Putting it All Together

The hardest thing to remember at first is to bid with a "bad" hand. You must be relentless. Partner expects this from you, and will definitely blame you for not bidding or misbidding a hand10. Other keys, responder normally maintains control of the auction which means getting in and out after having bid the limit of the partnership's offensive values without leaving any burn marks around partner's neck! Something to be aware of is balancing -- especially over a 1 of minor opening -- because partner would have already pre-balanced by overcalling. Pay attention to vulnerability. Down two undoubled is a great score non-vulnerable at matchpoints, but vulnerable it's definitely bad news.

We aim at certain strategic targets when playing against standard bidders using five card majors. If the opponents open 1 of a minor in standard, we want to use whatever means we can to preempt the auction, making it difficult for them to locate their fits. For example, utilizing the preemptiveness of the Intermediate Jump Overcalls, the RJOC are also very preemptive as is bidding a NTO and having advancer preempt at the 3 level. Whenever you eat up a level of bidding, the opponents will be forced to guess at a final contract. It's been our experience that they guess wrong.

The basis for our system is that we trade off ease in handling a few relatively infrequent strong hands to increase our use of lighter and more frequent hands. We, furthermore, try to increase our percentage of success with these more common hands. We use specific description to reduce the strength necessary to compete successfully in an auction. The tradeoff is that less strength is required when less time is needed in the auction to find your proper position. You may be weaker, but if your exposure to danger is shorter, you do not need as much raw power to be relatively secure.


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