Loading ...inverted minors
I’ve been thinking lately that Shannon and I have spent something like two full years perfecting a dense major suit structure. If we have hearts and spades, my friends, we can show them. The power of the spade, after all, is second only to boss NT. It occurred to me that I don’t know my minors quite as well. Or, maybe, at all …
A funny thing happened in Gatlinburg: we were chugging along in some two-day knockout, nothing terrible happening and comparing with Ron & Justin (which is a kind of fun I highly recommend), when I discovered that Shannon and I were playing inverted minors in two completely different ways. Yikes.
Now, Inverted Minors was the last convention I learned in a week that started with forcing notrump and 2/1 forcing to game. It’s possible (even likely) that I didn’t pay sufficient attention; but who cares? It’s not that complicated: when partner opens 1C or 1D and I have a good hand with 5 or more of those and no 4-card major, I bid 2 of whatever she bid. If I have a bad hand with long trumps, I bid 3. Easy.
A few years ago I studied with Lynn Deas for a while. She read through our notes and said what we played after inverted minors was outdated. We showed stoppers in the majors on the way to 2N or 3N. Lynn told me that was silly, instead we should bid 2N or 3N after partner’s 2x call if our hand was balanced (stoppers are for weenies), and anything else announces an unbalanced hand. Okay. I wrote it up. That’s what we play. I like bidding NT with balanced hands when partner has a source of tricks. Those hands are usually easy to play. If we don’t have a stopper, we’re not going to tell you about it. You have to figure out what to lead all by yourself. Good luck. It’s probably the source of the random +600 …
Then the unexpected happened: I opened 1D, partner bid 2D. I bid 2H on my four small (I was 6-4) and Shannon bid 3N. The guy led a thing to his partner who promptly cashed his heart winners for down two. Shannon was aggravated: I’d told her I had a heart stopper when I most certainly did not. I was reminded how much I hate being in foolhardy contracts. Unlucky. In my mind, I didn’t tell her I had a stopper; I told her my hand was unbalanced and she shouldn’t maybe be thinking about playing the hand in NT. Yikes.
This week we’ll begin figuring it out …
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