Define your strength and shape with a limit bid
Describe the strength and shape of your hand in bridge with just one or two bids.
When a player makes a limit bid their partner is well placed to choose the final contract. It's important to know the limit bids for all the bidding situations, no matter what bidding system you're playing.
The following hand is balanced with 18 high card points balanced hand. Nice.
As opener and with a balanced hand, we should be able to describe our shape and our strength to partner in just one or two bids. So let's do a quick review of the numbers.
Acol version 1 12-14 Open 1N 15-16 Open 1 suit, rebid 1N 17-18 Open 1 suit, rebid 2N 19 Open 1 suit, rebid 3N 20-22 Open 2N 23-24 Open 2♣, rebid 2N 25+ Open 2♣, rebid 3N
Acol version 2 12-14 Open 1N 15-17 Open 1 suit, rebid 1N 18-19 Open 1 suit, rebid 2N 20-22 Open 2N 23-24 Open 2♣, rebid 2N 25+ Open 2♣, rebid 3N
Standard 12-14 Open 1 suit, rebid 1N 15-17 Open 1N 18-19 Open 1 suit, rebid 2N 20-21 Open 2N 22-24 Open 2♣, rebid 2N 25+ Open 2♣, rebid 3N
On our hand, North responds 1♥ so with our 18 points we jump to 2N on the second round.
North bids 4♥ and that's all we need to do.
East leads the ♠8. Looks like we have a club to lose and maybe a diamond depending where the ♦K is and maybe a spade depending where the ♠Q is.
What I don't want to do here is finesse the spade unless I need to, so I'm going to play the ♠A, draw trumps and then play the diamonds. Even if the diamond finesse loses, I can throw away one of my spades later.
tags: #constructivebidding #limitbids
