RESPONDING TO NO TRUMP OPENERS

Your partner's NT opening bid shows a great deal of promise in most cases, often with opportunities for game. Interestingly, your response will tend to be conventional rather than natural when your RHO passes. Though you can pass just as much information with natural bids as with conventional ones, what follows has the benefit of protecting your opponents from seeing key information during the play of the hand, and that pays dividends in most cases.

Supporting Partner's NT Opener:

When your partner opens the bidding in NT, and you have the points and distribution for game in NT but not slam (his well-defined point range means that you need 10-15 HCP over partner's 1NT and 5-11 HCP over his 2NT), bid 3NT right away—don't give your opponents time to pass information to one another or derive information about your hand or your partner's hand. However, if your partner opens 1NT, and you have 8 or 9 HCP with NT distribution, bid 2NT. This tells your partner, "If you have a maximum 1NT opening (17 HCP), bid game; otherwise, pass." That's all there is to supporting NT below game, though suit bids by you may allow the bidding to return to NT later, barring a good fit in a major.

Bidding When You Don't Want To Be In A NT Contract:

About half of the times your partner opens a hand in NT, you will look at your hand and want to run to a suit. You may have a hand that would be hard to get into or out of safely in a NT contract; you may have a long suit that might be a better place to play; you may just think it's a good idea to give partner information before letting him settle on the contract. Whatever your reasons, it's good to have ways of describing your hand efficiently.

Stayman:

Stayman is perhaps the most basic and useful way of describing your hand when your partner has opened 1NT or 2NT and your RHO has passed. It promises 8+ HCP and at least one 4-card major. Note that it is possible to be 5-4 in the majors and bid Stayman, but if you have a 5-card major and 3 or fewer cards in the other major, use the transfer bids spelled out below. Your bid of 2C/1NT or 3C/2NT asks your partner to bid a 4-card major (he has already said, by bidding NT, that he lacks a 5-card major). He will bid his 4-card major, if he has one (hearts if he has both), or diamonds if neither his hearts nor his spades is 4-cards long. If you are 5-4 in the majors, and your partner bids your 4-card major, bid your 5-card major; otherwise, you can bid NT at the appropriate level for your points (see the information above for deciding that level) or show a 5-card minor.

You should be able to derive appropriate responses for most hands, though the full convention, as is true for most explained here, is significantly more involved. The only other case for bidding Stayman is rare, but you should be aware of it. If you have a singleton or void in clubs with a complete bust (very low points, if any), bid Stayman with the firm intention of passing anything your partner may bid in response. You are essentially trying to rescue your partner from a situation in which he will be faced with a poor club suit in no trump; in most cases you will either make your contract or go down by fewer tricks than if you had played in NT, unless, of course, your opponents are kind enough to come into the bidding.

Pretty simple, huh? Only one thing, though. What if your opponents bid before you get the chance to bid Stayman? In that case you have to bid naturally unless your RHO bids 2C; if that happens, double the 2C bid to show partner that you would have bid it if there had been no interference. This is called a stolen bid, and it works for transfers too.

Jacoby Transfers:

There are several kinds of transfer bids, but Jacoby Transfers are the most common. The key question is this: given your partner's whopping NT hand, would you prefer to have your opponents see your partner's hand or your hand as dummy? Since the dummy rarely provides a psychological edge to the declarer, it's better to hide the position of key honors from your opponents. Make them guess as much as possible. Jacoby Transfers help you do this. Note that while the descriptions below focus on transfers in response to 1NT, you may transfer after 2NT just as easily by increasing the level of the bids by one. All other guidelines remain in effect.

Regardless of your points, you may transfer to a major suit by bidding the next lower suit than the one you want your partner to bid. Thus, if your partner opens 1NT and you have a 5-card or longer heart suit, even with 0 HCP, you may bid 2D. Your partner is obliged to do two things at this point: first he must say "transfer" before your LHO bids, and second he must bid 2H when his turn comes up in the auction, provided your LHO doesn't bid. Likewise, if you have spades, bid 2H. If you have both suits, transfer to hearts and then bid the spades. In this case, your partner will have a guaranteed fit with at least one of those two suits since (using our definition here) he has no more than one doubleton).

