Monday, June 14, 2004 9:05 AM
The Spade Response
PITBULLS:
The
spade suit is the highest ranking suit. When partner responds a spade , this
bid can cause problems . Confusion whether a bid is forcing , forcing one round
or not at all can arise. Lets take the lowly club suit opener as an example .
Partner opens a club , you respond a spade and partner rebids 2♣ . You have
hearts along with your spades. You can have 3 types of hands with your heart
suit , non forcing , invitational and game force . How do you describe them ?
Tom Gandolfo introduced me to the concept of a “forcing noise” in diamonds to
help with these auctions. Say you have Axxxx
Q10xxx xx x and partner rebids 2♣ . This is a 2♥ bid which is not even forcing one round ! Say you
have AJxxx AJ10xx xx x with
partner rebidding 2♣. Its nice to have jump preferences and jumps in general by
responder in non misfit auctions
as invitational
especially when you play 4th suit as a game force. Therefore you bid
3♥ with that hand. You have AKxxx AKxx xx Jx and this hand qualifies for the 2♦ forcing to game noise bid. Whatever partner bids ,
you then show the heart suit.
What
if partner opens a diamond and rebids them after you respond a spade ? You do
not have a convenient “forcing noise” bid available at the two level. This
means that 2♥ is forcing one round. You can still bid 2♥ with Axxxx Q10xxx
xx x but drop the contract when he gives preference or raises
hearts. If partner bids 2NT , 3♥ is not
forcing as you could bid 4♥ to give
him a choice of contracts. With the invitational range hands , you can still
jump after a 2♦ rebid and the strong heart hands can be shown by
bidding 2♥ as it’s a one round force.
What if you have a forcing raise in partners minor
after he rebids them ? This is where the forcing noise in the other minor comes
in. Axxxx Ax xx KQxx with partner rebidding clubs
bring in the 2♦ forcing noise bid. Ditto if partner rebids 2♦ and you have Axxxx
Ax KQxx xx . You bid 3♣ ( the other minor ) as the “forcing noise”.
Keeping in mind the initial spade response , what if
partner starts what we call the misfit auctions where
all 4 suits are held with two of them per partner ? Axxxx Q10xxx xx x
and partner opens a diamond and rebids 2♣. Partner shows 9 or more cards
in the minors and you have 10 cards in the majors. You do not have the luxury
of a two heart bid so you make a forced preference to 2♦. Same with the invitational hands AJxxx
AJ10xx xx x . You can not jump to show invitational hands in a
misfit auction. You are forced to give a forced preference to partners minor
and hope for a balancer J. In fact a jump in a “misfit auction” is a splinter
!! If you have a strong hand , you
can make a simple 4th suit forcing to game hand of 2♥ which can show hearts or a strong minor raise.
Tom and I play a treatment called “recovering the
strong jump shift “ in these auctions. If we respond a spade and partner makes
any rebid including 1NT , a jump to 3♠ shows the old fashioned strong jump shift response.
This bid also must show a strong spade suit or else we would have bid 4th
suit forcing or new minor forcing to show a shaky spade suit with game forcing
values. All our suit responses
are treated this way . If we jump in our suit , it is not
invitational but a “strong jump shift” type of hand.
Since we play weak jump shifts up to 7 HCP , we can
get a way with the above treatment. Responding a spade and rebiding the suit is
essentially invitational so we can adopt this “recovering the strong jump shift
“ treatment.
Simple sequences like a spade response can cause
problems with all but the established partnerships. Discuss with partner to get
these sequences ironed out.