass. We will want a “Forcing Raise” (similar to Jacoby 2NT or Inverted Minors) in order to find out more about Opener’s hand. This is missing from a standard bidding system. It is a valuable tool for making a slam try while keeping the auction from getting too high.
(548) NT Bidding: Modern, Transfer, and Modern Transfer Lebensohl
Lebensohl is an excellent system for dealing with interference over our 1NT opening bids, but it has some flaws. In Lebensohl auctions, we will sometimes play the hand from the “wrong” side (Responder’s side), and Responder often has three strengths (buckets) to describe. Let’s see how Transfer Lebensohl is an upgrade to help solve these problems.
(547) NT Bidding: Responding after a Penalty Double of a 1NT Opening
When we open the bidding with 1NT, showing 15-17 points, if an opponent makes a penalty double, we are less likely to be looking to invite or bid game. We are usually looking to escape from a 1NT contract and attempt to find some safer place to play. This safe place will hopefully be our largest fit or a long suit in the weak hand (in Responder’s hand). In order to find this place to play we need to look at how Responder’s bidding options change after a penalty double.
(546) NT Bidding: Responding to 1NT vs. 3-Level Interference
There are many systems the opponents play in order to interfere over our 1NT opening bid, but almost all of these systems use the 3-level (actually 2NT+) for the same meanings – 2NT as a weak bid showing both minors and 3-level bids as weak with a long suit, preemptive. It is important that we and partner are on the same page for how to deal with this higher-level interference.