North
1[club]
East
?
You are in the Overcall position and your Right Hand Opponent (RHO) opens 1[club]. What should you bid?
I told several people about this hand….they couldn’t believe it! You have two choices 1[spade] or 2[club], Michaels, showing 5+/5+ cards in spades and hearts. At the time they gave me this hand I suggested a 1[spade] bid for a couple of reasons.
- Your spades are much better in suit quality than your hearts. You need to emphasis the spade suit.
- The auction will not go 1[spade] – Pass – Pass – Pass. There are too many cards in clubs and diamonds in the remaining three hands and too many points for the hand to get passed out.
- If you bid Michaels and partner has one spade and two hearts…which suit do you want to be trumps? Spades! Let’s emphasis spades.
If you’re interested, virtually everyone I talked to opted to bid 1[spade]. By the way, partner raises spades…isn’t that nice!
See more of this technique in Patty’s “Michaels and Unusual 2 No Trump” book.