Wednesday, March 07, 2007 7:48 AM

Strong Hands – Clubs

PITBULLS:

Standard bidding systems do not handle strong club hands very well. Our system has some understandings that assist the partnership with some of the strong club hands. Lets review these understandings. The balanced strong ♣ hands (18 -19 ) with a 5 or 6 card suit are handled with a 2NT rebid. How these hands are identified is via the Wolffe relay. You break the relay to 3NT and that shows a “club” 2NT rebid. Distributional strong club hands are sometimes shown with a 2♦ reverse.

Strong balanced hands with a 5 or 6 card suit in the 22-24 HCP range are handled with a special understanding. Since we use a relay to show the upper range hands (25-26) , we define a jump to 3NT after 2♦ to show a club suit with a strong balanced hand. ♠Ax ♥AK ♦KQx ♣AQJ10xx or the like are bid 2♣-P-2♦-P

3NT

Playing the Wollfe relay , strong club hands by responder are shown by eliminating Gerber from the system. A jump to 4♣ shows immediate slam intentions in a 2NT rebid auction.

The best understanding to handle the troublesome 2♣ openers with clubs as the anchor suit & diamonds as the secondary suit are now solved. By removing the diamond 2 suiters to a strong 2♦ opener , you have a very valuable negative inference with your 2♣ structure.

2♣-P-2♦-P

3♦ Must show a two suiter with clubs as the anchor suit ! This is true or you would have opened the hand 2♦. Gone are the days where you had to conceal your club-diamond hands with a 2NT rebid. ♠AQx ♥K ♦AKQx ♣KQJ10x you would open 2♣ and when partner bids 2♦ , a 2NT bid used to be the most practical. Not any more as raising the 2♦ to 3♦ shows clubs & diamonds. Partner has ♠10xx ♥Ax ♦J1098x ♣xxx and this may give her the push to get to your cold 6NT from the 2♣ side .