The Rabbit's rules

One of my Christmas gifts last year was The Rabbi's Rules by Mark Horton and Eric Kokish,

and based on the late Leonard Helman and his bridge philosophy. It's a very instructive book, with many examples of bidding and play from top-level competition recounted by Horton and interjected with good system suggestions from Kokish. There are 20 of the Rabbi's rules in the set and all are worthy reminders of things to do or not to do.

With the book in mind, I thought I might have a little fun with my own set of rules. But given that my bridge resume is not nearly so impressive as that of Helman, Horton or Kokish, I have dubbed them "The Rabbit's Rules." Most of these have already been talked about in this blog and in those cases, there will be links to the full blog.

1. There are no undos in bridge – once you've told partner you have a particular type of hand, you must stick to your story. See The "no undo" principle or What's done is done.
2. Every bid tells a story – there are many ways to bid a hand, especially in competition where you also have pass and double at your disposal so try to choose the sequence that best reflects your hand. See Every bid tells a story and also rule 11.
3. Overcalls, and other bids in competition, are made with a specific purpose (or purposes) in mind – not just because you paid your entry fee. See Tram Tickets or To overcall or not to overcall...
4. If you make a prepared bid of, say, 1♣ (i.e. with three clubs) you must rebid 1NT (or 2NT) unless partner bids your four-card suit. Rebidding a new suit promises 4+ clubs and a somewhat unbalanced hand. See Prepared Bids (part 1).
5. Get on the same page with your partner regarding the meaning of Double! See many articles, e.g. the Cooperative double and Reviewing the situation.
6. The best penalty doubles arise when you have no fit for partner. See Wielding the axe or What makes a good penalty double?
7. Close competitive decisions should be resolved in terms of the following parameters: trump quality, shape, defensive values. See also rules 8 and 9.
8. Close decisions by a passed hand should be resolved in favor of the more conservative action (usually pass). This is especially true when partner has made a "pressure bid." See Passed hands may make only one free bid.
9. Only make disciplined sacrifices: don't do it with quacks in the opponents suit or without shortness – and force the opponents to make the last guess. See To sacrifice or not to sacrifice.
10. Remember the Golden rules: Game before slam and Declare before game. See Two golden rules of bidding.
11. Don't tell the same story twice. If you've already bid a suit and you don't have any extra strength or distribution, don't rebid your suit again just because you don't want to defend.
12. If you're making a sub-standard third or fourth seat opener, bid a real suit, not a prepared bid. See Third and Fourth seat openers.
13. When the opponents have settled in a place that suits you – and you have no equity to protect, let them play there peacefully. See Staying with happiness.
14. If you plan to finesse twice in a suit, finesse against the lower honor first, unless you have a sequence above that honor. See The principle of least commitment.
15. If partner has freely bid two suits and you find yourself on lead, then lead the second suit. See the Principle of substantive discretionary bids.
16. If you've got it, flaunt it – but don't be a tease. You signal the location of a high card, say the king of spades in a notrump contract and later, partner gets in and leads a low spade. But you also have the ten while the jack is in dummy. Play the king, fulfilling your earlier promise, not the ten. Partner may have chosen to under-lead their ace on the basis of your earlier signal. [I feel sure there's an article on this in my blog but I couldn't find it]
17. On defense, don't infer secondary motives on the part of your partner. For example, if you have overcalled a suit or signaled an interest in a suit, and your partner subsequently leads that suit, don't assume he's looking for a ruff – he's just doing what you asked. On the other hand, if trying for a ruff can't possibly cost, you might as well go for it.
18. Try to be a lucky player. Have the opponents ever said after the hand was over "You were so lucky to make that contract – no other pair is going to bid that?" What those players don't appreciate is that you listened to the auction, visualized the hands, realized that all your cards were working and made your own luck. See How to be a lucky player.
19. Don't underestimate your opponents. As much as we all know that we ourselves are better than almost everyone, those "clueless" opponents will not simply keel over and die when they come to our table – we have to work at beating them. Even in the hands of a total palooka, the ace of trumps is still going to take a trick.
20. And the most important of all: Be nice to your partner. Have you ever been playing against a really good pair when they have a disaster? Do they argue and accuse each other of being an idiot? Not at all. They smile and put their cards back in the pocket. It can never be right to criticize partner at the table. Never, ever (although I have been guilty too many times). See RIP Norbert.

