Trial bids

After a major is raised to two, most pairs have agreements about the meaning of a new suit: a "trial" bid, or "game try."  These days, the most common agreement seems to be the "help suit" game try.  Personally, I'm not a fan, because it's so hard to know what kind of help partner needs.  And, if responder retreats to 3 of our major, the defense know that they can fairly safely start with the trial suit if they have no other compelling lead.

Personally, I like the power of a double fit and so, traditional second suit bids make more sense to me.  On the other hand, I like short-suit tries too, because it is so easy for responder to know which points in his hand are working and which aren't.  With 7 or more "working" points, it's probably reasonable to bid game.

With some partners, I've played a rather complex system of two-way game tries: the first step is a prelude to a short-suit try (after partner's relay), the third and fourth steps are long suit tries and the second step is everything else (including the "power" try and the short-suit try we skipped with the first step sequence). 

A number of years ago, I read in the Bridge World about Eric Kokish's scheme for two-way tries.  This idea made a lot of sense to me.  Now, I have been able to agree that system with several partners.  It's simpler than the other two-way scheme and really has all of the advantages, while concealing the nature of opener's (declarer's) hand as much as possible.

After 1♥–2♥–, 2♠ asks for the lowest ranking suit in which responder would accept a game try (2NT substitutes for spades).  Otherwise, 2NT, 3♣, 3♦ are short suit tries (NT again substituting for spades).

After 1♠–2♠–, things are simpler: 2NT asks for partner's lowest-ranking suit with help, and 3x is a short-suit try in x.

Of course, if responder names a suit where he has help but opener isn't impressed, he can make a counter-try in a higher-ranking suit, at the expense of revealing more about his hand.

Here's a hand from the club this week where we didn't get to the optimum contract, playing help suit game tries.  After 1♥–2♥– and holding ♠AK92 ♥A8542 ♦K85 ♣K, Len asked for help in diamonds with 3♦.  After all, he didn't need much help in spades.  With ♠QT75 ♥T96 ♦JT94 ♣A3, I reasoned as follows: my spade honors were likely useless (since partner skipped over spades) and my diamond honors might simply be too slow to be really helpful.  I therefore bid 3♥ only.  Well, I was right about the diamond honors but of course wrong about the spades.  We made four for a score of 66% (it wasn't the easiest of contracts and many of those who did bid game went down).  

Playing Kokish with this hand, opener doesn't have to be the one to choose which suit to make his game try in.  Assuming that he doesn't fancy a short-suit try in clubs, he can simply start with 2♠: where can you help?  I would respond 2NT (I have help in spades) and we'd be off to the races.  If I bid 3♣, he could still ask about diamonds.

With Kokish, the distinction between "help" suit and "second" suit is less of an issue because the only kind of help that responder will show is of the form honor third or better.  He will never show "help" with x or xx.