Expert Conventions Expert

Four Suit Transfers

There are a few areas of bidding where simpler systems do a perfectly good job, and players can decide when, if ever, they want to move up a gear in terms of complexity in order to gain extra accuracy. Responding to 1NT with long minor suits is one such area. Once you are fully familiar with all other aspects of responding to 1NT opening, you may want to switch to a four suit transfers system. This simply means that each of the suits has its own transfer bid, rather than clubs and diamonds ‘sharing’ the 2♠ response. This refinement to the system of minor suit transfers that you originally learned gives you and your partner extra information that can be crucial to finding certain 3NT contracts that you would otherwise not reach, and to reaching the best slam contracts when you have long minor suits.

Try some hands

Hand 1

After opening a sort-of balanced 1NT, you must find the right response to your partner’s transfer. Be careful in the play: there’s two tricky choices to make.

Hand 2

Once again, your partner will transfer and you must decide the best response. In the play, you should pay attention to see if either opponent plays a suspicious card when you start drawing trumps.

Hand 3

After you find a way to show a weak hand with diamonds, your partner will bid 3♦. What does this mean and does it change anything about where you want to play?

Hand 4

Once your partner opens, you start to get very excited about the possibility of slam. How might you find it? Once the play starts, you must also make sure that you win every last one of your clubs to guarantee the contract.

Back

Four Suit Transfers

This video explains both the mechanics of the system (the ‘how’) and the advantages it brings (the ‘why’) when bidding certain types of hand.

Question 1/7

Walter has a very weak hand with six clubs. How should he respond to Penelope’s 1NT opening bid?

Now that you are playing four suit transfers, 2♠ is no longer a transfer with either minor, forcing opener to bid a ‘pass or correct’ 3♣. Instead, it shows specifically six or more clubs.

Continuing the same auction, Walter has correctly bid 2♠ to show his 6+ clubs. What should Penelope bid now?

Penelope ‘likes’ clubs - that is to say she has an honour and at least two other cards in the suit. She thinks: ‘If you like the suit, bid the suit’ and so she bids clubs. If she had less than this honour third holding, so either only two cards or three small ones, she would bid 2NT. Bidding 3♦ would make no sense, as it would then now be possible for her partner to play in 3♣.

Now that Penelope has said that she likes clubs, what should Walter bid next?

With a better hand, Walter might be see the potential for 5 or 6 tricks from his club suit. Combined with Penelope’s good hand, this would mean they would usually make 3NT, even when Walter has fewer than eight points. This hand, however, is so weak, that it does not fall into this category. There is no guarantee that with Jxx in clubs, for example, that Penelope would be able to establish the clubs in two rounds and get to dummy with the third. Penelope would need a lot of points in clubs for the suit to make six tricks, and if she does she can't really have the other suits stopped effectively even if she had 17 HCP.

How should Walter respond to his partner’s 1NT opening bid with this hand?

With ten points, Walter knows that the partnership has enough for game, but he has neither enough strength nor shape to be thinking about a slam. He is always going to want to be in 3NT, regardless of whether or not Penelope likes clubs, and he has no interest in the major suits, so he should just bid game and ignore the six card minor.

Walter has shown his 6+ diamond holding by bidding 2NT, and Penelope has bid 3♦. What should Walter bid next?

Although Walter has only five points, he knows that his diamond suit will provide a good source of extra tricks if Penelope is able to set up the suit and then get to his hand. In combination with her 15-17 points, these extra tricks should make nine tricks an ambitious but realistic target for Penelope. Because she has bid 3♦, showing that she likes diamonds - she has honour third or better in the suit - Walter knows that she should be able to get to his hand, so he can go ahead and bid 3NT.

A very similar situation, with Walter having the same hand, but Penelope having made a different rebid. What should Walter bid this time?

Walter still has that lovely diamond suit, but this time, there is no guarantee that Penelope will be able to reach his hand once the suit is established. If he has only two diamonds, and the opponents hold up the ace for one round, as they should, he will no longer have a diamond to play, and there is no other way to reach Walter’s hand. Having ascertained that Penelope does not like diamonds, Walter should settle for the sensible part score of 3♦.

Walter has started by showing his long clubs by responding 2♠ to Penelope’s 1NT opening. Penelope has shown that she likes clubs by bidding 3♣. What should Walter bid now?

Walter has a great hand once Penelope shows that she likes clubs, and he should definitely be looking for a slam rather than settling for 3NT. The most useful way for him to take that investigation forward is by showing where he has shortage, which he can do by bidding a new suit at the three level. This will help Penelope to evaluate her hand, and they still have the four level available for cue bidding.

These links will take you to the Bridge Training website, where you can have a go at bidding and responding to Four-Suit Transfers. You will then be able to play the hands and see if you can make your contract. Have as many goes as you like if you don’t succeed the first time.