There are some limitations. You cannot bid transfers if opponents interfere. The exception, as with Stayman, is if your RHO makes the bid that you wanted to use as a transfer. A double in that case turns RHO's bid into a transfer, stealing his bid and all of the effects that follow normally.

If your LHO makes a bid between your transfer and your partner's acceptance, your partner does not have to accept the transfer. This means that if he does accept it over interference, he is promising real support. A bid of any denomination other than the one to which you attempted the transfer is, in this situation, natural and shows a 5-card suit. Your further responses should be natural as well.

There is one more thing your partner may consider in accepting the transfer. Even though he knows that you may have 0 HCP, if he has four cards in the suit you are showing with your transfer bid (he has, for instance, four hearts and a 16-point hand when you bid 2D), he may opt for a "super accept" of your transfer and bid 3H. This shows you a 9-card fit and offers you a chance to bid to game.

As with most bids, there is an element of risk. You know that you partner, in opening a NT, cannot have more than one doubleton and no singletons or voids, but what happens if he has 15 HCP and a doubleton spade to which you transfer with your 0-HCP hand? You have a 7-card fit and only 15 HCP. At the two level you'll probably do fine, even if you go down one trick. Think of what your opponents must be missing with a probable 8-card fit and 25 HCP. If they don't rescue you from going down, odds are they are handing you a HUGE score compared to what they could have had in their own contract.

Minor Suit Transfers:

You may be wondering about tranfering to minor suits. While some people play minor suit transfers, they are not very popular. By way of inclusion, I'll briefly explain them here, but don't feel the need to take these on just because you use Jacoby Transfers. In order to transfer to a minor suit, you must have a 6-card minor suit and at least 5 HCP. Remember, this is a tranfer to the 3 level, so a little more security is essential.

The most common method for handling this is to have 2S function as a transfer to 3C and 3C as a transfer to 3D. Interestingly, under ACBL rules, your partner must say, "transfer," after your 2S bid used as a transfer to 3C; however, he must say, "alert," after your 3C bid transferring to 3D. If this seems confusing, using "alert" for minor suits seems to be an acceptable alternative. Note that if you use "alert" instead of "transfer" for a transfer to 3C, you must always use "alert" for that bid: inconsistencies may be construed by your opponents as a means of illegally passing information to your partner.

Texas Transfers:

Texas is a big place, so a big transfer is named after it (though it could refer to about the same number of square miles, "France Transers" doesn't have the same ring, and it would have been renamed "Freedom Transfers" by now if we had called it that). Think again of that NT distribution your partner has. Picture his points. Let's say he has that 15-HCP hand (always assume minimums until you hear otherwise) with that doubleton spade we mentioned earlier. What do you need to have in order to guarantee that you should be in game? You want an 8-card fit, so you must have six of a major suit to go with his guaranteed two cards in the suit. You also want 25 HCP between you, so his minimum 15 HCP needs the help of at least 10 HCP from your hand. In other words, if you have 10+ HCP and a 6-card (or longer) major, you can transfer right to game in a major by bidding just as you would for a Jacoby Transfer, only at the 4-level (4D demands 4H from partner, and 4H demands 4S). As with Jacoby Transfers, your partner MUST complete the transfer, even if it is not his favorite suit for that hand.

There are two important things to remember about these. First, with all of the space between your partner's NT opening and a transfer at the 4 level, you can make Texas Transfers over interference. Second, the point requirements for Texas Transfers over partner's 2NT opener are adjusted accordingly: you only need 5 HCP and a six-card major. Fortunately, once you have made your transfer bid, your opponents will only be able to interfere if one is holding an extremely long suit, and even then it is a gamble that will probably fall short.