The Hand In Question
| ||||||||||||
K8| South | West | North | East |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2NT | Pass | 3 ! | Pass |
3 | Pass | 4 | Pass |
| 6 | All Pass |
The Auction
South has the big hand, and bids it accordingly: balanced and 21 HCP = 2 NT. West stares at the ugly diamonds and passes. North wants to express the lovely 5-5 distribution, and starts with a Jacoby Transfer to spades. East wisely is silent with a 5 count. South completes the transfer. North bids their other long suit, clubs. South, seeing two nice fits and slam interest from their partner, goes ahead and bids the slam.
The Play
The play of the hand is very straightforward. West, on lead goes for 4th highest of their longest suit, leading the 4 of diamonds. Dummy takes; declarer pulls trump. 5 trump tricks, 5 club tricks, two diamond tricks, losing the last heart trick.
Slams rarely have interesting play, possibly beyond a single trick or two.
Discussion
Oh, my. The premise of this series of articles is that I deal out a random hand and then talk about what lessons we can learn from it. My goals were to focus on competitive bidding (the norm) and intermediate hands that rarely get much analysis (the ones you end up playing at two diamonds, say). Instead, I've dealt a slam, a game contract that almost was a slam, and a nightmare of competitive bidding. Honestly, this is kind of fun. Unfortunately, I'd also hope to build up ideas and concepts, working my way to complicated tools like Negative Doubles. Here, we get 2NT without ever having talked about 1NT, and a hand that is pretty complicated even within that realm.
Before we can really talk about this hand, I should provide a bit of background for our general approach to NT openings. This is a less than ideal hand to start this topic, but I'll stick to my premise here: you are rarely dealt ideal textbook hands when you play Bridge, so we are forced to analyze the less than ideal.
1NT Openings
Why are NT openings so complicated? Because they can be. I'm not trying to beg the question here, but I believe that to really be at the root of it.
In general bidding, opener describes their hand to responder, who then puts the two hands together, figures out an appropriate contract, and tries to place the partnership there. In many situations (slam, trying to get to 3NT by bidding stoppers, etc.) it's more of a team effort, but in general responder has to place the contract.
If you open 1 heart, you show anywhere between 11 and 24 points. This is a huge range. Your first bid tries to tell your partner a bit about your distribution. Opener will spend another bid to try and tighten this window, usually into one of three categories: minimum, middle, maximum. Then responder makes a decision, usually with less than precise information.
If you open 1NT, you show both a narrow point range (15-17 in our system), and a balanced hand, effectively describing both strength and distribution in a single bid. That's saving bidding room! NT bids have to be like that, however, as they do consume so much space. If you open 1NT, you've effectively forced your partnership into a two level contract (which would be a three level contract if not for all of the fancy machinery we're going to talk about). Your bidding must be economical.
Balanced hands are also less than ideal for taking tricks (we talked about that back in Dark Bridge 1). If you're going to make a bid with such a hand, you are generally going to be looking to find a fit elsewhere, and natural bidding techniques are simply too expensive in terms of bidding room to do so at a reasonably low level.
One last item, since 1NT requires 15 points to open, usually opener should be declarer. Placing all those points on the board is an invitation for the defense to eat you alive. Keeping them concealed gives declarer a strong advantage in the play.
Incidentally, defense to 1NT is even more complex than 1NT openings. I hope we'll have hands where we can explore that, maybe doing a comparison of different conventional options.
Dark Card NT
Dark Card plays a strong NT (15-17) in keeping with standard bidding techniques. Many experts are very fond of all the machinery of 1NT openings, and want to use it more so they lower the point range. There is also the obvious preemptive effect. Dark Card prefers the standard method, since it's simpler, safer, and since I'm not 100% convinced I like the weak NT openings. I think they work very well against novices, but against average or expert players, particularly those with strong 1NT defensive tools, they break down.
