Sunday, September 24, 2006 5:50 PM

Hand Evaluation – Tactics ( The Club Suit )

PITBULLS:

One of the bids in Bridge I hate the most is the “phony reverse” . Reverses were invented to show distribution as well as HCP’s & that is one of the strengths of a natural bidding system. The multi-purpose 3♣ strong jump shift was invented so that phony reverses were not necessary with most hands. This multi-purpose 3♣ jump shift helps with strong one suited diamond hands. Even stronger, opening 2♦ as a strong & natural bid helps describe strong single suited diamond hands . Unfortunately , there is no bid available in standard bidding to describe a single suited club hand just under a two club opener. If you conceal this club suit with a 2NT opener or a 2NT rebid , you are subjecting yourself to missing easy club slams.

I stubbornly resist a phony reverse with these powerful club hands so how do you describe these strong club hands ? The only solution I can think of is to open a light 2♣. This treatment applies to distributional clubs only. Balanced hands with clubs & the requisite HCP’s , open 2NT. You get dealt ♠AJx ♥Ax ♦Kx ♣AKxxxx , you could easily get away with opening this hand 2NT. However , you have just transferred the problem to that particular structure. There is no way of showing the 6 card club suit after you have done that manipulation. If the suit were diamonds , I would open our strong 2♦ & rebid 2NT so that solves that problem.

With Re-Stayman after 2NT openers , you can show your long club suit as in the hand above. If you do not play Puppet Stayman , you can define a 3NT response to Stayman as a “club” 2NT opener. What if you have a balanced hand with club length & values in the 18-19 HCP range ? Again I would rebid 2NT so if partner bids 3♣ , I break the relay to 3NT to show these club hands. Breaking relays are very useful to show hard to bid hands.

Barton gets around this problem by having a jump rebid of 3♣ forcing . I thought of this also but it just puts too much strain on the 2♣ bid as invitational. Again , I want to avoid a phony reverse to show these club hands so with distributional hands that 2♣ would be too much of a stretch , a very healthy 3♣ bid is needed. I prefer this lie over the phony reverse. Forcing 1♣ anybody ?

Over 2♣ my partners & I play a relay to show the 3NT range ( 25-27 HCP ) of hands. This frees up the direct jump to 3NT after a 2♣ opener for something that we could define. Soloway says use that bid to show a balanced club suit 2♣ opener. This works for me . 4♣ by responder sets the suit & is a slam try. 4♦ by opener would be Kickback for ♣’s.

Actually , what I would like to design is a natural forcing club system close to the Polish club structure ( either weak or strong ) . In other words , 1♣ is natural showing all club hands from an opener up to 40 HCP. This would take clubs out of the 2♣ structure & 2NT openers leaving only strong balanced hands & the majors for 2♣ openers. Need my partners to design the system for me though J