Well, you came back! Congratulations. If you can hang in for a few more chapters this wonderful game will begin making sense, and you will have acquired a rewarding pastime that will serve you for life.
When you were dealing and bidding your practice hands, did you notice that sometimes your partner was enthusiastic about your suggested trump suit, and sometimes he was not? Maybe partner had a good suit of his own that he would like to have used as the trump suit. When bidding, if you don’t like your partner’s suggestion of the trump suit, you have the option of mentioning that a different suit might be best as trump. In the language of bidding, we communicate to our partner our preferences and describe our hand. We do it in a very specific order called a “Bidding Ladder.” This ladder is based on the hierarchy of suits. Remember, spades outrank hearts which outrank diamonds which outrank clubs. Also, 2 is more than 1, 3 is more than 2, etc.
A rule of the bidding ladder is that while you can climb up, you can never climb back down. If you don’t want to go higher, you stop, usually by saying “Pass.” (The other ways to stop require the opponents to be bidding too. Since that gets more complicated, we’ll save it for later.) When you and your partner both pass, you are agreeing that you have climbed high enough. The rung at which you and pard stop on this bidding ladder becomes the final contract.
FOOTNOTE: Remember that there are 13 tricks in a deal. The first six are book. Book is a prerequisite to start the bidding. Seven more tricks remain. So, you can bid for as few as one to as many as seven tricks above book.
Each trick above book for which we bid is considered a “Level” of bidding. So, we can bid at the one level, or the seven level, or any level in between.
There is another rule of the bidding ladder. Higher ranking suits can be bid at the same level as lower ranking suits, but lower ranking suits must be bid at a higher level. Clear as mud? Suppose you open the bidding with “One club,” which says: “Pard, I think we can take seven tricks (book plus one) if clubs are trump.” Your partner may want to suggest another suit, perhaps spades, as trump, and so “Responds” to your one club bid by saying “One spade.” Now, you may just hate that idea, but have a counter-offer of hearts as trump. So, you now bid “One heart” right? Wrong! (Of course.) Hearts rank lower than spades, so once spades have been mentioned (bid) at a level, a player must go up at least one level to mention hearts (or diamonds or clubs). Levels may be skipped, but for now we’ll just take ‘em one at a time.
So, if you “Opened” with one club, and pard bid one spade, you would now bid “Two hearts” to make your heart suit suggestion. Well, suppose pard didn’t like that, and decided that the club suit was the best home for you after all. Now partner must bid “Three clubs” to return the bidding to clubs. (How’d we get so high?) Do you see how the bidding ladder works? Let’s make sure with some examples. In each of the following cases, you will open the bidding, and your partner will respond to your suggestion. Decide which sequences are correct, and which of them violate the rules of the bidding ladder.
What if your hand and pard’s would take a lot of tricks even if there were no trump suit? Well, then you might want to play the hand without trumps, expecting to take tricks on the basis of high cards and long suits. In other words, you might want to play this deal with “No Trump.” Some players love to play in a No Trump contract, but it can be the most difficult of all contracts. (Perhaps that’s why they like it, bridge players being fond of challenges and all.)
No Trump is part of the bidding ladder. It ranks above the spade suit. It is also worth a bit more. If the contract is played in No Trump, the first trick above book is worth 40 points. Additional tricks are worth 30 points each. Remember that “Game” was 100 points? Well 40+30+30=100. Therefore, only 3 tricks above book, or nine total, are required to reach game in a No Trump contract. We will discuss No Trump in detail later, but for now it is only necessary that you know what it is and where it ranks. You need to know this because sometimes it is appropriate to say “No Trump” when you respond to your partner’s opening bid.
So, now that we have that out of the way, we can talk about “Responding” to partners opening bid. Remember that partner can open the bidding with spades or hearts, the major suits. Pard can also open with diamonds or clubs, the minor suits. Pard may also start by suggesting that playing without benefit of a trump suit might be best, but at present we will assume that partner opened the bidding by suggesting a specific suit might be useful as trump.