We play Jacoby Transfers, Texas Transfers, Stayman, Puppet Stayman, Garbage Stayman, and Gerber. Much as I would like to, just because it has such a pretty name, we do not play Yellow Rose of Texas. The way these deals are going, I'll probably be talking about that really obscure convention on the next hand.
Since this is relevant to this hand, here are our point ranges for balanced hands.
| Points | Opening | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0-12 | Pass | Balanced is really bad when combined with no points! |
| 13-14 | 1 of a Suit | The ubiquitous 1 Club bid usually... |
| 15-17 | 1NT | Joy is a 1NT opening. :) |
| 18-19 | 1 of a suit, Jump in NT | Typically this will be to 2NT. Rebidding 1NT does not show balanced; it shows minimal hand with no better option. |
| 20-21 | 2NT | Our subject today... |
| 22-24 | 2, 2NT | Bid 2NT regardless of partners response |
| 25-27 | 2, 3NT | If only life were this good... |
| 28-30 | 2, 4NT | This will be next hand won't it? |
| 31-32 | 2, 5NT | It just gets silly past here. |
Checking standard techniques, I've just noticed that they differ here. The standard approach is to bid 3NT for 25-27, then slide the rest of the bids down one. I suppose it's nice to save bidding room in your 28-30 point hand, but this seems confusing to me. Furthermore, this removes the option of using the Acol 3NT bid (way beyond today's topic, sorry).
Some form of transfers and Stayman are on over all of these. Gerber gets increasingly irrelevant as you go up the ladder (not that it was all that relevant lower down).
So far, I've said nothing about our hand of the day. Let's get a bit closer to it by looking first at West's decision to overcall or not overcall.
Should West Overcall 2 Diamonds?
West has 7 points, max, and a rather ugly strong suit. Their only option is 2 diamonds. In this hand, it would at most be lead directing (interference issues aside). I'm not sure what a diamond lead buys when your best card is the 10, and given your distribution you are expecting a suit contract. (Actually, 2 diamonds is only down 1, proving the law of total tricks again. But lacking any idea of your partner's distribution, this could be a lot worse.) I would not make that bid.
Can North Make a Texas Transfer?
A Texas transfer is at the 4 level. It is used to show a 6 card suit, and to get opener to bid it first. Jacoby transfers happen at the 2 or 3 level, and show a 5 card suit. A Jacoby transfer, followed by a rebid also shows a 6 card suit, and the difference between them is up to your partnership agreement. We play it as showing fewer points over 1NT. Over 2NT, some experts reverse which is the strong and which is the weak bid.
Texas transfers force the partnership to play in a particular suit. Opener can have as few as two cards in a suit, so to ensure you have a fit, you must have 6 of the suit you wish to transfer in. You simply cannot Texas transfer on this hand. Without 6 cards, we don't need to worry about Jacoby followed by a rebid.
Showing a Second Suit After Jacoby
After a Jacoby Transfer, bidding a new suit indicates some sort of two suited hand, usually 5-5. North has such a hand, and will want to show the clubs. In this case, it also shows slam interest. Let's examine why.
Let's say you're not interested in slam. As North, you expect South to complete the transfer (if not, it's going to be a long car ride home). That will put you at 3 Spades. After your rebid, if you are not going to slam, South will either have a fit in spades (yeah!) and want to play at 4 spades. You will rebid 3NT, and offer them a choice of either 3NT ('we couldn't find a good fit or our fit is in a minor') or 4 spades ('we have a fit'). If you bid 4 clubs, South either has to go to 5 clubs or bid 4NT. 5 clubs is rarely the correct contract, 3NT is almost always better (and the times where it is not are not started by a 2NT opening bid). If you didn't want to explore slam, bidding 4 clubs would put South in a terrible position. Therefore, you want to explore slam.
Should South Jump to 4 Spades?
Some partnerships permit South to break the transfer by bidding 4 spades with 4 spades (check!) and a hand at the upper end of the range (this is silly over 2NT since the 'range' is 20-21 points, but check!). Should South do this?
