Wednesday, October 04, 2006 2:24 AM

Inverted Minor - 2NT

PITBULLS:

After an inverted minor , the first duty of the opener is to describe whether she has a weak NT bid. Bidding your distribution is the primary goal with inverted minors and your stoppers & HCP’s come later. The purpose of an inverted minor auction is to get to your 3NT contract or find flaws that make 3NT an unsuitable contract. A 2NT rebid after an inverted minor is a very common bid and may contain both 4 card majors. Do not make the mistake of bidding a major unless you have 5 or more of your minor. Describe your distribution by bidding naturally.

Inverted minors are natural sequences where you “show where you live” a.k.a notrump gropes. Here are a couple of hands from a Spingold where they bid the hands very well.

♠AKx ♥Kxx ♦xx ♣KJ109x and partner opened 1♣ so you bid 2♣ & she rebids 2NT so over to you. Well it looks like 3NT is a reasonable spot but you have a doubleton diamond which might prove annoying since partner opened 1♣. Why not show where you live along the way to 3NT ? You bid 3♠ which means that you have shown 11 of your HCP’s already. Partner surprises you by bidding 4♠. Her hand

♠ QJ10x ♥Axxx ♦xx ♣ AQx and you make +650 against your partner’s +100 for defeating 3NT at the other table.

Here is another hand handled well by the Spingold participants . ♠xx ♥xx ♦AKxxxxx ♣Ax Partner opens 1♦ and you bid 2♦ with partner rebidding 2NT. 3NT looks like the spot as you have a “flat” hand of 7-2-2-2 . However why not show the club Ace along the way to 3NT ? Partner has ♠AKQx ♥Q10 ♦QJ10x ♣xxx and bids 3♠. OOPS no heart stopper so you leap to 5♦ . +600 again against your partners +100 for defeating 3NT at the other table.

A good rule for inverted minors is bid your distribution first and your stoppers later by showing where you live. Bridge becomes quite a simple game by bidding this way.