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M J Bridge

Bidding

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Theory

Relays, asking bids, denial cue-bids, spiral scans etc.


These pages exist to give you a glimpse into an esoteric world to which I do not belong.

It follows that I can only provide you with a few pointers rather than a detailed and accurate account of ‘how it’s done’.


A combination of control-showing cue-bids (preferably first- or second-round controls) and RKCB (or perhaps Key-card Kickback) will already have put you ahead of many a club partnership.  You will bid small slams with a fair degree of accuracy, and you will usually manage to stop in a game contract when that is the best you can manage.


At pairs scoring this will be sufficient to keep you more than competitive with most of the rest of the field.


But if you find yourself in the sort of company and competition in which this isn’t quite good enough - in which the occasional slim grand slam might be important - then you might perhaps have noticed that the strongest partnerships seem able to locate additional critical cards and further precise information relating to the distribution.  It is worth mentioning in this context that such contracts (slim grand slams) will not infrequently depend on specific third round controls.


You might also have realised that when the suit has been agreed at a low level in a game-forcing auction then the methods referred to above will sometimes take up a considerable amount of bidding space whilst yielding only a minimum of useful information.


Usually such situations will follow one of:-


an opening of one of a major and a Jacoby game-raise response;

an opening bid and a splinter raise;

a ‘fourth-suit’ auction followed by a return to a suit below game-level to show a slam interest;

a bid of four of a minor setting the suit and showing a slam interest;

or an artificial opening bid followed by a game-forcing suit rebid.


The challenge is to use the available bidding space as efficiently as possible, giving a maximum of information with the most space-efficient bids.


One part of the solution is to place one member of the partnership in charge of the auction (see below).


A second is to try to give at least two pieces of information with anything vaguely resembling a cue-bid which is not the next suit up.

It might perhaps come as a surprise that one way of achieving this is to use cue-bids to show what you haven’t got rather than what you have got (denial cue-bids).


But whichever method or variation you choose it is important to agree a number of principles:-


which sequences will lead to the methods under discussion;

do you wish to show some other piece of information (e.g. shortage/number of controls/key-cards) before using the agreed methods;

what are you assumed to have shown with your bidding up to this point (perhaps at least two controls);

is the agreed trump suit included in or separate from the methods used;

what happens when the opponents intervene?


There are two main underlying methods as the designated partner initiates the sequence:-


one is that he will always relay with the cheapest bid whilst waiting for partner to bid out his specific features;


and the second is that he will start with an asking bid in a specific suit.

Context  -  Acol bidding - the auction continues - in the slam zone.

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This page last updated 20th May 2019