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Theory

Artificial strong twos

Legality

There are regulations relating to permissible meanings of artificial opening bids at any level.

For most club and tournament play in England these regulations are laid down in ‘the blue book’ which is to be found within the ‘Laws and Ethics’ section of the English Bridge Union (ebu) web-site.  These regulations are subject to alteration from time to time.

The particular regulation pertaining to all artificial strong opening bids is ‘the rule for strong openings’.

Versatility

Artificial bids are a way of getting more for your money.

By using one bid, for example, to show a strong single-suited hand in any one of the four suits you are combining up to four traditional bids into one and releasing the other bids for other purposes.  You will probably also include a range for a strong balanced hand thereby giving you five for the price of one.

Such bids will inevitably attract disruptive counter-methods from your less than totally awestruck and respectful opponents.

This will not matter if you can define your hand with your next bid.  However, if it takes you two more bids to define your hand then you might well never get the opportunity.  This consideration is addressed on the page ‘How many strong bids?’.

However, the present section is primarily concerned with listing all of the most likely bids which are available to you (and a few which are less likely).  Considerations of selection and combination will be addressed in the section ‘combining the bids’.

The available bids are classified in the following categories

game-forcing openings

almost game-forcing

game-invitational or better

invitational but limited

strong two-suited

strong three-suited

2♣ with a multi

2♣ with Tartan twos

Context  -  Opening two of a suit.

This page last modified 8th Jul 2019

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