OPENING SYSTEM STRUCTURE OVERVIEW

ACOL, WEAK NT, 3 WEAK TWOS’, 4 ¾ (4.99%) CARD MAJORS

I’ll never forget how disappointed I was to find out that Albert Benjamin didn’t play Benji Acol when I first played against him. And today none of our top bridge teachers play Acol, preferring an American or European strong no-trump, 5-card major and heavily transfer based system. It smacks of ‘Don’t do as I do, do as I say’.

During the 200 plus days of lockdowns I read about the only pair at the Wuhan World Bridge Championships playing what we ordinary mortals might recognise as Acol. The EBU magazine featured a series of articles from 2019 by Chris Jagger on the ‘Four and three quarters card majors’ system he played with his partner. I liked this framework (though not the optional complicated gizmos detailed later) and adjusted my Acol system to use this.

No system is perfect but I prefer a natural framework as it’s easier to remember, risks fewer mistakes and has more similarities to the responding structure which I’ll outline later. If like me you want to play a simple structure with partners, I recommend this to you.

• 1NT is 12-14 points, over twice as frequent as 15-17 balanced points.
• 2NT is 19-21 points as this range doubles the frequency of use from 20-22.
• Open the lower of two four card suits.
• With 4major333 distributions always open 1C.
• 4441 hands open 1D with a black suit singleton and 1C with a red suit singleton.
• This means opening 1S is always a 5 card suit and opening 1H is 99% a five card suit or 4/4 majors with a 15-18 balanced hand.
• When 5/5 play ‘high fives’, opening the higher suit first, otherwise always open your longest suit first.

SUMMARY

1♣  – either 4+ clubs; or 4333 with four-card major 15-18; or red suit singleton 4441 shape

1♦  – always 4+ diamonds; can be 4441 shape and black suit singleton

1♥  – 5+ hearts (99% frequency); or 4/4 in majors (open lower suit) and 15-18 balanced

1♠  – always a 5+ suit

1NT – Announce ‘12-14 points’, a balanced hand 4432, 4333 and any 5332 including a 5-card major; these 1NT hands comprise 10% of all hands.

2NT – balanced 19 to 21 points, no singleton, 1% all hands, not announced or alerted.

Opening one of a suit is always an unbalanced hand or 15-18 balanced.

Opening bid requirements for 2C and 2D/H/S will be discussed separately later.

COMPETING AND SCORING AT BRIDGE

As I said in my introduction, I think of every board as being worth 4% of the total score when playing 24 boards in a duplicate competition. At Gentle Bridge where we might play 16 boards every board is worth about 6%. Every board is a fresh scoring opportunity, try to forget the previous board whether you’ve had a great score or not.

Everyone will be familiar with the concept of needing 25 points between the partners to make a game contract like 3NT or four of a major (4M). We bid games for the bonus points they bring – 300 points if non-vulnerable and 500 points if vulnerable. The competition on these hands is first to make the contract and second to try to make extra tricks if you can safely do so to beat the other scores on that board.

When you play, around half of the boards will have the points divided between the North/South and East/West partnerships somewhere in the range of 22 to 18. Depending on your distribution and that of your partner and opponents, usually these boards should be competitive where both partnerships can make some sort of contract.

As you know, making a part score contract gets you 50 points plus the value of the tricks made – majors each 30, minors each 20 points. In no-trumps the first trick is worth 40 points, all subsequent tricks 30 points.

When you go off in a contract, if non-vulnerable each undertrick scores 50 points, vulnerable undertricks score 100 points each. But if you are doubled and go down, non-vulnerable undertricks score minus 100, 300, 500 and 800 for four down. Vulnerable doubled undertricks score minus 200, 500, 800 and 1100 for four down.

If you think the opponents can make a 2M contract scoring 110 points, if you go off in three of a minor (3m) but lose only 100 points you will score well. Sacrificing against successful game contracts can also work well, even doubled. Minus 300 beats plus 420 and minus 500 beats plus 620 for example. But reversing the vulnerability may result in a very poor score for you.

LEARNING TIPS

Don’t be afraid of bidding vulnerable games but if you are competing over which partnership will play the board, take the vulnerability into account.

Learn to compete because pushing your opponents to play in 3♠ rather than 2♠ and holding them to 8 tricks is winning bridge.

Don’t be afraid to double if you think you can defeat your opponents! Especially when you think they are sacrificing against your making game.

