Opening Strong 2C With Tricks Not Points
Mike Bitonti
A couple months ago, a CBC Director had to make a ruling on the legitimacy of a 2C opening call. The details of the hand are not important, nor is the ruling made by the Director at the time. But the necessity of our Directors having to make such rulings got me thinking… what truly does constitute a legitimate strong 2C opening bid? For that, Google is your friend!
A quick search on Google yielded the following link:
This document, while dated 9/14/2013, is the most authoritative document I could find on ACBL’s position towards strong 2C opening hands. For those not wanting/able to open this document, the key paragraph within is:
Opening an artificial and forcing bid without an “abundance” of high card values is acceptable under the following circumstance: If, in the view of the bidder, there is a reasonable chance for game in hand with little help from partner.
So I followed the rabbit to its hole, into which I promptly dove head first. The ACBL’s 2C opener position statement couldn’t have been more vague if they had tried, however there is one thing that is clearly missing, and that’s a statement on the requirement of general hand strength. For many years I had the adamant belief (ask Mary Townhill!)
that strong 2C openers in 2/1 or Standard American systems required what a Director felt to be a generally strong HCP holding, not just a distributional trick-taking hand. The ACBL document smashes that fantasy by saying it’s acceptable under a specific condition. Grudgingly, I cried “Uncle”. But this really just kicked the issue from one point to another… from “how many HCP is enough for 2C” to what defines “…reasonable chance for game in hand with little help from partner.” Time to bring this to the Queen’s Court!
What a better group of people to bring this puzzle to than the CBC Director Team… let the games begin! But before I get into that, I’ll also present a discussion thread I found on this topic where players worldwide provided their insightful, and sometimes colorful, comments:
There are ~100 comments in this thread, but one thing I believe most of them have in agreement is how poorly written the ACBL position statement is. As one fellow calls it:
“it’s a sad, sad document”. Agreed, mate! Now back to the CBC Director Team.
We spent a fair amount of time during last month’s Director meeting discussing this position statement, and I believe we were (more or less) in agreement that the verbiage of “reasonable chance” equates to being within one trick of game based on suit(s) represented in the opener’s hand. Thus, if a declarer has 9 likely winning tricks with a long major suit, then he/she only needs one trick from partner to make 10, and thus their game. That would be acceptable. If the 9 winners were in a minor suit hand, then declarer would need 2 tricks from partner to make 5C/5D, thus it would not qualify. For hands that are deemed not to qualify as legitimate 2C strong opening hands, the Director will assess an adjusted score on the board in favor of the non-offending side unless the final contract result it more favorable for the non-offenders, in which case that result will stand.
I’m going to pause for a moment to allow those readers who are screaming… “reasonable should be 2 tricks!!!”, or “reasonable is only ½ a trick!!!” to vent, calm down, and get over it. This is the rub of discussion; there is no qualifiable, objective, one-correct answer to this issue. It’s a Director interpretation, and unless the Director demonstrates what I would feel to be an abnormal interpretation of “reasonable chance”, then we must respect that Director’s decision for that ruling. I encourage our Director team to ask advice from other Directors at the game, and even other experienced players when it comes to subjective rulings, but at the end of the day it’s still the Director’s ruling that needs to be respected.
The ACBL position document gives the following two hands as examples of legitimate strong 2C openers:
Example 1
♠
A K Q J 10 9 7 6 5
♥
7 5 4
♦
2
♣
‐‐‐
Example 2
♠
A K Q 10 9 8
♥
J 10 9 8 7 6
♦
4
♣
‐‐‐
From the ACBL document:
“If a pair thinks that Examples 1 and 2 are 2
♣
openers, then their convention card should have some notation about playing strength in the appropriate place. Also, if a pair marks their card with HCP limits for their 2
♣
openers, they should note if it only refers to balanced hands. (Directions ‐ April 1992)”
