A long suit is a powerful asset, especially if it is a long, strong suit. When we Declare, this type of suit can be established into winners in a variety of ways. Let’s look at some techniques for developing long suits, and then we should look at what we can do with the suit to help us take more tricks. Long suits are on many of the hands that we hold, so learning to make the best use of them is a key skill.
When we declare in a suit contract, then there is a trump suit, and hopefully, we have more of these cards than the opponents (if not, please reconsider your bidding). That means, when we gain the lead, we have the option of attempting to remove all of the opponent’s trump – draw trump. Let’s look at our options and considerations for how and when to do this.
When we declare a hand, especially in a Notrump contract, there are two common assets that help us produce tricks. The first are our honor cards, which we quantify using High Card Points. We normally use these honor cards as quick tricks or to capture the opponent’s honors. The other way we usually take tricks is with long suits. Long suits (especially strong ones) can be used to take tricks with their little cards by running the opponents out of cards in that suit. When we declare a hand, we may have a long suit in our hand or in the dummy. We can use either of these to establish additional tricks – often called length tricks. Let’s look at how we try to set up these additional winners.
Learning to take tricks is a key part of developing our card play skills. There are a large number of techniques for taking tricks, and it is important to be able to use these to help our side collect our winners. Let’s look at some of these fundamental techniques.
When it’s our turn to play a card to a trick, then a key thing to consider is which player we are at the table. Are we playing to the trick first, second, third, or last? When we play to a trick, it affects our strategy for how we use our cards. There are some guidelines for what to “second hand low, third hand high”. Let’s look at the pros and cons of playing to a trick in each of the positions and see why these are suggestions for us.
A long suit is a powerful asset, especially if it is a long, strong suit. When we Declare, this type of suit can be established into winners in a variety of ways. Let’s look at some techniques for developing long suits, and then we should look at what we can do with the suit to help us take more tricks. Long suits are on many of the hands that we hold, so learning to make the best use of them is a key skill.
When we declare in a suit contract, then there is a trump suit, and hopefully, we have more of these cards than the opponents (if not, please reconsider your bidding). That means, when we gain the lead, we have the option of attempting to remove all of the opponent’s trump – draw trump. Let’s look at our options and considerations for how and when to do this.
When we declare a hand, especially in a Notrump contract, there are two common assets that help us produce tricks. The first are our honor cards, which we quantify using High Card Points. We normally use these honor cards as quick tricks or to capture the opponent’s honors. The other way we usually take tricks is with long suits. Long suits (especially strong ones) can be used to take tricks with their little cards by running the opponents out of cards in that suit. When we declare a hand, we may have a long suit in our hand or in the dummy. We can use either of these to establish additional tricks – often called length tricks. Let’s look at how we try to set up these additional winners.
When it’s our turn to play a card to a trick, then a key thing to consider is which player we are at the table. Are we playing to the trick first, second, third, or last? When we play to a trick, it affects our strategy for how we use our cards. There are some guidelines for what to “second hand low, third hand high”. Let’s look at the pros and cons of playing to a trick in each of the positions and see why these are suggestions for us.
When declaring in a suit contract, one of the most exciting ways to win tricks is to trump with our small trump. This is especially satisfying when we can trump the opponent’s honor cards – like their Aces and Kings! If we do this ruffing in both our hand and in the dummy, then we can do some significant damage to the opponent’s potential winners. Let’s see how we can use the technique to take as many tricks as possible.
When we look at a card combination in a suit, we normally focus on how we can best play these cards to produce the most tricks in this suit. But remember that our goal is to use all of our cards to produce the maximum number of tricks from them. That means that sometimes we play a particular suit in a less-than-optimal fashion (differently than if we were only playing that suit, or looking that suit up in a book), in order to allow ourselves to take the maximum number of overall tricks. One of reasons that we may play a suit differently than a textbook will tell us to do is to give us additional entries to one of the hands. One of the ways that we may try to produce additional entries is by taking an unnecessary or less than optimal finesse. Let’s see how this can work to our advantage.
The more bridge we play, the more we run into situations in the play that frustrate us – where we feel that we always get things wrong. In compliment to that, we may find certain card combinations where we know we end up with good boards if they appear. For many players this involves whether they lose a trick to the trump Queen or not! There is a particular card combination that I find elegant – it has resulted in many good results for me over the years. Let’s take a look at my favorite card combination and make sure we have it in our skill set.
Some players find declarer play to be fun, while others find it infuriating. Often this has to do with what we feel is the strength of our game: Are we best at Bidding, Declarer Play, or Defense? But one of the ways to improve our Declarer Play is to adopt the right mindset during the play. This is not just about having confidence in our play (which is always helpful), but also about thinking about the right thing at the right time. When it appears that we are going to make our contact, then that is the time for us to start thinking about “What could go wrong?” and then about “What can I do about it?” These are extremely powerful and helpful question to ask ourselves. What this type of thinking leads to is an extremely useful type of play, the Safety Play! Let’s look at these plays and see how they can help us improve our declarer play.
