Aces on Bridge
DEAR MR. WOLFF: In a recent column, you have a player with 12 points and 4-4 in the minors opening the bidding with one club. However, in a bidding problem, you suggest opening one diamond. Which is your recommended strategy?
— Desperate Dan
ANSWER: Much inappropriate and misdirected thought has been wasted on this question; I’m sorry if I innocently added to the confusion. There is no technically superior answer to the question of which suit to bid, but there is a practical answer: I’d recommend always opening the better suit. The reason is that if the opponents end up declaring the hand, you’d rather your partner led your good suit, not your bad one. This also applies when a hand is too strong to open one no-trump.
DEAR MR. WOLFF: Have you ever played a forcing pass method or a system that didn’t conform to a standard base? If so, did you enjoy the process?
— Lumpfish
ANSWER: We were all young once, but ever since I grew up, I have tended to follow normal methods. However, that does remind me that 40 years ago it took a lot of persuading to convince one of the top American women that if her opponents played an opening pass as a strong hand, she could not double the pass to show a good hand herself!
DEAR MR. WOLFF: At my local club, I picked up SPADES A-Q-3, HEARTS 10-5-32, DIAMONDS A-Q-7-4, CLUBS Q-3 and responded with a two-no-trump call to my partner’s opening bid of one heart, to show a forcing raise. When my partner bid three hearts, showing extras but no shortage, what should I have done? — Half Mast
ANSWER: In context, you have nothing to spare. You have bad trumps and at most a queen more than a dead minimum, so I would sign off now. If all your partner needs is two aces, he can use Blackwood to find out more. For the record, if your hearts were J-10-x-x, you might bid three no-trump, meaning it as having nothing to spare, and not being unsuitable for slam but without extras.
DEAR MR. WOLFF: What scheme of responses to weak twos do you recommend? Does it depend on the degree of discipline your partnership imposes on pre-empts? If you ask for features, what holding outside the trump suit is needed for the weak-two opener to treat his hand as maximum?
— Forward Progress
ANSWER: Briefly, if playing Ogust (which assumes a pre-empt may be on only a moderate suit — or worse), what constitutes a good suit and a good hand may still depend a little on the vulnerability. A good suit should have decent play for one loser facing a doubleton (a minimum of six to the king-queen). The range is 6-10, no matter what style of responses you play; and if you have a maximum, show a feature with an ace, king or guarded queen.