"Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" Opener Rebids by Marti Ronemus

A: Pass: Members of the Clint Eastwood School of Bidding don't much like that bid, but the road ends here. Pard's hand is minimum and so is ours. Repeat three times: In a non-competitive auction, two minimum hands should not bid above 2♠. We don't want to rebid the Diamonds, since it would show a six-card suit. Park the car.

Your result so far:

A: 2♦: No bid is perfect. We hate rebidding five-card suits, but our hand is unbalanced (nine cards in two suits = unbalanced). We cannot bid the Hearts because it's a suit Pard denied and you can't "reverse" with this hand (story for another day...). There's no perfect road here, folks. We're just going to describe our hand the best we can.

Your result so far:

A: 3♥: This is a darn nice hand, and we have to show it. We are going to rebid our six-card suit, but more importantly, we're going to do it at the three-level. That shows 16-18 pts. If Pard is at the top of his bid he'll put us in game, either in Hearts (now knowing we have six) or No-trump. Our final destination is up to him now.

Your result so far:

A: 2♣: Another tough one. The map isn't real clear here. We don't have quite enough to jump shift, but with our medium distributional hand, we need to tell Pard we are two-suited. 2♣ may be weaker, 2♦ isn't either, and with our singleton Spade, 2 No-trump isn't an option. 2♣ is the best we can do though, showing two suits. Sometimes we're not too sure where to go, but this will get us close.

Your result so far:

A: 3♣: This time the road is clear. We are two-suited and we have a maximum hand. We have a clear road to a jump-shift, which is forcing to game.

Well, we managed to find our way to our destination. Let's try a hand.

Your result so far: