Are you minimum or maximum?
Partner invites us to game. When should we accept? Invite rarely, accept often.
Most of the time when partner has made a limit bid you'll be in a position to choose the final contract. Sometimes, though, you'll need to know a little more about partner's hand. For example, if partner has shown 6-9 points then that's still a pretty big range. Invitational bids ask if partner is minimum or maximum.
Opener rebids notrumps
On this hand we have to decide whether or not to bid game. I've opened the bidding 1♣, North bids 1♦, and I rebid 1NT showing 15 to 17 because I'm playing Acol. If you're playing Standard, you would simply open this hand 1NT. Either way you're going to bid 1NT sometime and partner is going to raise to 2NT. 2NT asks us are we minimum or are we maximum? If we're at minimum we are to stay in 2NT, but if we're maximum we go to 3NT. I have 16 points and I've shown 15 to 17 a so I'm kind of in the middle. What do we do in that situation?
There's a couple of ways you can think about it. They lead to the same answer. One is that when partner invites us to game, we accept the invitation unless we are absolutely minimum and absolutely minimum on this hand would be 15. 16 isn't maximum, but it's not minimum either.
Invite rarely, accept often
The other quite common phrase that people use is 'invite rarely accept often', which means that from North's point of view, north bids 2NT and he doesn't want to do that too often! Most of the time North will either want to bid 3NT or just leave it in 1NT. 2NT gets us stuck nowhere some of the time. Sometimes you've got to do it but invite rarely accept often.
On this hand I've got to decide whether to accept or not, but I'm going to accept because any excuse will do and I've got 16. That's a good enough excuse!
tags: #constructivebidding
