By Peter Rhead
Your common responses to partner’s Two No-Trump opening
In the past six weeks we investigated your six common responses to partner’s One No-Trump opening. Now we move to your five possible responses to partner’s opening of Two No-Trump. They are PASS, Three No-Trump, Stayman, Transfers and Quantitative. Each is dependent on your hand distribution and your point count.
Remember, when partner opens Two No-Trump he is showing 20-21 points and your responses are very different from those to 1NT. As responder, now you need only 4 points to make a probable game (21+4=25). With less than 4 points, usually you PASS. I know that 20+4 is just 24, but it’s worth the risk of going to game for most players! If you want to be conservative with your response consideration, you could use 5 points instead of 4 points. Five points makes the play of the hand a little easier!
With 4 points or more, you now have four options to get to game or slam. You, of course, have lost the option to PASS. The four response options left are Three No-Trump, Stayman, Transfers and Quantitative. We will provide examples of each of the options in the weeks to come. Stayman and Transfers still are used in your partnership effort to find the magic eight-card major fit. Statistically it is the preferred contract.
Next Week: Examples of a Three No-Trump response to partner’s 2NT Opening.
Remember, as we all fight COVID-19 with social isolation, if you want your Bridge fix, online competition is available for all skill levels. From the ACBL Bridge website, you can hook up either to play live people or to play robots. Either way you test or consolidate various Bridge skills. At ACBL.org just click on “Play Bridge” and follow the prompts for various choices.
If you wish to promote an activity in your Bridge group or ask a Bridge question, send the information to [email protected] and I will try to include it in this column.
Looking for more bridge tips? You’ll find them here.
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