The modern approach to improving our bidding structures (especially in competition) is to add transfers to our methods. This gives us more space and allows us to communicate more efficiently. When we play a system like McCabe, designed to give us more ways of raising partner and show support, we already have a useful structure. If we add transfers to this structure, we gain even more space for communication.
The most complicated 2/1 GF auctions are the ones that start 1♦ – 2♣. Actually, these can be some of the most difficult auctions in all of bridge. These auctions can lead to lots of complexity and confusion about the meaning of bids on the 2nd and 3rd round of the bidding. Many pairs have played in 3-3 Major suit fits after the auction began with 1♦ - 2♣, thinking they were headed to a much better fit. Let’s look at what agreements we need to make with partner and then see how these affect our follow-up bidding.
When we play the version of 2/1 GF that uses “2-Major Waiting” (meaning that Opener can rebid their suit without promising a 6th card), then we gain the ability to “right side” a NT contract when we have a balanced hand without a stopper in one of the suits. But, by having 2-Major be a waiting bid we make it harder for us to show our 6-card suit. Let’s see how we can add a gadget to help give us better rebid options to describe our hand.
When we choose to adopt the alternative approach to our 2/1 GF responses, “2♦ showing a 5+card suit, 2♣ being “could be short as 2 cards”, then this changes our reasonable options for rebids by the Opener. It is important that we have good agreements with partner about how this approach changes our rebid agreements. Let’s look at the hands that are simplified by these agreements and problems that are created.
There is not just one version of a 2/1 Game Forcing bidding system. There are a variety of conventional rebids that are additions to a fundamental 2/1 GF system, but there are also some fundamental response agreements that can be adjusted. One of these is the length that we promise when we respond in a minor suit at the 2-level. In the standard 2/1 system a 2♥ response shows at least a 5-card suit, a 2♦ response shows at least a 4-card suit, and 2♣ usually shows a 4+ card suit (occasionally it could be a 3-card suit). Let’s look at these responses in detail as well as an alternative response structure where we require 5 cards to bid 2♦ and then must use a 2♣ response with a large variety of hands.
Transfers are an extremely useful tool for competitive bidding. So are relay bids, like the way we use 2NT in a Lebensohl auction. We can play a useful system, like Transfer Lebensohl, in a variety of different situations. Let’s see how we can use these methods after partner opens the bidding and the opponents take away our bidding space with a Weak Jump Overcall.
When partner open the bidding with 1-minor and our RHO makes an overcall of a suit, then we need a way to describe our hand to partner. The traditional Responder tools are negative double and positive freebids, but in some auctions, there are other approaches that use transfers to give us a better way to compete as Responder. Unfortunately, we don’t have a transfer structure in every auction (when they overcall 1♠, we have very few good systems) but hopefully there will be more and more interesting development in this area of bidding theory.
When partner opens the bidding with a minor suit and right hand opponent makes a takeout double, the modern approach for many expert partnerships is to play transfer bids by the Responder. By Responder transferring to the suit with length instead of bidding it, we gain many advantages in these competitive bidding auctions. Let’s look at how we use these transfers by Responder and what they gain for us.
When partner opens the bidding with a Major suit and right hand opponent makes a takeout double, the modern approach for many expert partnerships is to play transfer bids by the Responder. By Responder transferring to the suit with length instead of bidding it, we gain many advantages in these competitive bidding auctions. Let’s look at how we use these transfers by Responder and what they gain for us.
When our LHO opens the bidding, partner makes a simple overcall, and Responder makes a Negative Double, then we in the position of the Advancer. We can choose to play Transfers in the position as well. By doing so, we give our selves an additional step and we often allow ourselves more ways to raise partner. These Transfer bids also cause some more difficulty for the opponents – making the meaning of their bids less clear. Let’s see how they work.
Responding to 1NT is a balancing act of showing both strength and shape while keeping the auction at a low enough level. With a game forcing hand (10+ points), the goal is usually to be able to describe our hand below 3NT, particularly with hands that are strong enough to be interested in slam. This is not a problem with relatively balanced hands, but with distributional hands it may be more difficult for Responder to show their shape and explore slam without getting the auction too high (going past 3NT). Transfer bids allow Responder to show their shape while using space efficiently. After making a transfer bid, Responder usually gets to make a second bid without the auction getting much higher - one of the most valuable parts of playing transfers. A way to further improve our use of bidding space is to play transfer bids not only on the first round of the bidding, but on the second round also after a Major-suit transfer. Let’s see how these Transfers Over Transfers work on Responder’s second bid after a Responder starts with a Jacoby Transfer.
