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I was involved recently in several online debates that became quite heated in regards to bidding. In the discussions it was apparent that some advocated an exact bid. Normally I took the conservative routes typically underbidding a trick or two while others took the aggressive route. What this proved was that a certain amount of "bandwidth" exist in our bidding on any hand that can easy range 2-4 tricks. That looks quite absurd but depending on your plan of attack it becomes necessary. Sometimes we look at a hand and say, "that was a 4- bid!" I think that is a bit ridiculous. Without considering why the individual bids 2, or 3, or even 5 we quickly dismiss all the reasons an individual may have to bid what he bid. We might think we have all the answers but we are not reading from some conventional manual these two players have provided us with. We have no idea what conventional agreements they have, we have no idea about bidding discipline, and we have no idea if they are playing for the first time or for ten years. Without some quick investigation into the background of these two we simply cannot discern what is right for them as a partnership. Regular partnerships can employ many tools while bidding, especially in special positions. Granted this is simply strategy but it borders on the edge of collusion. Partnership agreements that I am not privy to should be disclosed to all at the table. In time we may get there but for now it's one for all and all for one! The "bandwidth" or floating window is what makes the game interesting. You can try to dictate a specific bid during a specific bidding scenario while providing all the facts about the people at the table as well as the score but you still cannot account for partnership agreement. We as outsiders typically feel we can make a quick decision regarding a hand versus a bidding scenario and we might be right quite often. The truth however is that we cannot know what "Ted" might know about "Bill" and his bidding habits. Ted may make a tactical bid that is ridiculous in our eyes but based on years of table experience while playing with his regular partner. I might look at his hand and think. "Hmmmm, a 4-bid" while Ted bids 6 smoothly without pausing for thought. It could be because he knows that his partner underbids by a trick in a half and even more in some specific situation such as the this one and the game is close enough that he feels he must compensate for his partner's gross underbid. Why am I beating this horse about bidding and this mysterious "Bidding Bandwidth?" We need this range for many reasons ranging from bagging options, nilling decisions and considerations. We might have to underbid our hand drastically because the bidding is already at 10, 11, or higher while we hold a 3-bid. We might feel strongly that our side is going to set the opponents but do we bid the full value of our hand if it will push us over a 14-bid? That thought is suicidal unless we need a set to win the game! Even if we hold the spades to guarantee our bid it is still suicidal to push it. What has our partner bid on? An example would be this one: You hold….
And out-to-lunch on the rest of the hand with something like:
I can see one guy in my mind right now saying, "3-bid…..No-brainer!" His pard has also bid 3 and holds this hand!
See the problem with bidding 3 now? Is it really a no-brainer? I think it becomes a topic well worth considering. Mirrored spades can beat ya to death. We all love to hold big ones as well as length but when both partner's bid on them we can set ourselves deservedly. If you bid a 6-bid with these two hands you will go set much more often than not. Your opponents will take the first 8 tricks before giving you a ruff-n-sluff in the club suit. This is but one small example in a bag full regarding conservative bids, mirror distribution and the need for a N-1 methodology. (See One is the Loneliest Number. ). Since we should already know that conservative bidding "Pays," we should tailor our bidding and we should do this based our partner and his bidding style. It will not be right to be conservative on every hand. We are going to have nils where we can set the nil bidders partner and we can signal our pard by bidding tight that we are not after a nil set. I am primarily talking about your meat and potatoes hands that occur in the early to mid ranges of the game. We are running the clock out while playing safe in these phases and our risks should be relatively low. If we make a fairly risky bid it should certainly pay off big dividends to justify the risk early in the game. Since we have this "Floating Window" and we can adjust our bid, why can't we use this to our advantage in other ways as well? I realize we have limited resources in our bidding. Fourteen bids? That is our bidding language! Fifteen, if dnils are allowable. Our bidding language consists of thirteen numeric bids with a nil and dnil. My grandfather communicated with a plow horse with only 7-word vocabulary and got his fields plowed for years in a timely fashion. I must admit however, I like the way John Deere communicates much better! Communication is limited but we manage with a few conventions like the Big 5 bid to suggest a possible nil bid and the 7-bid for dnils if play in areas that allow them. I do not use them and prefer to play in games where they are not acceptable but the point of the 7-bid was used as a reference that we do in fact have a few conventional bids. Conventional meaning that an agreement exists between the partnership about a certain bid. "Conventional." Such an ominous word yet a necessary word in almost any card game where two folks seek to improve without collusion during the game. Communication during the play is easier but even then can be just as challenging. As an example let's say we are faced with the following problem. Your pard has placed a 6-bid on the table in the second bidding position. LHO bid 2 and RHO bid 2. It's your bid in a close game on a hand that is not game-dependent. Bags are 4 each and the players are good.
