DavidC's Bridge Blog

This is not really a bidding theory post, it's more of a practical thing. In my regular partnerships I play very complex systems. But I ...

Keri is Ron Klinger's system of responses to a 1NT opening, as described in his book "Bid Better, Much Better After Opening 1NT...

Following on from the previous post , let's assume we are playing a system which uses a natural 2C opener, and have agreed to pass hands...

Suppose we hold this hand as dealer, playing Polish Club: S 8 H KQ73 D AQ7 C JT653 What do we do? The normal opening bid with this shape is ...

There is an old debate about whether a new suit by responder (e.g. 1S : (2C) : 2H) should be forcing or not. Either method is very useful wh...

This is a simple defence to 1NT that I've been playing recently. It's my own invention, though given how simple it is, it would be s...

Since I posted the link to the Polish Club system notes last week a few of us have been practising bidding on BBO. Some parts of the notes ...

One of the reasons I haven't posted much on my blog recently is that I've been writing up my system notes for Polish Club. This is a...

This method is quite popular amongst players of 2/1 GF: after a major-suit opening, a jump to 3 of a lower suit is invitational and shows a ...

When responder has a balanced hand and is interested in slam, he can use a relay-like sequence to find out about opener's shape. Dependi...

Since I wrote about an artificial 2C response to 1-of-a-major , some people have asked me about continuations. There are certainly plenty of...

This follows on from the explanation of the artificial 2C response to major-suit openings. If playing natural 2/1 responses (apart from 2C)...

This is another way to try and improve bidding after a 5-card major opening, but unlike the artificial 2C response this convention is very ...

If you play 2/1 Game Force (or "GF except rebid"), you need to decide what you will do on a hand worth forcing to game over a 1-of...

It's difficult to find a good meaning for the 3NT opening. The "natural" strong balanced meaning doesn't work very well be...

One of the main issues to be resolved in a Polish Club system is whether to open 1C or 1D on minimum balanced hands with four diamonds. In W...

Polish Club is one of my preferred systems, and it demonstrates many of the things I've talked about in my series on bidding theory. It ...

I've now finished all that I wanted to say on general bidding theory. It has only covered one particular aspect of bidding theory - the ...

Playing a Strong Club (or Strong Diamond) system means that natural opening bids can be limited to a maximum of 15 HCP or so. Since these op...

Nearly all opening bids give some information about strength, but here we want to look at bids which show only the strength of the hand, giv...