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2-Heart and 2-Spade opening bid

Since we open 2Diamonds with a typical weak two in a major, that means 2 and 2♠ should not be weak twos. I use to play Muiderberg 2 bids. Now, I am not so sure. I still play Muiderberg with Mishovnbg and a few others. But I think two alternative auctions might be useful. One is for 2 to show hearts and clubs, minimum normal opening bid, and 2♠ to show the same. This allows opener to open 1 of a major and then rebid 2♣ over partners response as artificial, stuck for a bid as it will never show clubs. I got this idea from Henri Schweitzer. Henri is from France and is not only a world class bridge expert and one of the very helpful "Yellow" host on BridgeBase Online, he is also a really nice guy.

The basic principle is if you play this type of 2M opening bid, your 1M-1NT-2C or 1H-1S-2C can not be natural. Instead it says that you have good cards without a good rebid. Hands in the 15 to 19 hcp range without a good descriptive bid. This might even include a hand with a six card major, but with a poor suit quality. I will talk about how this 2♣ rebid fits into the 2/1 structure when we get to 1M openings.

Here is how we handle the 2♠; and 2♣ ; opening bids. These show 26 to horrible 32 Zar points, five+ in the major, four+ in the clubs.

  1. Raises are natural,
  2. 3NT and 4NT are natural,
  3. 2NT is game force.
  4. New suits are not forcing.

Over 2NT, opener rebids:

  1. 3♣ with five card suit,
  2. Rebids his major with six, and
  3. Rebids a side 3 or 4 card suit. Once fit is announced, normal cue-bidding takes place.

Here is the first 2S hand I had since switching to this method. I had it with BBO's Hannie, and needless to say, I messed it up. I must say that 4S was bid at all 11 tables, and made at seven. We had no chance when the defense found the right line despite our less than revealing auction.

S-Q72 S-AJ6543
H-KQJT H-A
D-83 D-Q5
C-A875 C-JT32


-- 2♠
4♠ Pass

In theory, maybe 3♠ would have been better than 4♠ but like I said the entire field bid game. The defense was deadly. Since we made the field bid, I can't feel to bad. I used ZAR to see I had more than enough for the game. Game is not horrible, but needs 2-2 spades with King on side to make.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting, I never heard about these before. I like to play Gazilli, where 1M-1NT-2C is forcing, and either natural or strong.

The consequence is that you cannot play 2C with minimal 5-4 hands, but in your structure, you can't do this either.

When putting the advantages (more clarity with both handtypes) against the disadvantages (losing out on some kind of preempts), I don't know what is better.

Han

7:17 PM  
Blogger bboinquiry said...

I have participated in a discussion of this on BBF. I am sure you have read it by now. But I have become more and more disatisfied with mulderberg with respect to my current bidding practices. This despite Mulderberg was one of my favorite conventions.

I consider this 2H/2S opening bid as being minimum opener, with 5M and 4CLUBS as a modified mulderberg. It keeps a lot of the advantages. I will post on my bboinquiry blog some of my thinking about this issue.

6:59 AM  

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