Do not respond 2NT or 3NT to a One of a Suit Opening Bid

Standard Bidding

Unless you and your partner have agreed otherwise, in Standard English bidding the responses of 2NT and 3NT to a one of a suit opening bid are natural and non-forcing: 2NT shows 11-12 hcp and 3NT shows 13-15 hcp, both with balanced hands.

As I will explain in this article, however, you do not need to use 2NT as a natural bid, and a natural 3NT is best restricted to use only in response to a minor suit opening bid.

A Much Better Approach

When your partner opens 1♣, 1♦, 1♥ or 1♠ it is, of course, possible that he has a balanced hand too strong (or maybe too weak, if you play a strong 1NT) for your 1NT opening bid. But you should assume (until and unless your partner informs you otherwise) that he has an unbalanced hand. Modern players have found that it is better to respond with a suit bid of your own to a one of a suit opening bid by partner, even when holding a balanced 11-12 hcp or a balanced 13-15 hcp, since (a) when he is balanced it is usually better for the opening bidder to declare a NT contract; and (b) it allows room for opener's rebid at a low level when he is unbalanced. In the latter case, opener's rebid may indicate a better or safer contract than 2NT or 3NT and, having heard opener's rebid, responder is then in a position to take advantage of that.

So if your partner opens one of a suit and you are balanced with game-invitational or stronger values, you should bid a suit at your first turn. If partner rebids in NT, then you will naturally raise NT to the appropriate level and your partner will declare. If partner makes a suit rebid and if you have not found a major suit fit, then you should rebid 2NT or 3NT. You are, in effect, making the same bid on the second round that you could have made on the first round, but you have allowed partner to describe his hand more fully.

After an auction such as 1♠, 2NT, if opener has minimum values and two 5-card suits, he has to guess what to do next. Whenever a player has to guess in an auction, there is a good chance that he will guess wrong. If instead you first respond in a suit, say 1♠, 2♣, 2♦ 2NT, now partner will be comfortable to pass 2NT, knowing that you could have bid 3♦ or 3♠ instead if you had had worries about the heart suit.

A Small Drawback

The only drawback to bidding 1♠, 2♣; 2♦ 2NT instead of the shorter 1♠, 2NT is that the two extra suit bids have given additional information to the defenders. When you finally end in NT anyway it is certainly true that this is likely to help them to defend more accurately, so I cannot and will not claim that this is of no consequence.

However, while you might sometimes have gained one or two extra tricks by keeping the defenders in the dark, it will not be frequent enough to compensate for finding yourselves in a poor contract when NT is not the right strain. In practice, it is far more important to ensure that your side plays in the best contract available, even at the cost of helping the defenders occasionally when you do reach the optimal contract. If 2NT is not makeable against best defence while some suit part score is makeable, it is better not to be in 2NT rather than to bid 2NT quickly on the hope of a favourable lead.

A Significant Additional Advantage

If you adopt my recommendation to follow modern practice and always bid a suit over a one of a suit opening bid when you have invatiational values, you no longer need the immediate responses of 2NT and 3NT as natural bids. These two bids can be recycled for artificial use.

My preferred method is to use 2NT and 3NT over a major suit opening to show trump support (freeing up direct raises to the three and four level as pre-emptive raises), while 2NT over a minor suit opening should show a strong balanced hand with 4-card trump support. 3NT over a minor suit opening should be natural and to play, but not showing or promising anything. In this last case the 3NT bid may often be a bit of a gamble, based on a long suit, in which case there is a lot to be said for not revealing anything to the opponents!

One Special Situation

When your partner opens 1♠ and you have a strongish hand with exactly a 3=4=3=3 suit pattern, you have no bid to make. A bid of 2♥ would promise a 5-card suit, while raising spades more than one level with only 3-card is a very poor idea. And since a bid of 2♣ or 2♦ promises a 4-card, what option do you have if you can't bid 2NT or 3NT?

You should bid 2♣. It is usually pretty safe to bid a 3-card minor in a forcing situation, and certainly nothing bad will happen here. If partner supports clubs then he must be unbalanced with a 5-card spade suit, so you can correct to spades. If he rebids spades, you support spades. If he rebids hearts, you support hearts. Over a 2♦ rebid you rebid 2NT or 3NT (according to strength).

Author: Chris Burton
Gravesend Bridge Club