Nil appears absurd with the dime holding. Pard probably can save you in spades but what about dimes? You bid 1while thinking "I can get 3 on this hand!" RHO leads the Now you are at a crossroads. Do you lead a trump or not? In practice I would, and did. I was wrong too. It would appear with that 6-bid on the table, pard would be dying to have trumps led, and that big fat King of spades is just what he needs to see from me. Maybe so……but then again maybe not! Say partner has: (Ex. A)
You see the problem? You have two spades left and normally you would lead the top card from a doubleton but on this hand it is a disaster. It will not matter which spades you lead because you are doing exactly what the opponents would love for you to do. They have all the spades and your best bet is to try to cash your winners while making some of your spades ruffing. If they were led from the beginning you would get three spades tricks because they will bump heads. On the other hand you might get four if you do not lead them. You can trump a dime later in the hand. Even if the opponents have some chance to lead spades you have first and second level control to prevent them from leading a second one right away. This asset gives you the time you may need to trump with your King of spades to produce an extra trick for your side. Now suppose pard has this hand: (Ex. B)
He is dying for a spade lead and the King of spades will elicit a smile from him as wide as the Grand Canyon! Is this decision ours to make? Should we have to bear the brunt of an irate pard if we take the incorrect action? Is it possible for a pard to signal us early in the hand what his intentions are? All of these are great thoughts! Is it ours to make? Certainly it is our decision but the question still remains regarding partner's length in trumps. Does partner have hand A, or hand B? Each hand dictates a specific course of action. With this thought in mind it should be intuitively obvious that it is the 6-bidder's problem. Can he show us which hand he holds during his play? Sure he could! But we give up the ability for him to show us count and attitude when we start assigning artificial meaning to his plays. Even in the first example pard is not going to be able to low high, or high low in clubs to tell you what he wants. With that King of clubs he is going to win the second trick so his play is not optional. If he were leading it might be more apparent which hand he holds. Partners that have an excessive number of high cards (Aces, Kings, Queens) can shift from suit to suit playing Aces and Kings to indicate which hand type they have but even then the hand might be over be over before you have conclusive proof. So how do we solve this dilemma then? Why do you think I have wasted a page or two discussing the unimportance of exact bids? Why have I discussed bidding ranges of four tricks on one hand? Why did I mention bidding "Bandwidth?" All of this was an intro into conventional as well as tactical bidding. We should all have a range we use for specific reasons. These reasons can be strictly tactical and based on the present state of the game and they can be conventional as well to show trump holdings that involve four or more trumps. If we place the task on the bidder regarding his trump length we get the info at the opportune time and we do not have the possibility of faulty data collected while playing to contend with. If we know before the opening lead is made which hand partner has we can be most effective playing ours. By utilizing "third and fifth leads" we can maximize our trick taking ability and lead trumps at precisely the right time. A second article will follow soon discussing trump management and the details about leading third and fifth in regards to bids four and higher. For now I simply want to introduce the concept with brief highlights of things to come in the future. Since we are now placing this trump showing duty on our partner we must assign a method for him to use. Well, that's easy! We have mandated that it occur during the bidding so he only has 15 choices. We cannot take a single bid like one and say," Anytime pard bids one, he has six tricks." We must come much closer than that. The best method I believe is to associate bids of 4 and above to trump length. A 4-bidder will quite often have 4 or more trumps. Since the average would be 3.25 trumps per man at the table 4 becomes our over the hump total. With seven combined trumps we have much more raw trump control and we can handle a few taps if they occur in the 3-trump hand versus the four-trump hand. Again we still are tasked with that single simple trump length question. Does he, or doesn't he have spade length? If we realize that bids of 4 and above tend to have a greater chance of holding four trumps we must have some means to show this. What we have available is thirteen numeric bids with a floating window or bandwidth that I have touched on. Since we do have the leisure of this option we can always adjust our bid by a trick or two. Since we have two trump situations we are trying to discern we only need two responses to allow for each. We have this at