Our system is a 5-card major system. If you open 1H or 1S, you are promising your partner at least 5 cards in that suit. We choose this to aid in finding major suit fits, though other options are possible.
In response, we play limit raises. That means a double raise is invitational to game, showing trump support and 10-12 points. In the early days of bridge, everybody played this bid as forcing (and in fact to play it as invitational was illegal, until someone pointed out you could not be stopped from bidding what you thought you could make).
However, once opponents intervene, we use the double raise as a preemptive bid. If you have points, you can cuebid your opponents suit (or redouble).
We play that 2NT and 3NT are natural (though some in 8-NT play a special 2NT bid here-be warned), but we do use splinter bids. A splinter bid is a double jump shift. For example, bidding 3S over 1H or 4D over 1S. A splinter bid shows 4+ card trump support, 13-16 points, and a singleton or void in the bid suit. It needs to be so specific because it takes up so much space. They don't happen often, but they will often either let you successfully bid a low HCP slam, or keep you out of a bad slam.
We don't play forcing or semi-forcing 1NT responses (player playing a 2 over 1 system often must check one of these boxes). A 1NT response shows 6-9 points, and can be passed even with a medium strength opening bid.
Our 2NT and 3NT responses show balanced hands with 10-12 HCP and 13-15 HCP respectively. Note: you generally want at least 2 card support for partners suit to bid this. Otherwise you may run into transportation issues in no trump. So you want a genuinely balanced hand.
As we don't use many of the fancy gadgets here, we don't have much to alert. Only the splinter bids are alertable here (and most likely your opponents will assume this meaning even should you forget to alert-that doesn't excuse the failure to alert however).
Stay tuned for Minor Opening next.
No comments:
Post a Comment