bridge for money

[akwoo]

Do a lot of people play opening 2's like that now? Basically a baby 3?

 

What do you do with ♠KQ10xxx ♥xx ♦Kxx ♣xx?

♠KQ10xxx ♥x ♦Kxx ♣xxx?

 

With an understanding partner, I definitely play weak 2's like that, and I open 2♠ on all of these hands.

 

Does that make things hard on partner (particularly if opps jump in)? Yes.

 

It also makes things hard on opponents, and I think they're more likely to be worse hit.

 

Remember - half the time, the hand belongs to the opponents, and in those cases, the purpose of bidding is to make things hard for the opponents.

 

Now, if you're significantly better than your opponents, you have more to lose, so then maybe you should be more constructive in your agreements.

 

It helps to be playing Ogust with such wide-ranging weak 2's.

[mycroft]

I will play whatever style of weak 2s my partner expects. My current partnership is *very* wide-ranging (when we're bored of our real system, we play EHAA; so, actually, we play "conservative" weak 2s usually :-). Yes, I have raised partner to game on a good hand and lost three trump tricks and a trick. We've also preempted the opponents *a lot*; and won the partscore battle in 3M (losing two trump tricks, sure) where most tables aren't finding the suit fit because they didn't open.

 

"Remember - half the time the hand belongs to the opponents" - and that's more than half the time when you have a bad hand in first seat. And it's actually a lot of fun when the opponents take the "marked" finesse only to find...

 

I do believe that *outside* strength, especially outside defensive strength, should be controlled. When it goes 2♠-p/x-3♠-4♥, I want partner to be comfortable with her (lack of) doubles and/or sacrifice decisions.