Sunday, March 27, 2005 3:06 PM

Hand Evaluation - Limit Raise Or Better

 

PITBULLS:

 

            “Limit raise or better” is a hand evaluation concept. We base our entire system on this concept. We play all our systemic forcing bids & Q bids as limit raise or better with a death response as an escape hatch. In our opinion , this is a better way to play all your forcing bids & frees up other bids which would be invitational in standard for something else. Bids defined solely as limit raises or invitational are extinct in our system. Forcing & invitational bids are merged or embedded systemically. We think standard methods waste good bids to use them as just invitational. All you need to do to purge invitational bids from your system is to change captaincy. A systemic invitational response makes opener the captain. A limit raise or better response makes responder the captain as opener must show her minimum hand with a “death response”. 

 

            Having a fit in Bridge is happiness. It simplifies auctions & many understandings emerge. The variance in HCP’s after announcing a fit is not serious as there are ways to announce the extra HCP’s. This is why a Q bid in Bridge shows “limit raise or better” hands with a fit. It is only with low frequency hands that game is not reached so we do not worry about those hands. We can Q bid or otherwise keep bidding to force with non limit raise hands after announcing a fit.

 

            My partners & I have modified Jacoby 2NT  to show “limit raise” or better. This works well as we have a 3♣ rebid by opener  to show all minimum hands even with a singleton. This is the proverbial “death response” after bidding 2NT with a limit raise hand. With some rare auctions we will screech to a halt by playing only 3 of a major. This understanding frees up a bid that would normally have to be used to describe limit raise hands. We can now play jump raises as descriptive ( trump length)  as the limit raises are included along with our forcing raise with Jacoby 2NT. We do not need a Bergen 3♣ bid to describe a limit raise so we use that bid to describe any minor suit splinter. Our splinters are “limit raise or better “ also. Splintering with weak hands is horrible Bridge as you are introducing ambiguity & giving information to the enemy with the wrong type of hands.

 

            There is no reason not to free your jump raises in the minors to announce descriptive under limit raise hands also . The solution is to play inverted minors as limit raise or better. A few “escape hatch” understandings so your minor fits parallel the rest of your systemic “fit” understandings. Announcing a fit early is a Bridge goal. Combining your limit & forcing raise in the same structure makes sense & has useful spin offs. Playing Jacoby 2NT in the minors is not a good idea. With minors , 3NT is often the holy grail. By making NT artificial with a systemic bid wrong sides 3NT games with distributional hands & makes describing partnership assets more difficult. The phrase “limit raise or better” to describe your inverted minors is a nice generalization for all your forcing raises in Bridge. The only death response with inverted minors is either side escaping to 3 of your minor. 2NT is forcing as it may show the either /or range of 12-14 or 18-19 . If partner bails to your minor after 2NT , the auction can languish in a partial.

 

            Limit raise values or better should also apply to NT bids . We combine the invitational & the game forcing with NT bids also. We do this by defining all of responders 2NT bids as “godfather” or a new suit forcing one round. This includes the immediate leap to 2NT ( 11 + 15 ) after a minor opening . These bids are called  “Godfather 2NT’s “ an invitation you cannot refuse. Opener must compensate for this duality by bailing out of 2NT to her minor ( death response )  with a weak unsuitable hand for 3NT. Otherwise , we are forced to game somewhere. This understanding solves many , many problems. You do not need the ugly 4^th suit forcing with balanced hands & you do not need relays over these 2NT bids to escape to partials. Responder right sides the NT & describes her soft values with one bid. You preserve bidding room by allowing exploration under 3NT. No reason to pre-empt opener to the 4 level by leaping to 3NT. You now have a leap to 3NT as a picture bid ( fast arrival ) as a shot at game with no slam interest. The only bad part of this structure is that you can not play 2NT as a contract. Who wants to do that except in matchpoints ?

 

 Gadgets can apply to 2NT as a passed hand , directly or in competition as the 2NT bid has the same “godfather” understanding & HCP range in all cases. Your leap to 3NT after a minor opener is also more narrowly defined as a picture bid ( 4-3-3-3 with NT range ) so you do not have to compensate for your lack of a natural solely invitational 2NT bid which bothers match point hounds very much. In IMPS , who cares ? 2NT is a silly place to play a contract. Single handedly deciding that 2NT is the limit of the two hands is a dangerous IMP decision. May you be inflicted with +150 or +180 in all you stopping on a dime 2NT decisions. May my partners be +600 & 630 on the same hands. The godfather 2NT forces you into these game so play them well.

 

The above understandings free 1 major  P   3 major   & 1 minor P  3 minor as something other than invitational . 1 of a minor 2NT is now not solely invitational & covers game forcing hands as is 2NT by responder in any auction. Do not need horribly silly bids like 1♦-P-3♣ to show a limit raise in diamonds. We can use the bid to show the hard to bid non forcing to game club hands.  This treatment also prevents the silly leap to 3NT directly over a minor to pre-empt the auction. We just reverse captaincy in these auctions. Instead of responder telling opener ,she has a balanced invitational hand , opener tells the responding 2NT her range & distribution. Just a different & better way of bidding , in our opinion.