Two Club Openings

Two Club Openings - Introduction

In so-called “Standard” methods, 2♣ is used as a general purpose strong bid … the other two-of-a-suit openings are used for other purposes, most commonly as preemptive actions. But the 2♣ opening bid is artificial, strong, and, in most cases, it is forcing to game.

Consider this hand: ♠ AKQ875

♥ AK7

♦ 8

♣ AQT

A nice 22-count! With reasonable luck, this hand will have a play for game most of the time, even opposite the most pitiful of dummies. So, we open 2♣ to create the force. Why not open 1♠? Well, to understand why, here is a hand from the other end the spectrum:

♠ 96

♥ 86

♦ 76542

♣ 9743

A magnificent Yarborough! No, we are not being sarcastic, we present this hand as an example of how little it takes to make game opposite that earlier hand. In fact, the way the hands fit together, an overtrick is not out of the question! The point we are making here is that we open 2♣ whenever we are afraid that our opening one-of-a-suit bid may get passed out, resulting in a missed game by us.

In this introductory article, we’ll just concentrate on what is a 2♣ opener, and what is not. How we follow up in 2♣ auctions will be covered later.

No Trump Hands

If we are playing a strong No Trump system, this is how we show our No Trumpish hands:

12-14 We open one of a suit, and then, if appropriate, we rebid 1NT.

15-17 1NT opening.

18-19 We open one of a suit, and then, if appropriate, we jump to 2NT.

20-21 2NT opening.

22-24 Open 2♣ and then rebid 2NT.

How about even stronger balanced hands? Well, they don’t come up every day of the week. You could certainly open 2♣, and then jump to 3NT for 25-26. But, all this jumping around with big hands is not conducive to accurate slam bidding, there's a convention for those hands ... please see the article on Kokish Relay.

Major Suit Hands

When your long suit is a major, you can stretch things just a little when it comes to opening 2♣. For example, that hand we gave earlier cannot, on its own, guarantee game. But, it takes so little from Partner to actually make game that you should have no qualms about opening 2♣. The risk of your 2♣ opening pushing you overboard is less than the risk of playing in 1♠ when game is cold. Here is the previous hand repeated for convenience:

♠ AKQ875

♥ AK7

♦ 8

♣ AQT

Is this a bottom-end 2♣ opening bid? Or can we weaken it a bit further, and still open 2♣? Some would say that this is about as low as a 2♣ opener should go. We disagree! We would even stoop as low as:

♠ AQJ875

♥ AK7

♦ 8

♣ AQT

To open 1♠ with this hand is to risk getting passed out there. But there are just too many awful hands that Responder might hold which he will pass, when game is quite cold. For example, if Partner could only have the decency to show up with the K♠, or the Q♥, or a doubleton Heart, or some Spade length, or the K♣, then 4♠ will have a play, and may well be cold.

Yes, opening 2♣ with this hand is somewhat borderline, perhaps, but, in our view, it’s the right call, just to avoid the danger of getting passed out at the one-level when 4♠ is cold. True, once in a while, our ebullience will get us to a game going down, but that’s all part of the overall equation.

How about this hand?

♠ AKJ6543

♥ KQJT

♦ 6

♣ 8

Yes, you could open this 2♣. After all, you do have close to 10 tricks in your own hand, why not? The answer is twofold. First of all, you have enough distribution, and few enough HCPs, to make it highly unlikely that 1♠ will be passed out. Secondly, if we open 2♣, Partner will expect some defense from us, and things could get quite un-partnership-like if they compete to 5 of a minor.

Minor Suit Hands

Here is our original hand, with the suits reversed:

♠ AK7

♥ 8

♦ AKQ875

♣ AQT

Suddenly, it does not look so good! Game in Diamonds will require more than a little help … and 3NT requires a Heart stop from Partner, to say nothing of a running Diamond suit. Not all would agree with this, but we would open the hand above with 1♦ … if it doesn’t get passed out we will be in good shape. And, as we shall see later, 2♣ auctions, where the Opener has a minor suit, have a tendency to get very crowded … you open 2♣, Partner makes some kind of artificial or negative bid, and now Opener bids 3 of his minor … let’s face it, the 3-level is rather high to start introducing suits for the first time!

Even though some might balk at opening 1♦ with the above hand, few experts would open 2♣ with this collection:

♠ AK7

♥ 8

♦ AQJ875

♣ AQT

Yes, this is the hand from before, but where Spades was the long suit. In that case, it looked like a 2♣ bid to us. And, now that Diamonds is the long suit? Not even close! This is a 1♦ opening bid!