Thursday Bridge Club: The Old And The New

10th June - Board: 3 E/W Vul. Dealer South

	North: S Q 9 6 2 H 4 D Q J 7 5 4 C 9 8 5
West: S A K H A K 9 6 D K 10 6 2 C J 7 6		East: S J 10 H Q 10 5 3 2 D none C A K Q 10 3 2
	South: S 8 7 5 4 3 H J 8 7 D A 9 8 3 C 4

There were loads of exciting hands again this week but this one caught my imagination because to bid it well you really needed a mixture of old and new ideas. As you can see 7H is laydown but to bid it you need to establish the perfect heart fit at a low level so that you have plenty of room to show controls. Jacoby 2NT as a response to an opening bid of 1S/H does just that, showing as it does a high card raise to game or better in the opener’s suit. There are many ways to proceed after that but a popular method is to use a 3C rebid by opener to show an above average hand – say 15 points or more – with a reciprocal 3D rebid by responder going along with any slam aspirations. A sensible auction might be the following:

West East

1H 2NT

3C 3D

3S 5NT

So 2NT is Jacoby, agreeing hearts and game-forcing, 3C shows slam interest while 3D goes along with that notion. 3S shows first round control and 5NT is – Josephine! Amazing to have this little used convention come up two weeks running. With two of the top three heart honours West bids the grand.

If anyone would like more extensive knowledge of Jacoby feel free to send me an e-mail and I will attach some notes.

2 comments:

Robin16 June 2010 at 16:36
Hi David,

Your notes on Jacoby 2NT say that over 1H/S and a 2NT response:
3C = 15+ points
3H/S shows a minimum hand, no singleton, but a sixth trump
4H/S shows a minimum hand, no singleton and at most five trumps
Any 3-level bid in a new suit shows a singleton (singleton club = 3NT)
Any 4-level bid in a new suit shows a void.

Are there different variations of this? For instance I am looking at David Bird’s Jacoby 2NT which says over 1S – 2NT:
3C/3D/3H – unbalanced hand, short in suit
3S – Balanced, 17+ points
3NT – Balanced, 14-16 points
4C/4D/4H – A good second suit of 5 or more cards
4S– Balanced minimum, 11-13 points

which seems different in a few places. What do you think of his version?

Robin
Dave16 June 2010 at 19:34
There are loads of different ways people proceed after 1S/H - 2NT and it really is a matter of personal preference which you prefer. A lot of methods, like Bird's, seem to put quite a strain on the memory for something that doesn't crop up that often. The method I use is simple but I think what I had in the notes should be amended a bit in that a return to three of the major could be based on a hand with about 14 points but not necessarily with a six card suit. The main virtue of the convention lies in the fact that you can differentiate between a raise to game with just distributional values but not many points, and a high-card raise to game or better. As for the continuations I doubt very much whether anybody has done any exhaustive analysis to see which works best. Now there's another project for you young Robin........

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