Artificial bids, (Conventions)

Many people play a bidding system called Five card majors. Under this system, a person playing this system, will not open the bidding unless they hold five cards in a major suit. The problem with this is that they may hold a really good four card suit and because they can't bid, their partner, who may be sitting with four cards in the same suit, may assume their partner hasn't got a bid and may pass missing a good contract. To overcome this problem, some people use the false club opening, (which they must tell their opponents about)

Clubs are the lowest ranking suit in bridge and are easy to outbid with the other suits. On top of that, you need to make eleven tricks to make a game in clubs and it is therefore no surprise that, over the years, some bids in the club suit have been adapted for artificial bidding. The lowest bid of all is one club and the artificial use of that to open the bidding has become popular. It works like this:

The person opening the bidding has an opening hand in terms of high card point count. The hand does NOT contain a five card major suit and the bidder would love to bid one no trump but can't because of other factors as shown in this hand.. (This only applies if the pair use weak no trumps opening bids).

S/he opens the bidding with one club, the prepared club bid, which shows an opening hand and no five card major suit. The responder replies one diamond if they have less than eight points and one no trump if they have around nine points but gives a positive response in their best suit otherwise. Bidding then continues naturally. If the opening bidder receives a weak, Diamond, response for their partner they will probably sign off with one no trump.

It is important to note that the opening bidder may have NO clubs in their hand or they may have many. For this reason it is imperative that their partner replies no matter what value they have.

If the player next to the opener bids, the opener's partner may pass with a very weak hand. It goes without saying that both partners must know and understand that they are playing this system for obvious reasons.

Pre emptive bids | Stayman convention | Take out doubles | Slam bidding