Michael Lawrence

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One would be hard pressed to imagine that your first bid as responder could be a difficult one, yet when I give this hand to my students, a majority of them offer the wrong answer. The correct bid with this hand is two hearts. It is not one spade. True, if your partner has spade support, bidding one spade will be OK and may even be best. If your partner does not have spade support, then he will have to rebid something else and you will be in an awkward position. Say that you bid one spade and East rebids two diamonds.

A K 9 7 6 8 7 3 A Q 10 2 5 No one vulnerable. You open one spade and LHO bids two hearts. Your partner makes a limit raise of three spades and RHO goes to four hearts. What do you do? What would you do if you somehow knew your partner had three spades to the queen? I think you might double four hearts. If you knew he had four trumps, though, you might decide to bid four spades. Remember these two factors. If North has three trumps, the defenders can lead them and stop you from ruffing all of your heart losers.

Anyone who has followed my writings over the years will recognize this type of hand. The correct bid is two spades. Do not rebid one notrump and do not rebid two diamonds. If you bid notrump, the opening lead (you can count on this) will be a heart through whatever your partner has in hearts and you won't like it. If you bid two spades, you can still get to notrump if it is right and you can get to notrump from partner's side of the table if that is best. The other rebid, two diamonds, is seriously flawed too.

When you make a jump raise, you must promise four trumps so that your partner can judge the hand. If he knows you have four trumps, he can estimate the worth of the combined hands better than if he does not know how many trumps you have. Your partner is entitled to know what he has to work with so that he can bid wisely instead of having to guess.

RULE. When your hand has three trumps, your distribution will be less valuable than when you have four or more trumps. This rule is so important that you should never make a jump raise with just three trumps. It may feel natural to make a compromise. Is it not OK to make a limit raise with three trumps if you have an extra point or two to make up the difference? No. That is compounding the error. If you do that, your partner will not realize that the correct final contract is three notrump.

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