In Bridge, what are "proper" responses to a "strong" 2 club bid?

Question

Bidding Standard American, and opening a "strong" two clubs (typically 22 HCPs and a six card suit), I like to hear responses of 2 diamonds (0-8 points, no more than game interest), or 2NT (9+ plus points, possible slam interest).

I don't want to hear other responses (2 hearts, 2 spades, 3 clubs, 3 diamonds) unless the responder has at least six of them headed by something like KQJ (or better). The reasons are because 1) I've "advertised" such a good 6 card suit myself, and 2) with 22 points, I don't want partner bidding "my" suit and exposing my hand as dummy. (It's unlikely that we'll both have the same 6 card suit, which is why I allow this exception.)

Am I wrong to ask my partners to limit their responses to 2 diamonds and 2NT? Or are there other viable responses to my 2 Club opening?

Answer 1

If that's the system you've agreed with partner - that the only valid responses to 2C are 2D or 2NT - then it's fair enough to raise an eyebrow if they start improvising.

Personally, and bear in mind that I don't play Standard American myself, but a pretty loose take on Acol: I don't understand why you would want to restrict responses so strictly. Fair enough, you need to have a negative 2D bid, and to understand between you what that implies. Beyond that, the more expressive you can make your system, the better. What's the point of a 2NT "generic positive" bid if it just forces opener to ask more questions, at the next level of bidding, to determine the actual best contract to be in?

If my partner has enough points not to have to make a 2D bid, I'm delighted to hear about hearts or spades being his longest suit at the 2 level, even if that suit is only 5 cards or whatever. Naturally, if partner wants to talk about a minor suit, at the 3 level, they'd better have more than a 5 card suit, to be on the safe side...

Answer 2

Oye vey. It is too restrictive to expect lots of points and a 6 card suit. You want to use 2C for most hands with either 22+ high card points or 9 offensive tricks (generally 1 short of game). Two suited hands might be best handled with other systems. Generally 2C if you don't want partner to PASS.
Responses: I can think of at least five different response agreements: [1] just waiting, always 2D waiting, [2] waiting unless you have 7+ and a five card suit to bid or 10+ for NT response, [3] 2D game forcing, with A or K or for some QQ, 2H is not GF, 2S is spades, 2NT is five card heart suit and some points/stoppers [4] steps - 2D = 0-3, 2H=4-6, 2S=7-8, etc. and [5] control showing. Controls refers to bids that show Aces and Kings only. There are many answer sequence agreements, but many use 2D has a king or does not, 2H either has 2 Kings or just 1 Ace, 2S is exactly 1 Ace and 1 King, 2NT is exactly 3 Kings, 3C is 4+ control points. Ace=2 and King=1. I have played them all. I find # 4 and 5 more useful for slam bidding.

Answer 3

The most common agreement in the US is that 2D by responder covers almost all hands. At this point you know very little about opener's hand, so if you want to take up more bidding space than that you should be very descriptive. I play that bidding a suit shows two of the top three honors in that suit and nothing of value elsewhere. 2NT by responder has no meaning. It preempts your partner, and if opener is balanced you'd prefer that defenders not get the advantage of seeing the big hand. So 2D can cover a huge range of hands. That's OK, because opener's most likely rebid is 2NT (22-24 HCP balanced), over which you play the same system as you do responding to a 2NT opener (with required point counts adjusted, of course).

Edit: I didn't notice at first that (you say) 2C is typically 22+ HCP with a 6-card suit. This is certainly not current Standard American practice, which is to bid 2C on essentially any shape with 22+ HCP. The most common 2C opener is a balanced hand with 22-24 HCP.

Answer 4

If you use the 2♥ double negative response, and then 2♦ can be game-forcing (2 queens or stronger). Most pairs agreeing on this employ 2♠ for positive spades and 2NT for positive hearts.

You can also reverse the 2♠ and 2NT above, making them reverse transfers.

You mean the auction 2♣-2♦;2NT-3♥/♦ can be positive 5-card ♠/♥? The tradeoff is that disastrous 4M+2 and 6M-1 are more likely to happen. :)

Answer 5

I don't play Standard American, so this may be not the most valuable answer. But I can't believe you've read it right if the only two worthwhle responses are 2D and 2NT. Even if you do decide that you are only interested in negative (8- HCP) or positive (9+), that would be an inefficient way of doing it; why not make the positve response 2H, to give you more space? And no decent player would deliberately forego finding out partner's best suit, unless you have such a powerful hand that you only want to find out whether partner has one particular card before deciding which slam. (There are bids for this last situation, but I don't propose to discuss them; unless you are already too good to be taking advice from this site, gadgets for situations that rare can only cause trouble).

Answer 6

My duplicate bridge teacher suggested a 2D response as either negative or "waiting" in order to see what suit(s) the opener rebid. That might keep the responder from winning the bid and exposing the stronger hand as dummy.

Answer 7

Echoing the above with regard to not needing a 6-card suit. Wrongsiding a NT contract is usually worse than wrongsiding a hearts contract, so I think it's best to avoid responder making a 2NT response unless you want to get fancy.

If you want to keep things simple but effective, popular in clubs in North America is to have 2D be "semipositive", meaning a king or two queens or better. 2H is a bust -- may not provide even a single trick. Responder should bid their own suit at the 3 level only when it's a strong candidate for the right strain opposite Hx. Opener's most common hand type is the 22-24 balanced, and so you can use your 2NT system for responder to express their suit. And if opener isn't 22-24 balanced, they either have your suit too or they have their own suits to bid with limited support for yours.

So something that fits well with 2D = semipositive plus 2H = bust is to have 2N be unused, and 2S through 3H being transfers to the next suit, with KQxxxx or better. If you have a five-card major you can bid it after opener's suit rebid, or transfer to it over their 2N rebid.