FINESSING AS DECLARER

Let’s think about playing for a change! Everyone will be familiar with a finesse – an attempt to win a trick with a card when the opponents have a higher card in the same suit. As declarer, typical examples would include leading to the AQ when missing the King or leading to the KJ10 and playing the Jack or ten hoping to force out the Ace and finesse the Queen again later.

There are three stages to taking a finesse

• Identify the card that needs to be promoted
• Lead from the opposite hand towards that card
• Play the card, the third to the trick, hoping that the opponent playing second holds the missing higher card.

So far so good but for a long time I failed to realise that there are other types of finesse you can take as declarer whilst adhering to the three stages. One cropped up on Board 1 at Gentle Bridge on January 8^th 2026.

In 3NT you have 27 combined points but only six top tricks. After an unfortunate (for the defence) King of clubs lead which gives you two more tricks, you take a spade finesse which loses. Stuck on eight winners and with outside stops dwindling, you need to play the heart suit of AK32 facing J95 for three tricks.

Now you could play your Ace and King and hope the Queen falls but the odds are against this succeeding. The odds favour a 4-2 split of the six remaining cards and the Queen being in the longer holding.

Instead you take a finesse by leading a small heart from your hand towards the Jack! Now we are taught to cash our winners and giving up a trick goes against everything that ‘feels’ the right thing to do but it’s surprising how often this type of finesse play can happen. Initially you hope that the Queen of hearts (QH) is in the second hand but instead the 10H is played! With J95 you can cover the 10H with the JH and either it wins or if the defender wins the QH, then your 9H will win. This is a better percentage chance to win three heart tricks.

LEARNING TIP

Opportunities for promoting winners as declarer through taking finesses are quite common. Another example like the one above that is perhaps easier to spot is if you hold Axx and partner Qx or Qxx. You can lead towards the Queen and if the King is in the second hand you have made another successful finesse.

COMMON HAND SHAPES

Most people learn about points first when playing bridge but now that you’ve been playing for a while, I want you to think about hand shapes. There are thirty-nine possible hand shapes (from the flattest 4333 up to 13000!) but only thirteen have a probability of occurring more than 1% of the time. These are

4 4 3 2 – balanced hand (over seven times more frequent than 4441), 21.5% probability

5 3 3 2 – balanced, open 1NT if 12-14 points, even with a five-card major, 15.5% probability

5 4 3 1 - unbalanced hand, considered three suited, 13% probability

5 4 2 2 - unbalanced (except for some 2NT openers or NT rebids), 10.5% probability

4 3 3 3 – balanced hand, 10.5% probability too, has no ruffing potential

6 3 2 2 – 5.6% probability (the six-card suit shape best suited for NT)

6 4 2 1 - open the longest suit, usually rebid four-card suit – 4.7% probability

6 3 3 1 – 3.4% probability, usually open and repeat suit

5 5 2 1 – Michaels and Unusual NT type shape - not so common only 3.2% probability

4 4 4 1 – the 10^th most common shape, 3% probability. 90% of hands are these ten shapes

7 3 2 1 – 1.9% probability (seven times more likely to hold one of the above six-card shapes)

6 4 3 0 – 1.3% probability, plan to open your long suit and usually rebid the four-card suit

5 4 4 0 – 1.2% probability, truly three suited! A void in partner’s suit can be bad news.

The three balanced hands account for 47.5% of all hands. All the other ten shapes above with over 1% probability also add up to 47.5%. In a session of twenty boards, you will pick up on average only one hand that does not fall into one of these patterns. Unless opening 1NT or 2NT, which define your point range and limit your shape options to the balanced hands above, you must have a rebid plan as opener to tell your partner about your shape and your points, which we will return to later.

• 35% of hands have four cards as their longest suit
• 43.4% have five cards as their longest suit
• 15% have six cards as their longest suit

A void is likely in only 5% of all deals. In 54% of deals a doubleton will be the shortest suit; 30.5% a singleton. Holding exactly 4333 will occur the other 10.5% of the time.

Long suit odds are an 11-card suit 2.7 million to one; 40,000 deals to see one 10-card suit. Even an 8-card suit is 0.47% likelihood with a 9-card suit 0.037%.

LEARNING TIPS

Concentrate on learning these most common hand shapes because having a strong understanding of how to bid each shape, combined with your points, will help you bid better and, when defending, recognise what shape hand your opponent holds too from their bid. Knowing their shape and counting distribution will help improve your scores.