Weak Two Bids

Happy new year everybody. Let's start with some more system notes.

There are some bids that “everybody” plays, so you might wonder what needs to get documented. In ACBL-land, weak twos, especially in the majors, fall into that category. Playing with Elwood has opened my eyes.

The standard for opening a weak two varies wildly, depending on who you ask. Some people treat the bids as purely destructive, and are willing to open on almost any garbage, even not-that-great five-card suits. Some people are quite strict, imposing restrictions on suit quality and other features of the distribution. Elwood runs closer to the wild side than I do, but is more disciplined than many I know. He regards two-bids as belonging in the spectrum of pre-emptive hands, and judges whether to open based on likely tricks and losers, taking into account the vulnerability and so on. That means he doesn’t have hard and fast rules about suit length or suit quality or point count, but on the other hand, if he judges correctly, you aren’t likely to make a killing off a penalty double of him either. I am a bit more old-fashioned, and consider the openings more like the bottom tier of constructive bidding. Therefore I will have prospects of a defensive trick, and I generally try to follow the old standard of “two of the top three or three of the top five”, at least in first and second seat. I have been known to open on a five-card suit, but the few times I’ve done it, it was a very good suit, AKQxx or better, and the strategic situation seemed to call for extra effort. I think I’ve opened two on a seven-card suit, also, but that would be even rarer. (I usually take any excuse to open a weak three-bid, and at that level I tend to be much wilder than Elwood).

When I first played weak twos, many moons ago, we played step responses that are known these days as Ogust. Most common now seems to be the idea of using 2NT to ask for an outside feature, defined to be an ace or a king. Rather than choose between these methods, Elwood plays both. So we have that 2NT asks for a feature, and a 3C response is Ogust: opener rebids
• 3D = bad hand, bad suit
• 3H = bad hand good suit
• 3S = good hand, bad suit
• 3NT = good hand, good suit
Responses in a new suit, other than the 3C ask, are natural and forcing. Direct raises are to be considered as raising the pre-empt, and opener should not be encouraged.

When the opponents interfere, we use an approach generally known as McCabe. After 2x – (dble) - ?, a new suit is lead-directing, and opener is expected to return to three of his own suit. This hasn’t come up yet, but it sounds like a useful weapon. After some discussion, we decided to keep 2NT as a feature-ask. The alternative was to use it for a relay, with the idea that responder is running to a suit of his own which he deems a better idea than staying with opener’s suit. It’s a close call – neither use seems likely to come up, to be honest. The other call to be defined is a redouble. Elwood had a little menu of possible meanings, and I chose the one he didn’t expect. Redouble shows Ax or Kx in opener’s suit, and a good hand. I picked that meaning because it seemed to me to fit the lead-directing strategy – responder is really telling the opener that it’s OK to lead small away from his suit.

Now all we need is some aggressive opponents.