This is great. But, what about those poor minor suits. What if you have a very weak hand with 7 or 8 clubs? Is there a way to play 3C? What if you are really strong, with a good minor suit and are interested in a minor suit slam? How do you bid these hands?
Four Suit Transfers help to solve this problem. We use 2S with a long club suit to ask partner to bid 3C. Similarly, we use 2NT with a long diamond suit to ask partner to bid 3D. There are a variety of possible ways to play this system after these transfers, but that is not the goal of this article.
If we change 2NT into a transfer to diamonds, we can't use 2NT for its usual purpose. All of a sudden we no longer have a way to invite to game in NT.
How do we invite to 3NT over 1NT?
The answer: Bid 2C as Stayman, and then bid 2NT no matter what suit partner bids.
This is a fairly minor change. After all, often when you bid Stayman, even when partner has a 4 card major it doesn't match yours and you bid 2NT. Traditionally, this would promise four cards in the other major, so partner could take that into account, and find the fit. In four suit transfers, we don't promise the other major, and potentially miss a 4-4 fit.
How bad is this? Well, it is only a problem if opener (the 1NT bidder) has 4 cards in both majors. With that hand, she'll respond 2H to Stayman. Then the responder bids 2NT.
If opener has a minimum, she must pass, and the 4-4 fit is missed. Even so, it is possible that 2NT is better than 3S, where the traditional method would leave us. So we lose sometimes with 4-4 in the majors an a minimum 1 NT opener.
If opener has a maximum, she wishes to accept the invite, but without giving up on the 4-4 spade fit. The solution is simple. Just use 3S as a choice of games bid. So there is no loss here.
In summary, while playing four suit transfers over 1NT, with a hand that would normally bid 2NT, simply bid 2C and then follow up with 2NT.
Pros: You can transfer accurately to minors with weak and strong hands.
Cons: You miss 4-4 fits in spades when opener has 4 cards in both majors and a minimum. Also you give a tad more information to the defense.
Additional notes: The 2NT follow-up bid is alertable in situations where it does not guarantee a four card major somewhere.
Here's a hand played during an 8-NT session that gives an example of this invitational bid. Note, we play systems on over the 1NT overcall. That simply means that we bid as if 1NT was an opening bid.
I never knew that this converted the minor transfers from drop dead into unlimited hands, but that makes sense. Now I know why four way is advantageous; I never got it before.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised that 2C doesn't need an alert as "may not have a four card major"
What do you do with 1NT-3C that you don't want it to be a transfer to Diamonds?
ReplyDeleteI don't have anything in particular, though it looks as though it is used for some sort of 5-5 hand. Using 3C as the transfer to diamonds gives up one benefit however. Using 2NT as the transfer allows you to super accept with 3C, showing an honor in diamonds, and inquiring about the possibility of 3NT counting on diamonds to provide most of the tricks. This will let you find more good games that you might otherwise miss than the loss of the direct 2NT invitation will cost you, I think.
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