Julian Pottage
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The general advice is to lead from a short strong suit but here your shortest side suit is also the weakest. I would lead a diamond as this will be a reasonable lead if partner has either the DA or the DQ.
Are you asking specifically after a 1C opening or after a one-level opening in general? People playing a short 1C opening commonly play weak jump shift responses and would do so even without the double.
At tournament level, everyone plays a jump shift in competition as fit showing if the opening bid was natural. So 1H-X-3C would show 5+C and 4+H.
Most club players would not have an agreement about what a jump shift shows after a double.
The hand you have described has only 12 cards. Unless the missing card is an ace (I suspect it is actually a small one) the hand is too weak for a strong opening bid. David Stevenson may also have an opinion about the legality of a bid if you ask in his forum.
It is better to think of a Benji 2C opening as a near game hand. The label 8 playing tricks is rather misleading. You could have a nine-card suit headed by the king-queen with no high cards outside. That would be 8 playing tricks but nowhere the values for a one level opening, let alone a strong opening.
I do not like playing a pass as forcing a redouble because often responder does not mind playing in 1NT doubled but playing in 1NT redoubled carries too big a risk. If you are a gambler by nature, though…
North’s reverse after the two-level response creates a game force. North’s jump from 3D to 5D was an error. North should have bid 4D, over which South cue bids 4H. North then checks on key cards with a view to bidding 7D if South shows two but settles for 6D when a key card is missing.
North’s reverse after the two-level response creates a game force. North’s jump from 3D to 5D was a grave error. North should have bid 4D, over which South cue bids 4H. North then checks on key cards with a view to bidding 7D if South shows two but settles for 6D when a key card is missing.
On the first board you might beat 2S by two tricks for +100 and beat those scoring +90 in 2C.
I am not really sure what you can do about the second board. I do not think you can make 2NT on best defence. You might beat 2H by a trick to score 100 and beat pairs scoring 90 in 1NT but low level contracts are often easier to play than to defend. In my view, the authorities should not have allowed such opening bids for club level play. You might wish to ask David Stevenson about that.
If you cue bid a suit in which partner has announced a shortage, you show first-round control – a 2nd round control facing partner’s second-round control is is of little use. Cue bids in other suits retain their usual meaning.
In Traditional Acol a responder’s reverse is forcing for one round only and therefore a 2C response is fine. If you play a 2C response with a 2S rebid as game forcing, that would be rather an aggressive course of action to take. As has already been suggested, without any sort of diamond stopper, you cannot rebid 2NT if you respond 1S and partner rebids 2H – you would have to pass. Since partner will nearly always have six hearts to open 1H and rebid 1S over a 1S response, passing 2H does not seem too unreasonable.
Often when you have only a 7-card fit its is better to play in NT rather than a suit. Of course, if you have a suit unstopped, NT is no good. A possible advantage of playing in the 5-2 fit is that you can take a ruff in the long hand and still have enough trumps to draw the opposing trumps on a normal 4-2 break. If, however, the 4-3 fit is solid and the most likely ruff is in the short trump hand then the 4-3 fit can be better.
On the auction you cite, I prefer to play 2H as forcing, which gives you more space to investigate the best contract.
Here in the UK it is normal to play a 3NT opening as showing a long solid suit. In the USA a 3NT shows a very strong balanced hand (and the robots on BBO play a 3NT opening as a very strong balanced hand too). I am not all that familiar with Q-Plus myself but it would seem you have, perhaps inadvertently, set it to American style bidding.
With my most regular partner I play Benji, with a 2D opening as a game force. With another partner, I play a 2D opening as a weak two in diamonds and a 2C opening as the only strong bid (apart from a 4NT opening and slam level openings of course). With another partner, I play a 2D opening as a Multi, which covers some strong hands as well as weak two bids in the majors.
Playing both 2C and 2D as artificial bids does help with ranges for balanced hands because you have three ways to get to 2NT (open 2NT, open 2C and rebid 2NT, open 2D and rebid 2NT). If you play a 2D opening that does include any strong balanced hands, you really need to play a convention known as Kokish. With Kokish 2C-2D-2H shows either hearts or a balanced hand; this means again you have 3 ways to reach 2NT: a 2NT opening, 2C-2D-2NT and 2C-2D-2H-2S-2NT.
Your bidding system should not have any impact on your opening leads (except to the extent that lead directing doubles and lead directing overcalls do so). Acol is not an acronym; it is the name of a street in the Hampstead area of London and as such should have a capital ‘A’ but lower case for the rest of the word.
On average you will do better if you never lead away from an ace than if you always do so. Trying to pick out the occasional times when it would be the winning action to do so is rather tricky.
You need to ask David Stevenson about how to handle your opponents reaction.
There are some traditional rules about when a double is takeout and when it is penalty but they have changed in recent years.
These days most low level doubles of suit bids are for takeout (unless the player doubling had the chance to double the same suit for takeout on the previous round).
Most doubles of NT bids are for penalties, with the excpetion of a 1NT response to a suit opening, in which case the double is takeout of opener’s suit.
