Sunday, May 16, 2004 7:31 PM
BART
PITBULLS:
The forcing NT bid is bid on multiple hand types and
many times can lead to confusing auctions. One bad side effect of the forcing
NT is losing the heart suit after
the auction 1♠-P-1NT-P.
You lose accuracy on you 5-3
heart fits from the 1NT side with the various types of forcing
1NT hands after a spade opener. It
is very important to get to your 4♥ games after a spade opener and also have a way of
showing strong support for partners minor.
With a heart opener and a forcing NT you have 2♠ as a very useful
artificial bid after a rebid of a
minor. After a spade opener and a forcing 1NT with a minor rebid , we have no
such luxury.
After a spade opener , the forcing 1NT and 3♥ jump was designed to get to your 4 heart games . I
think this a bad way of doing this
as the 3♥
bid quite often just lands
you in the wrong partial and a minus.
Jumping to the 3 level
with a 5 card suit is not very descriptive
and can often lead to a disaster. With a spade opener and a club rebid , BART
is a convention that solves both the heart
problem and the minor fit problem . The only thing you lose is the
ability to play 2♦ after a club rebid . Think of “Black Bart” to assist your memory. BART is
applicable after a black suit opener
( spades ) , a 1NT response and a black suit
rebid ( clubs ) .
BART
signals to the opener that the 1NT responder has a invitational heart hand or a strong
club fit with a 2♦ bid..
With a normal weak heart hand , the 1NT bidder just simply bids 2♥ and not
the BART convention. With a pre-emptive club raise , 3♣ is bid by the forcing
1NT to hinder the balancers. With an invitational heart hand or a strong club raise the forcing 1NT bids
a forcing artificial 2♦ . Opener assumes
the heart invitational hand first
and bids 2♥ with 3 hearts
or 2 good hearts. Two spades is the death
response for hearts showing a singleton or void in hearts or a bad
hand with 2 small hearts. 2NT
after the BART 2♦
is artificial
& denies hearts showing 5-5 in the blacks
and 3♣ shows 6-5 in the blacks.
This bidding allows you to get to 4 hearts with a heart fit of 3 or 2 good hearts in the openers hand or invite by
bidding 3 hearts. It also describes your club hands. A civilized way of getting to your heart game or club contract.
In
the GNT finals in Calgary , Gordon & Judy got to 4♥ for +620 when our partners got to the wrong spot.
Q109xx Kxx KJx KQ opposite x AQxxx
Axxx xxx .
With only 3 diamonds It’s a got
idea to bid 2♣ with as little as two clubs
playing BART. This allows the partnership to always
promise 4 diamonds with
a 2♦ rebid which is very handy. Anyway their auction went 1♠-P-1NT-P 2♣-P-2♦*-P 2♥-p-3♥-p 4♥-p-p-p . Tom
Gandolfo got off to the best lead of a trump for our side but +620 is still
there. Somehow our partners lost the heart suit altogether at the other table
and our side lost 12 IMPS as they played 5♦ in their
Moysean. They rebid 2♦ on their 3 card suit as
per forcing 1NT theory so what do you do with the other hand ? . If you jump to
3♥ with your 5 card suit and partner
passes with no hearts but a diamond hand
you could be cold for 6♦ going down in 3♥ ( say partner held a hand like
Qxxxx x KQxxx AK ). Our partners I assume chose to raise diamonds and
the heart suit game was now impossible to reach. We lost 12 IMPS because Gordon & Judy had a superior system ( BART ) to find their
heart fit then our partners did. This also happened to be the number of IMPS we
lost the GNT team finals to them.
The
beauty of the BART bid is that it also shows
the strong club raises . After a BART 2♦ and a further forced heart or spade
rebid by opener , 3♣ now
shows a strong club raise and 2NT a club raise with 4♣ . This sequence solves the age old problem of how the forcing NT differentiates between the
various strength of club raises.
If the BART bidder now bids diamonds its OOPS partner we should have been in 2
diamonds. If opener had bid hearts
over the BART 2♦ with
his two or 3 cards in that suit ,
a 2 spade bid now is the hard to bid 9-10 HCP hands with 2 spades. Tom
Gandolfo suggests the bid also show a doubleton spade honour. BART is used like
a relay to show two different spade raises
!!
The direct 3♥ bid after 2♣ is now a splinter in clubs since BART
handles the invitational heart
hands. Excellent ! Here is a
recent BART auction . Tom Gandolfo opens 1♠ with J109xx AKx void AQ987 and I responded 1NT with Ax 10x AQxxx
J10xx . Tom rebid 2♣ so it is time for the BART convention to
show your strong club support.
You bid 2♦ and partner bids 2NT conventional showing 5-5 in the
blacks ( 3♣ would show 6-5 ) in the blacks. You bid 3♣ to set the suit and
partner bids 3♦ which brings 3♠ from you. Partner bids 4♥ and you try 6♣ which makes due to the club King
being on side. 6 points wasted in diamonds and +1370 is still there !
After
a spade opener , forcing 1NT bid and a diamond
rebid we do not have the luxury of BART. However in my mind a jump
to 3♥ is still a bad bid
. Think about it . Opener can 5 spades and 5 diamonds and you have just jammed
the auction . Jumping to the 3 level with 5 card heart suits is lame bidding. Partner can have no hearts
or a singleton heart and you are too high . I think it is best to
just bid 2♥ and if partner has a good hand in support of hearts
she will make the heart raise . The pre-emptive 3♦ raise has to be sacrificed in favour of a strong
diamond raise and not getting by 3NT
.
You
now have all the bases covered to show strong
minor raises after a forcing 1NT . Use 2 spades after a heart
opener , BART after a spade opener and a club rebid . A 3♦ raise after a spade
opener and a diamond rebid. Voilla !
1 spade and a forcing 1NT is a pathetic way of showing a 6
card heart suit with invitational values. The 1NT forcing is also
bad as the 5 card heart suit with invitational values is also shut out. Tom and I made an exception to 2/1 with a 6 card heart suit and played
a bid and rebid of hearts was not forcing to
game . That worked , but then we invented a 3♣ bid over a
major as any splinter . This freed
the 1♠-p-3♥-p bid to show those types of hands just like the 1♦-p-3♣ bid does to show an invitational club hand.
Both bids describe the 6 card invitational hand in one fell swoop. Forcing 1NT is quite often a kludge to
allow you to have 2/1 as forcing to game.
You quite often need treatments like BART to get around the problems that a forcing 1NT bid generates.
BART
can be used with a heart opener also and complement the artificial 2♠ bid
showing a strong club raise with 5 or more clubs. The 8-10 HCP hands with a
doubleton heart is also hard to describe. The intermediate club raises can be
shown by bidding BART first and raising clubs. Other sequences can be invented …