Just a shortish blog today (I hope).
To round off the responses to 1C, we now deal with 3C+.
There are a set of hands where the nature of the hand (solid and semi-solid suits) has a higher probability of being more important to get across (first at least) than exact shape. We deal with these using bids from 3C+. The responses to 1C are as follows
- 3C: POS, ART, any solid suit
- 3D: semi-POS, semi-SOL hearts
- 3H: semi-POS, semi-SOL spades
- 3S: semi-POS, semi-SOL clubs
- 3NT: semi-POS, semi-SOL diamonds
There are probably some sensible uses for 4C+ (I’m open to suggestions) but I’m not going to worry too much about them for the present.
As this is a fairly short blog so far, I’ll touch on my current ideas on continuations after the above. After 1C 3C(=any SOL POS), then
- 3D: “I know your suit, tell me your shortage?” – resolve as normal, up 3 steps, specific control showing ignores the known suit
- 3H: “I can’t determine your suit, tell me what it is?” – 3S=C, 3NT=D, 4C=H, 4D=S, 4H+ D but stronger than 3NT and not wanting to risk a pass
- 3S: “I know your suit, do you have extra length?” – 3NT = 6, 4C = 7 etc
- 3NT: To play, suggests a minimum and that the suit is known
- 4C: ?
- 4D: ?
- 4H+: strong suggestion to play – “I either know your suit or don’t care”
As always, open to suggestions for 4C and 4D above.
For the semi-SOL, semi-POS’s, my thoughts were game (any strain) or bid of the shown suit – to play, otherwise, analagous to the SOL stuff, that is first step normal relay, second step asking extra length (remember, the suit is known, so that step is not needed).
As an aside, I first saw the “I know your suit, tell me …” when some Scandanavians were in Challenge the Champs in The Bridge World, sometime in 1997 (maybe it was Fallenius and Nilsland). They also used 3C over their 1C opening to show a SOL suit, however, they played 3H as that option. I’m unfamiliar with the rest of their structure, so I can’t tell you if their use for 3D was better, but it seems to me that opener will more often than not know what suit responder has, so the cheapest bid should cater for that possibility if it doesn’t otherwise obstruct the method. I don’t believe that what I am proposing for DIP does so obstruct: if you have to ask, only the major suits (or a very strong D hand) force past 3NT. That’s no problem for the majors, you can play 4M, only losing out on the reasonably rare occasions when you didn’t merely like, but needed to play 3NT (this may be a little different at MPs, but DIP is geared to IMPs).
That’s it for today.
Regards, DipBridge