our disposal! From 4 to 13 we have 5 even bids and 5 odd bids with only three slots remaining for the 1, 2, and 3-bids. I agree that the 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and possibly even the 8-bids are rare. Once we eliminate them we are reduced to 4 bids that used fairly often. The 4, 5, 6, and 7 bids. These will be the ones we concern ourselves with for the most part and our 4-trick bandwidth. The bids are all touching when you consider it from an even/odd viewpoint. Most of us already employ a 5-bid to show a powerful supporting hand that can cover most nils and typically shows a minimum of one of the two top trumps. We don't mind reducing some 7-bid to a 5-bid, or 8-bid to a 5-bid if it meets the criteria of the 5-bid convention. Why? Because we know that a high-level bid that is covering a nil must have extras! If it does not the opponents will attack the nil bidder's partner instead of the nil. Do the math! Why underbid and run the risk of bagging while not bidding the full potential value of your hands when the nil was making but you missed setting the 5-bidder. You eat three or four bags, they make both bids, and you lose the points for underbidding. The point is simply this. We don't mind underbidding our hand when employing the 5- bid convention. Also realize that our use of the even/odd convention I am suggestion will not change anything in your present bidding scheme when used after your pard has already placed a bid. Many use a 7-bid to ask partner to dnil because they can cover anything. Both of these conventions are basically employing trump length already! And guess what? They are odd bids! If we are considering our bid after our pard has bid we do not have to worry about how that pard will react to a 5-bid and higher as far as nilling because his bid has been placed. Since he has already bid we do not have the fear of supporting a nil and we can bid our hand much closer. If employing the N-1 method we must add a trick to our bid in this seat. At this point we must ask ourselves do we still show trump length by the bid that is placed or are we to assume partner will look at the bid we had before adding a trick. For example say I am on a solid 4 bid, partner has bid 2. Partner should have underbid by one trick so I am going to add that trick to my 4-bid, as I am not on some busted nil hand. I bid 5 now making our combined table total 7. Partner should not consider my bid as 5 simply because I do not have a 5-bid. He should look at my bid as a 4-bid and act accordingly. A 4-bid is an even bid and I do not have trump length or vice versa if you invert the meanings. If I bid 6, partner is to assume a 5-bid from me and all the implications that a 5-bid entails. If 5 is your long trump bid then he will assume that. A 5-bid in third or fourth bidding position should not mean you have one of the two top trumps like the five-bid convention implies. In the closeout bidding positions (3rd & 4th seat) our partner's have already bid. Most of the games I play in do not allow the dnil so my 7-bid would take on a new meaning. Actually I prefer to invert the even/odd method and use the even bids to show the trump length! My 6-bid is the equivalent of the 5-bid convention. It shows one of the top trumps and spade length. If I am bidding before my partner I may have to either make my bid 4 to show the trump length when I do not have one of the top two trumps or I might have to bid 5 or 7 and tell a white lie about my trump length. This is what we give up when using this convention. Every convention normally has a certain amount of value or gain. When we decide to use it or not we have to measure that gain against what we give up. Bidding before partner we might have to tell him we do not have four or more trumps only on those hands that we would have bid 5 or 6 depending on whether you use even to depict length in spades or odd. This is a small price to pay considering the wealth of info we gain and the timely fashion we gain it. Let's look back our examples now. For instance…say we are looking at hand A. It is rich in face cards and will take six tricks so we bid 6 and that has the conventional meaning to partner that we have our bid and possibly a bit more but we are not bidding on the spade suit. (Note, I invert here and would bid 5 or 7 to show non-spade length). Partner will be in a great position now when faced with the situation I depicted above after trumping the club. On the other hand if hand B was held we could use an odd bid (I bid 6 on B) that was touching going either higher or lower to show the spades stack. This bidding is still applicable by the partner that bids in the second position as well. I use the even bids to show my spade length for several reasons. Folks are used to seeing 5- and 7-bids show spades and will nil/dnil quicker when you bid 5 and 7 anticipating the nil/dnil from your pard. I've found it much more effective to invert and go with the even bids. I admit that our opponents should be privy to this info but unless things change that mandate conventional agreements and the meanings associated with them we have to take our lumps.
