Tuesday, October 03, 2006 4:23 PM

Hand Evaluation – Tactics ( Responding )

PITBULLS:

In this day & age, I feel responding to an opening bid is just another example of “playing the vulnerability”. In IMPS , I loathe the practice of opening huge hands at the one level . This horrible practice encourages partner to respond on anything just to keep the bidding open. This of course , gets your own partner quite often as she takes you for your word that you have 6 HCP or better. . A response shows 6 HCP & above as a standard unless you have 4 or more of partners major. Some sort of pre-emption is in order with those “fit “ hands.

NV vrs vul ( terrorist vul ) is a different matter. Letting the opponents have a free run to their vul game is tactically unsound. When you have a fit for partner’s major with not enough HCP’s , manufacture some sort of bid. Bidding a forcing NT might disrupt the opponents. A simple raise can be surprisingly pre-emptive. I opened 1♥ nv vrs vul , partner held ♠ Qxxxx ♥xxxx ♦xx ♣xx so what should he bid ? Bidding 4♥ directly is probably too much with this flat hand. I would try 1NT forcing in order to muddy the waters however Osama & others may have more creative bids to make. One thing you do not do is pass on this one vulnerability. On all other vulnerabilities , I would pass 1♥ as you are just misleading partner into a minus.

An exception would be when I held the above hand & partner opened in 3^rd seat with any vulnerability. I would bid for tactical reasons. Table position as well as vulnerability changes our responding style. The light response has become as much a tactical weapon as the light opening bid. As usual with tactical bids , avoid taking partner down with you by misleading bids. Have table position & vulnerability on your side , so as to keep partner’s blood pressure at a reasonable level. Terrorists of course play random responses just like they do random opening bids. Partner is still the 3^rd opponent so things have not changed.

Quite often partner has a big hand with the majors & opens 1♣. You have 4 or 5 HCP’s with 5-4 in the majors so you pass. You play it one club or they balance with a NT etc & you find to your dismay that you could have made 4 of a major. This is one of the downfalls of playing a natural system as opposed to a forcing club system . What my partner’s & I have done, is to use the jump to 2♦ to avoid these disasters after a 1♣ opener. A 2♦ jump to a 1♣ opener shows 5-4 or 5-5 in the majors with 4-8 HCP’s. We have bids to ask about the exact distribution & whether you are maximum or minimum. This bid prevents you from responding when you do not have a response just to cater to partners possible huge opening bid holding the majors. When you are going to do such things , do it systemically so partner is on your side.

Standard bidding systems “borrow” from forcing club systems once in a while. A 2♦ response to a 1♣ opener as pre-emptive is pretty lame. Using the bid to prevent a vul game or partial being missed is not a bad idea. Passing 1♣ & hoping for the balancer to assist you in finding your major spot is not the way to go.