An accident waiting to happen

The trouble with rules is that sometimes they are in mutual conflict and it isn't always obvious which rule takes precedence.  Isaac Asimov gave his robots three rules and explicitly gave them a priority order.  But in bridge, it isn't always so clear.  Which rule is more binding may be "obvious" to one partner, while the other partner thinks a different rules is paramount.

Kim and I had just such a misunderstanding.  It was a bomb waiting to go off.  Fortunately for us, the bomb exploded alright but it blew up in the faces of our opponents, not us.

Here's the dichotomy in particular:

• Rule "1" -- when one player bids notrump to play*, all subsequent doubles are for penalty (* "to play" is defined as any natural notrump bid in the face of competition or at the two-level or higher);
• Rule "A" -- advancer of a notrump overcall bids with systems on^, that's to say as much as possible, we stick to our standard responses (^ "systems on" in our case means [after 1NT] Stayman, four-suit transfers, Texas transfers, various 3-level bids; [after 2NT] Romex Stayman, Jacoby transfers, minor-suit stayman).

In the event that the opponents intervene over 1NT, we use Lebensohl and negative doubles at the two and three levels (except that double of any 2C bid is always Stayman).  It's a lot less clear what we do over interference over a 2NT opener.  In my view, 2NT is "to play" by our definition (two-level or higher) and therefore partner's double would be penalty.  But partner sees a double here (other than over 3C which would be Stayman) as negative.  Who's right?  It all depends on which rule ("1" or "A") takes precedence.

Life becomes further complicated when we overcall notrump.  Again it's "to play" (bid in the face of competition) but what about "systems on"?

So here's the hand where this came up.  I held ♠KT953 ♥AQ5 ♦K8 ♣AQT in third seat (no-one was vulnerable).  Kind of an awkward hand, right?  I suppose I have to open 1♠ and then rebid 2NT over 1NT but then partner will be declarer and my hand which is chock full of tenaces will be exposed as dummy.  No matter, my RHO came to the rescue with 2♦.  Now, this was easy: 2NT showing a balanced 15-18 possibly with a five-card major (since we play Romex including opposite an overcall).  LHO now raised to 4♦ and partner doubled with ♠AQ72 ♥K732 ♦T2 ♣753.

Here's how I interpreted that double:  I bid two NT in competition so it's 100% penalty.  Here's how partner interpreted it: the opponents have strongly bid and raised a suit and our doubles are always for takeout (or two-way) in such cases.  We play systems on, and therefore double should be for takeout [we had never actually discussed a four-level overcall of a 1NT or 2NT opening].

I was of course overjoyed to pass this double, whatever its meaning and we duly collected 1100.  We could have made slam for 980/990 but in any case nobody else bid it (although all made 12 tricks in spades).  6NT (on 27hcp!) is the best contract but from my side of course in case the ♦A is in the wrong place.  It was only afterwards we discovered that this hand could so easily have been a disaster.

The last word?  I think that there are always three major considerations when discussing the meaning of calls: efficacy, frequency and simplicity.  To a point, I'm a big fan of simplicity when it comes to doubles, which is why I have developed my set of rules.  What about frequency and efficacy?  LHO has bid something, partner has overcalled in notrump, and RHO has raised.  Are we more likely to want to double for takeout (i.e. negative) or to penalize?  To be honest, I think we're much more likely to want to double for takeout so that "systems on" should take precedence, thus supporting Kim's use of the double card.  But, suppose that RHO didn't raise but bid a new suit.  It's almost impossible for us to have much in the way of values now.  Do we really want to make a takeout double?  I don't think so.  The only time I think we'd want to double would be when we happen to have some values in RHO's suit.

Really, I think the last word can be summed up in the typical experts' response when asked about this kind of double: "cards".  He who made the notrump overcall has to decide what to do based on bridge logic.  At IMPs and sometimes at matchpoints, the expert will generally "take the money".  The rest of the time?  Your guess is as good as mine.

Honey, let's agree that 2NT (3♦) X would also be negative (by extension of the 1NT sequence), thus overriding the other rule that a bid of 2NT is "to play".  We'll agree therefore that no opening notrump bid is ever "to play".  The next time it comes up, in about 2015, we should be well prepared :)