Tuesday, January 21, 2003 8:25 AM

NT Structure

PITBULLS:

Established partnerships usually have an excellent structure built around their 1NT opener . This can be a good source of IMPS over casual partnerships . 4 way transfers is by far the best treatment over a strong NT . A little known adjunct to this treatment is the use of a club bid as a further query after Stayman . With slam aspirations, responder should be able to discover more about opener's hand. Since you are playing 4 suit transfers, 1NT-2§-2any-3§ is no longer needed to escape from 1NT when you have long clubs or a forcing club hand . 3§ is therefore available for a much more useful purpose. Use it as a second inquiry .

We are sure that you could construct your own structure, but the one outlined below works. Note that opener's responses to the second inquiry will depend on his first response to Stayman, since in each case certain hands types are no longer possible.: Here is a sequence over a 2S rebid.

Opener Responder(You)

1NT 2§

2ª 3§

?

3¨ four clubs

3© four diamonds

3ª a fifth spade

3NT 4-3-3-3

Partner holds Axxx Qx AQx KQxx and you have x AKxx Kxx AJ109x . Partner opens 1NT and you bid Stayman and hear 2S . You bid 3C which is a further inquiry . Partner bids 3D which shows 4 clubs . You bid 4C which is KCB for clubs . Partner bids 4H which shows 3 Aces and you bid 4S which asks for the Queen of trump.

Partner bids 4NT which says I have a maximum with the queen of trump and no outside Kings .

Start constructing some maximums with no K of spades . A of spades , A of diamonds , KQ of clubs is only 13 . Two red queens to get up to 17 ? If you play the Kantar suit ask bids in these situations you can find out . 7C is very tempting to bid on our auction . 6C might be good enough to win some IMPS though.

Anyway discuss with partner what the Stayman re-ask club bid means in your partnership . It is a valuable tool and fits in with 4 way transfers well . The bid is also useful to ferret out 5 card majors in the 1NT hand . After a 2H/S rebid a return to the major shows 5 after the 3C bid ( no need for Puppet Stayman over 1NT ( 2NT opener only) . The e-mail on the web site dealing with 4-way transfers discusses it in detail and can be reviewed by visiting the site..