You have fewer than six points. The partnership doesn’t hold the 25 points for game, so you should pass. To bid would show (inaccurately) six+ points.
(b) You have plenty of points to respond, plus a fit for hearts. Also, the point count is high enough to go for game (13+12 = 25). You should jump to 4♥.
(c) You easily have enough points to bid, but no guarantee of a fit for hearts (opener may only have four hearts, in which case you’d need four to make the eight required for a fit). Instead you should bid your longest suit at the lowest level, and await developments: a bid of 1♠. This shows you have at least six points in order to bid and at least four spades to try for a fit (see the diagram on p. 31), and, by inference, you have fewer than four hearts.
must know
• The responder to a One-of-suit opener should bid if she has six+ points in her hand, and pass if she has fewer points than this.
• The opener of One-of-a-suit must bid again if his partner bids a different suit.
Bidding after an opponent’s opener
If you bid (or ‘call’) after the opponents have opened the bidding then you are ‘overcalling’.
Overcalling
Unlike opening, you don’t need 12 points to enter the bidding when overcalling, but you should only enter the bidding for a reason, i.e. when you have strong cards in a long suit. Sometimes you may be able to steal the contract from your opponents, or you may simply be aiming to cause them trouble by using up their bidding space (their opportunities to communicate with each other) or pushing them to make an unwise bid at too high a level.
The crucial difference in bidding an overcall is that where an opening bid and response only promise a minimum of four cards in the bid suit, an overcall guarantees a minimum of five cards. The corollary to this is that the overcaller’s partner only needs a three-card support to make the fit of eight cards (see the following diagram).
Note that both members of the overcalling side adhere to the same guidelines – it doesn’t matter if you’re bidding directly over an opening bid, or over the response.
Here are three sample hands that would make a 1♠ overcall following your opponents’ opening bid of 1♥ (or after the bidding sequence: 1♣, Pass, 1♥).
(a) and (b) are not particularly strong hands, but there’s everything to be gained by mentioning your spades in each case: it’s the highest-ranked suit (see pp. 8 and 22) and you may go on to make a contract. Even if it’s just a case of disrupting your opponents’ bidding, and ultimately defending, you’ll have helped your partner’s defence by indicating which suit to lead.
(c) is another clear overcall of 1♠. Note that an overcall is possible with opening bid values (12+ points).
must know
• An overcall in a suit indicates five+ decent cards in the suit.
• An overcall doesn’t guarantee that the overcaller has opening points (12 or more), but equally it doesn’t preclude them.
Doubling
The final bid in the bridge player’s arsenal is a double. When you bid ‘Double’ literally this means that you double the opposing contract because you think it will fail, and if you’re right you get more points for your side. However, the most frequent use for the double is something quite different: to ask your partner to bid in one of the unbid suits.
We’ll talk much more about the double in chapter 4 (see p. 126). For now, accept that the following hands (a, b and c) would double a 1♥ opener from the opposition:
must know
If you bid ‘Double’ following an opening suit bid from the opposition this normally indicates you have an opening hand (12+ points) supporting all unbid suits, and it implicitly asks your partner to bid one of these other suits.
Play
Once the bidding has finished, as declarer you now need to make the required number of tricks to achieve your contract, or as a defender you need to stop declarer from doing this.
Playing our first deal in no-trumps
When there is no trump suit, in each round of play the highest card in the lead suit wins the trick. A player unable to follow suit cannot win the trick so must throw away a card in a different suit.
As declarer you must plan your strategy before you play from dummy at Trick one. First count how many tricks are ‘off the top’, i.e. how many you can make before losing the lead. Note that you don’t play out these ‘top tricks’ at this stage.
Let’s return to a previous example:
Between the two hands, declarer has four top spades (provided he plays his top cards in the right order) and two top hearts: a total of six. Note that he doesn’t have any top tricks in diamonds and clubs – he’ll have to lose the lead before establishing tricks in these suits. In the bidding he has contracted for 3NT (six plus three = nine tricks out of a total of 13) and he can now work out that he needs three extra tricks to win (six + three extra = nine). He has two options:
(a) To take the six top tricks (i.e. ♠AKQJ and ♥AK) straight away, then look around for the three more he needs. (b) To focus first on generating those three extra tricks. The wisest strategy on almost all deals (and particularly no-trumps) is (b). The two strategies can be likened to a tortoise and a hare.
Tortoise and hare
I often equate the choice of strategies in a bridge deal to a race between a tortoise and a hare. The hare loves to get off to a flying start; cashing his top tricks straight away. The tortoise, on the other hand, is happy to lose the lead early, knowing he’ll polish up later on.
In the example on p. 40, let’s see what happens to the hare. He cashes all his spades and hearts, then, unable to cash any more tricks, turns to diamonds. The difficulties arise because when his opponents win the lead – as they’re sure to with ♦A – they’ll go on to cash promoted low-card winners in hearts (and perhaps spades) with cards