This table is not based on N-1 and the associated bids and corrections. It does work well with conventional bidding and N-1. Using N-1 ( One is the Loneliest Number. ) we simply add 1 to partner's bid and use this table. This is when we bid in first position. When we are bidding in third seat and if we are employing N-1 we add 1 to our bid. So if I am the last to bid in our partnership and my partner has made a bid of 2 and I have bid 4 in the last position to bid this means I had an original 3-bid. If you are not using N-1 the table stands alone without modification. Using N-1 you must look at the position the player has bid in and make the necessary adjustments to assess whether to add a trick to his bid or subtract 1 before going to the table. For example let's say partner bids 4 playing N-1. We know that he is bidding 1 less than he really has so we add 1 to his bid and check the table. We now see that a 5-bid guarantees a 5 or 6 bid but without four spades. The scope of this article is not to rehash N-1 but it is detailed in a previous article. The negatives involved in using this method revolve around bidding one less when you have an odd bid without four spades. Is that really so bad? I happen to think not. We are already bidding above the average mark when we bid 4 or more. Anytime we do we risk much more when we go set. Conservative bidding unless you are losing is not a bad thing. We have 5-bids that we can use to show trump length and we give up so little considering the knowledge gained. Normally when our pard bids 4 or more we wait for his signal to guide us into our best offense. If he leads from some long suit it may appear that he is long in spades and trying to establish his side suit. If he leads a short suit after bidding 4 or more we can ascertain that he is likely to hold fewer than four spades. Hmmmm, that works when pard has the opening lead but what about when the opponents or leading first or we are. I for one would like to know my pard's spade length before I make a short suit lead or long suit lead. Take this hand for example!
Pard has bid 5 in front of me and we employ the N-1 convention so I know that he really has a 6-bid. It is my opening lead. For a moment we think about a heart lead thinking that we should try to get a suit set up since pard has spade length. Well, yes, he does but wouldn't it be better for partner to have his side suit established instead of ours? Sure it would. If we attack hearts our pard could be short in that suit and get tapped in spades by the opponents. Since we are short in dimes it becomes a lucrative choice because our shortness is indicative of possible length in partner's hand. Granted it could be totally wrong but still presents more opportunity than leading a heart. Anytime partner has spade length we desire to take our trumps in the "short hand" meaning the hand that does not have spade length. Anytime I realize pard is short in spades I am planning offensive maneuvers and not worrying about tapping our opponents in spades. We do not have "disaster insurance" in the form of spades on our side. We do not have the luxury to take tricks when we want to take them as one can do holding extra spades. Bagging is easier for us as well now because we have inside info regarding pards spade length. All kinds of problems are solved by a simple question like, "Four or More" being answered by our bidding, which is absolutely the opportune time! In regards to agreements we would first have to establish what would be approved and in which competitions it would be allowable in before we come close to getting to the collusions issues. Anyway…..my 4, 6, 8, and 10 bids are my spades bids and my 5, 7, and 9 bids are not…… OK... so someone is wondering, "How you might bid 9 without spade length?"
