January 2016 - 29

Fighting Fire with Fire
Newly approved transfers help against overcalls.

t is a bridge fact that transfer bids
are a hugely popular conventional
tool. Even inexperienced players
use Jacoby and Texas transfer
bids by responder after a 1NT or 2NT
opening bid as the preferred way to
show a five-card or longer major suit.
Transfers are easy to use and convey
useful information.
There are many reasons to play
transfer bids, but the one we're going
to focus on in this article has to do with
forcing the defending side to lead up to
declarer's strength rather than through
it. Players intuitively understand the
need to protect honor holdings such as
K-x or A-Q: It's fine if the defender on
your left leads a suit where you have
such a holding, but it's not so great if
the player on your right does it. It's
even more important to protect these
holdings if the defender on your left
has overcalled in the relevant suit.
Overcalls and takeout doubles are
the twin pillars of competitive bidding. Both provide important clues for
declarer and defense during the play.
If a defender has overcalled during the
auction, the partner of the overcaller
will strive to lead that suit. This means
that if you're declarer and you have a
sensitive holding in a suit overcalled on
your left, it may be critically important
to keep your right-hand opponent off
lead. Here's an extreme example:
Dlr: South
Vul: N-S
IMPs

♠A82
♥AJ3
♦842
♣KJ63

♠5
♥ 10 8 7 2
♦ A Q 10 9 7 6 5
♣5
♠ Q 10 7
♥KQ96
♦KJ
♣AQ82

BY FRED HAMILTON AND BOB CIAFFONE

As South, you open 1NT. LHO overcalls a natural 2♦, and partner jumps
to 3NT, ending the auction. LHO leads
a low spade. If you decide to play low
from dummy, RHO will win the king
and play a diamond through your K-J,
giving the defenders the first eight
tricks. Instead, you should win dummy's ♠A and your other top winners to
make your contract.
Next, let's look at an example of a
Jacoby transfer in action:
Dlr: South ♠ Q 2
Vul: Both ♥ A Q J 4 3
IMPs
♦K95
♣752
♠ 10 9 8 7
♠J643
♥75
♥K62
♦7643
♦ 10 8
♣A86
♣ Q J 10 9
♠AK5
♥ 10 9 8
♦AQJ2
♣K43
West

North

East

Pass
2♦(1)
Pass
3NT
All Pass

Pass
Pass

South
1NT
2♥
4♥

(1) Jacoby transfer: five-plus hearts.
West leads the ♠10. Because declarer (South) realizes that a losing

trump finesse to East will likely mean
a club return through his rickety club
holding, he decides to first play three
rounds of spades, discarding one club
from dummy. When the ♥10 is ducked
to East's king and a club comes back,
the defenders can only get two club
tricks, and the contract is secure. Note
that if North were declarer, the contract would fail on the opening lead of
the ♣Q by East.
The power of the transfer bid by responder is that it allows opener to play
the contract. This makes the stronger
hand declarer in nearly all cases, yielding great benefits. The opening leader
leads up to your high-card power rather than through it, which is important
because the success of many contracts
depends on the opening lead.

A new kind of transfer

In recent years, there has been an
expansion in the use of transfer bids to
other areas besides notrump bidding.
Transfer bids after an overcall were approved for the ACBL General Convention Chart in March 2015, and we are
big fans of this treatment. Transfers
after overcalls are increasingly helpful because players use overcalls more
often these days, especially when nonvulnerable. The logical counter to

About the authors
♠KJ9643
♥54
♦3
♣ 10 9 7 4

ACBL Hall of Famer Fred Hamilton has
won two world bridge
championships. He
has also won 17 North
American titles. Fred
who lives in Las Vegas
is a full-time player
with more than 35,000 masterpoints.

Bob Ciaffone, of
Saginaw MI, is a Gold
Life Master who has
written numerous
articles on bridge
bidding theory. He is
an expert in various
games including backgammon, chess and poker.
January 2016 Bridge Bulletin

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of January 2016