Wednesday, March 10 and Wednesday, March 24

Sorry this has taken so long to get posted!  Things have been a little hectic, but I'm working on getting caught up as quickly as I can.

Both weeks we talked about 2/1 GAME FORCING.  This is an overall-system philopsophy of bidding that simpley promises that if partner opens a suit at the 1-level and we bid a 2-level new suit that is not a jump, we promise game-forcing values and neither partner is allowed to pass until we get there.

There are actually very few 2/1 bids (6, to be exact):

1D - 2C

1H - 2C or 2D

1S - 2C or 2D or 2H

So each of these bids promises an opening hand at at least 4 cards in the minors suits (C and D) and 5 cards in the Major (H).  From then on, bidding mainly proceeds as natural.

The adjunct convention you'll need to take of all those hands that don't fit this GF set of bids is 1NT FORCING.  Over partner's 1M opening (this DOES NOT APPLY to 1-minor openings), a response of 1NT is artificial (therefore announceable) and just forces the opener to bid one more time, as naturally as possible. 

A bid of 1NT FORCING therefore doesn't reveal a whole lot - it's probably a hand with between 6-11 points and no other better bid.

And one more convention that fits into this system well to take care of the cases when you did have a Game Forcing Hand but no 2/1 bid available to you is FOURTH SUIT FORCING (to game).  This one's simple - if we have bid 3 suits naturally, then bidding the fourth suit is artificial and game forcing.  An auction like:  1D - 1S - 2C - 2H*  (2H is artificial and forcing to game, alertable)

There are lots of ramifications to these bids, but we'll work on them lots more.

:)