Defensive Bidding

♣ ♦ ♥ ♠

Your opponents have opened the bidding - they have taken the advantage, the white pieces in chess! Now you can no longer make your normal opening bids! Instead you are on the defensive with the Black pieces! and your bids may be very different too! Without the free choices you would have with the white pieces you are now in either a 'reactive mode' or 'defensive mode' rather than a 'proactive mode'

BETA's Defensive bidding must be responsive to the nature of the opponents system card and their opening bid:-

If they play PRECISION or another strong Club system. They will usually be playing 5 card Majors and a strong 1♣ of at least 16HCP and a strong NT of 15-17 or so. Their opening bids if 1♣! or 1♦! will both be alerted. See Precision for our defence.

If they open weak 2's or pre-empt at the 3 level or higher we need to react:. See Pre-emptive-bids for our defence style. Basically the opponents are taking a risk and we need to know how to balance penalising them or going forward ourselves. With opponents tending to make really flimsy 2-bids these days we need to seriously consider calling thier bluff.

Your LHO opened the bidding and this is passed round to you. See bidding in the Protective position. See how to re-open in protective position, the science and the possible risks entailed.
RHO bids 1NT. See our defence to a NT opening
This leaves the most frequent case: RHO bids 1 in any suit with opening values:.10-12+ HCP. See our defence to a 1 of a suit opening
Other 1-level alerted minor openings.
Other 2-level alerted openings: 2♦ Multi, Lucas 2's, 2♣|♦ strong.

The following remarks are just reminders and a mere introduction - after reading this page, please follow the appropriate links given above above for the 'nitty gritty'!.

Pleease note that the defensive options available to you in 2nd position are very different to those available to you in protective position! don't mix them up! In fact they are so different that confusion is unlikely!

If you are following a 3rd hand opening you will still be following our 2nd position notes. Just be aware that 3rd hand openings maybe somewhat lighter in terms of HCP or suit length than an opening bid made in 1st position. Note too that your partner may have failed to open the bidding when he had a chance to do so.

BETA is an aggressive bidding system. In BETA we enter the bidding when opponents have opened ONLY when we have something precise to present. Bidding for the sake of it tends to help opponents and not help our cause! So you will observe that our available range of defensive bids provides a set of responses for specific situations. Partner will see and understand your line of attack and then consider what can be added or whether its time to call it a day.

In BETA's style we are keener to enter the bidding fray when we have TWO FEATURES to show! It doubles our chance of being able to compete - we can hope partner can pick up on one of the proposed lines! That double attack adds a measure of safety too perhaps doom too when neither are on!

We also risk defensive bids simply to removes significant bidding space from our opponents - there is risk in doing this but also significant potential benefits - fundamentally it cramps the opponents - taking away their ability to use their preferred sequences - in other words reducing their options. A simple example: If opponents open 1♦ and one makes a 2♣ o'call - you have stolen a whole round of bidding - and significantly reduces their bidding options too. They can no longer show their 4 card Major at the 1-level. Surely worth the risk!

Now, bearing all this in mind, look at the possibilities in the various links given to you within the above text. They are the building blocks of defence and the player has to use the available weaponry up to the hilt!