That hand! We give up 1-bid! But we gain valuable knowledge! So we might bag a trick in the process…then again we might not. What we will not do is lead spades prematurely! Let's examine this tool in action: We have just started a new game and on the first hand out of the box partner opens in first position with a 3-bid. We are playing N-1 so I know that he really has a 4-bid. Going to the table we see that a 4-bid guarantees 4 or 5 tricks and at least four spades. Note, I said at least four spades. He could have five, six, etc. The opponent on my right bids 4 and holding this hand I have to make my bid.
It's easy to see two tricks in this hand but playing N-1 we must add one trick for our partner. We do this and select a 3-bid correcting for our partner's underbid. The opponent on my left bids 2 making the total 12 at the table. It's our partner's lead and the At this point in the hand we have invaluable information, information
that would not be conclusive without employing this convention. We already
know that our pard has 4 spades or more. We know that we do not lead short
suits holding 4 or more spades. So let's examine partner's lead again! He
led the Without this convention we might very easily confuse the high/low play in clubs as a doubleton and try later in the hand to give partner a ruff. As it is our little convention clears this all up for us. My R.H.O. now leads a small diamond and his partner plays the Ace and
returns the suit to our partner's King. Partner leads the Considering this it is imperative we rise with the This set could have easily occurred without this convention but I assure you that the information would not be present. Not having the ability to count the hand early is a tremendous concern. Not having the ability to know when to lead spades or how many partner has is another. Revisiting our first example now we see how easy it is to find the correct shift. The key is that partner bid 6 in second position. We use the N-1 concept and add 1 to his bid making it 7 and then go to the table. We see that a 7-bid promises 7 or 8 tricks but shows less than 4 spades. When we reach that crossroad that we presented in the first example it becomes quite easy to avoid the spade shift! If partner on the other hand had bid 5 in second position he would have held a hand with 6 or 7 tricks and 4 or more spades. Now we make the mandatory spade shift. The information gained by this convention is not merely relative to the play of the hand. It is invaluable to the opening leader as well. Take for example this hand.
Say pard bids 5 in the last position to bid and we bid 1. We know that he has adjusted his bid based on our 1-bid. Since a 1-bid can be a busted nil playing N-1 we underbid 1 trick to protect our side in the last position to bid. Considering this we already know that partner's real bid was 6. Going to the table we see that 6 guarantees 6 or 7 tricks with 4 or more spades. Normally we consider our opening lead and its relevance to our hand but when we are privy to info like spade length in partner's hand we can make allowances. Things like leading our longest suit might be terrible when partner is two-suited and needs to set his suit up. With that in mind leading short suits becomes much more valuable since they are likely to be longer suits in his hand! In this example either the Jack or diamonds or the small club could net big profits. The trap is leading the heart. Even if you set this suit up it is likely to be worthless, as you have no entries in the hand to enjoy them even if partner can pull all of the spades. Look at the hand from partner's side, and not yours, help him establish his hand. He is the captain and with you on opening lead try to hit his hand and worry not about yours. You can call this convention "Odd" bids or Call it "Even" bids…. Spade length dictates the nomenclature. If you like to use odd bids for the lengthy spades then state "Odd" to some partner…..If you prefer the even method, as I do then "Even" would be your description! You can pick whatever you like to dictate what method you use as a quick reference to fellow pickup partners. Possibly you could use something like I do if you decide to go with "Even" showing the spades length. I use "E.S.P." as my reference for this meaning: Even shows Spades, Partner! I haven't given the Odd scenario any real thoughts regarding an acronym but "S.O.S.O." comes to mind for the odd-length bidders. Showing Our Spades Odd. Regards, |
AK873
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