Bidding the 4 spades, would tell North they have a great fit. It would likely turn on RKC 1430 (Blackwood instead of Gerber), and let North know about the very nice fit. North could then ask for keycards, and missing one, could bid 6 spades. By NOT doing this, you allow North to tell you a bit more about their hand if they wish, or to make a quantitative slam invitation.
Dark Card does not include this option, even over 1NT, although it is a fairly standard approach. There's no right answer to this one, at least no right answer apparent to me. I would probably turn this off over 2NT just to allow more bidding room to explore slam options (maybe we want to cuebid controls...)
Hey, 4 Clubs Is Gerber!
Not always. Best rule for Gerber I found is that the preceding bid MUST have been an actual bid of NT, and the 4 clubs bid must be a jump. So 1NT, 4 Clubs is Gerber, but 3NT, 4 Clubs is not.
It is important to note that just because 4 clubs would not be Gerber, one should not assume Blackwood is on. 4NT is usually a quantitative slam invitation (top end of range, bid a small slam; bottom end of the ragne, don't) in almost every auction that starts with a NT bid, including a strong 2 clubs followed by a NT rebid.
Should South Do Blackwood?
The title of this section is actually the wrong question. We should probably start with: is Blackwood on in this auction? Well, 4NT cannot be a quantitative slam invitation, as that has to be bid by North. The only other natural use for 4NT would be a sign off in NT, showing a hand without a fit for either suit. Of course, that would require two doubletons, meaning that South should not have opened NT. Unfortunately, there's not guessing as to which suit would be desired.
South needs to tell North which suit to play in first, unless they just bid the slam outright. If South bid 4 spades, I would still take 4NT by North as not blackwood in this auction.
Why Jump to Slam?
South knows a few things: 1) North is thinking about slam (see above) and North knows the partnership's total points; 2) They have two fits, one in spades, one in clubs; 3) They have good high cards in those suits; 4) North has a highly distributional hand, '5-5, Come Alive' is an old Bridge mantra. Given these 4 positive signs, and the only possible negative being the doubleton AQ of diamonds, they bid the slam. In fact, if they had another small diamond instead of a heart, 7 spades would be cold.
Setting Up a System
When considering what bidding conventions to include, you want to make sure you have every situation covered. We talked in this hand about showing your 5-5 distribution demonstrating slam interest. Let's talk about point ranges, and what you would do in response. Partner has 20-21 points. With your strong hand, you have at least 12 points (counting long suits). With just dummy points (doubleton = +1, singleton = +3, void = +5), you have 14. With both, as some experts recommend (Marty Bergen recommends this with a couple of other adjustments when considering slam; in this case the other adjustments make no change), you have 16. You're definitely at or above the 33 point slam margin.
Let's say you had 6-10 or 6-11 points. You're not interested in slam, but you still have 5-5 distribution, just lousy HCP. In that case, you're not going to play a club slam so you want South to choose from 3NT or 4 spades. You can bid the 3NT (quantitative raise), and let South pick. Note that over a 1NT opening, you would bid the clubs at the 3 level, just to give your partner information when choosing the best game.
With 0-5 points, denying game, you probably just transfer and then pass and hope for the best.
With enough points to think about the grand slam, you would transfer, and either bid 5NT (quantitative grand slam invitation) over 4 spades, or 7 spades over 6 spades. If you had the ace of hearts instead of the 9 in our hand above, you would have a total of at least 18 points on top of 20-21 from your partner. That's a grand slam, and you should bid it once you know where your fit is. You're looking for 37 points total for the grand slam, so you need at least 16 points to think of it.
Conclusion
- NT openings are fun, but be careful partner knows what you are doing!
- 5-5, Come Alive!
- Slams are usually easy to play: you have all the good cards, so you rarely have to make difficult decisions.
- When considering what bids to include, look up and down the scale to make sure you have a rational bid, regardless of your hand's value. Don't permit hands to lack a bid.
Next time: Things get crazier with Weak 2 Bids, Takeout Doubles, and Cuebids!
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