Sunday, September 28, 2003 12:33 AM

Forcing 1NT - BART

PITBULLS:

The forcing NT bid is bid on multiple hand types and many times can lead to confusing auctions. It is very important to get to your 4H games after a spade opener and also have a way of showing strong support for partners minor. With a heart opener and a forcing NT you have 2S as a very useful bid. After a spade opener and a forcing 1NT , we have no luxury.

After a spade opener , the forcing 1NT and 3H jump was designed to get to your 4 heart games . I think this a bad way of doing this and the 3H bid quite often just lands you in the wrong partial and a minus. With a spade opener and a club rebid , BART is a convention that solves the heart problem and the minor fit problem . The only thing you lose is the ability to play 2D after a club rebid .

BART assumes the 1NT responder has a good heart hand or a strong club fit . With a normal weak heart hand , the 1NT bidder just simply bids 2H . With an invitational heart hand or a strong club raise the forcing 1NT bids a forcing 2D . Opener assumes the heart try hand first and bids 2H with 3 or 2 hearts. 2 spades is the death response for hearts showing a singleton or void in hearts or a bad hand with 2 small hearts. 2NT after the BART 2D shows 5-5 in the blacks and 3C shows 6-5 in the blacks. This bidding allows you to get to 4 hearts with a heart fit of 3 or 2 hearts in the openers hand or invite by bidding 3H. A civilized way of getting to your heart game.

The beauty of the BART bid is that it also shows the strong club raises . After a BART 2D and a further rebid by opener , 3C shows a strong club raise and 2NT a club raise with 4C . If the BART bidder now bids diamonds its OOPS partner we should have been in 2 diamonds. If opener had bid hearts over the BART 2D , a 2S bid now is the hard to bid 9-10 HCP hands with 2S. The direct 3H bid after 2C is now a splinter in clubs since BART handles the heart hands. Excellent !

After a spade opener , forcing 1NT bid and a diamond rebid we do not have the luxury of BART. However in my mind a jump to 3H is still a bad bid . Think about it . Opener can 5 spades and 5 diamonds and you have just jammed the auction . Partner can have no hearts or a singleton heart and you are too high . I think it is best to just bid 2H and if partner has a good hand in support of hearts she will make the heart raise . The 3H jump bid can be far more useful to show a strong diamond raise and not getting by 3NT . It says nothing about hearts its just a strong diamond raise.

You now have all the bases covered to show strong minor raises after a forcing 1NT . Use 2S after a heart opener , BART after a spade opener and a club rebid and a 3H jump after a spade opener and a diamond rebid. Voilla !