When you were evaluating your hand to determine if it was at least a king better than average and therefore worth opening the bidding, you used a “Point Count” method of making this evaluation. You counted both high card points and distributional points. Now, assume that your partner has opened the bidding, and you must evaluate your hand to see if you should provide encouragement or discouragement to partner. “Pass” will take care of the discouragement. It says: “Pard, I heard you, but my hand stinks -— better cool it unless you have a real monster over there.” But how do you know what is good and what is bad, and how to tell partner about the good stuff? It should come as no surprise that there are rules for responding to an opening bid.
When you counted high card points as a potential opener, aces were worth 4, kings 3, queens 2, and jacks 1. Hey, here’s a break -— they are worth the same when you are evaluating your hand as responder! There were also distributional values to consider; voids were 3, singletons (stiffs) 2, and doubletons 1. Forget that stuff when you are responder. When evaluating your hand in response to your partner’s opening bid, you do NOT count distributional values -— unless you have a fit for partner’s suit. Then distribution not only counts, it counts MORE! If you have a fit for pard, you can count a doubleton as 1 (same-same), a stiff as 3, and a void as 5. Of course, since you have a fit, the void that you are counting so highly is not in partner’s suggested trump suit.
In Chapter One you learned that having 8 of the 13 cards in a suit, split between you and pard, is pretty good. In fact, it is good enough to make you want to name that suit as trump. You also might recall that if the 8 cards were divided 4 in your hand, and 4 in partner’s, that was even better. Of course, you certainly wouldn’t mind if you had 9, 10 or even all 13 cards in a suit divided between you and pard. That might just qualify as a trump suit, don’t you think?
Well, it doesn’t happen very often. In fact, try a little exercise. Shuffle and deal 10 times. Deal face up so it’s easier to see and faster to do. Look at all the hands, and see how often out of 10 deals that any two players opposite one another (partners) have more than 9 cards in any suit between them. Have you done it? If it happened more than three times out of the ten, you need to call me to arrange a partnership. You are a lucky dealer, and it’s better to be lucky than good.
When you are looking at your hand to figure out if you can make a positive (non-pass) response to your partner’s opening bid, those high card points are nice, but distributional points would be nice too. Remembering that you can only count them when you have a fit, what’s a fit? In “Basic American” we play “Five Card Majors.” So, if your partner opened the bidding with a major suit, he promised that at least 5 of his 13 cards were in that suit. Let’s see, time to do a little math. 8 - 5 = 3. Ah Ha! If partner opened a major, and you have at least 3 cards in that suit, you have a “Fit” for partner’s suit. Now you can count your distributional points.
But what if partner opened with “1C” or “1D,” the minor suits? That opening bid promises only four cards in the suit, sometimes even less than four. So, for now, until and unless partner later tells you that he has five or more cards in that suit, play him for four. So, how many cards must you hold in partner’s minor suit to count distributional values in your hand? Well, 8 - 4 = 4. Therefore, if partner opens with a minor suit, you need four or more cards in that suit to count distributional values in other suits.
Ah, here’s a tidbit that Bob taught which you won’t find in most begining bridge courses. Ready? Here goes. If you hold a king, a queen, or a jack and two other cards (even the 2 and 3) in partner’s suit, add one point to whatever you counted as the value of your hand. Chump change? Maybe so, but if you have a marginal hand it might make all the difference.
When evaluating your hand as a responder to partner’s opening bid, you are looking at your hand from the standpoint of how good it is in “Support” of partner’s hand. True, you are allowed to suggest a different trump suit, or even no trump at all, and you might end up declaring the hand yourself. But, initially, you must take a subservient role and think of your hand as being in support of your partner’s hand. If you find that demeaning, consider how many combat infantrymen, Marines, and tank crews have been darn near ready to marry the artillerymen, naval gunners and pilots who provided them with “Support” when the chips were down.
We will now turn our attention to responses. Please be aware that there are levels of bridge understanding, and in this book we are teaching a very basic level. Some of what you are about to learn will be modified as your skill level increases and you begin to play with partners who are also at a higher skill level. That's normal. You must crawl, then walk, then run. If someone with whom you play suggests that these "rules" are wrong, consider that individual's skill level. If it is advanced, then these "rules" ARE (somewhat) wrong. But if you play social bridge or duplicate bridge at the beginning level, you will find yourself bidding in general agreement with the folks at that level if you follow what we are about to cover.
All volumes in The American Bridge Series have this basic style. In addition, most chapters contain exercises which will help students "lock in" new concepts.