When your partner preempts, you are the captain of the auction.
- All raises are to play
- Doubles are for penalty
- Traditionally new suits are forcing. Whether new suits are forcing or not is a matter of partnership agreement. If you preempt aggressively, playing a new suit as non-forcing becomes more attractive. Jump in a new suit or go through 2NT to force. New suits should be forcing opposite a 2nd seat preempt because a 2nd seat preempt always shows a good suit.
- Redoubles ask the preempter to double if they have shortness in a suit bid by their right-hand opponent
- Consider tricks not points:
- Aces in side suits are valuable, Kings to a lesser extent
- Queens and Jacks are less valuable in side suits
- For more on this topic, see Andrew Robson's "Put up or shut up" article. Andrew discusses using Quick Tricks to assess whether a game is available. Andrew advises uprading the value of the King or Queen of trump. Andrew discusses the concept of Preempt Points: Ace = 2, Side-suit King = 1, King of Trump = 2, Queen of trump = 1). If your partner preempts at the 3 level, Andrew advises bidding game with 6 or more Preempt Points.
- Opposite a minor suit preempt, consider whether 3NT is viable. You need stoppers and quick tricks.
- Be conservative responding to a potentially aggressive preempt, partner may have already pushed a level higher than normal. Tend to go 1-level lower when raising.
- Raise normally with trump support and shortness, e.g. 2♠ - (P) - 4♠ with ♠ K984 ♥8 ♦KJ83 ♣9852
- A passed hand can give the preempter permission to sacrifice with an impossible 3NT bid
On an auction which begins with a preempt by your partner followed by a takeout double, we recommend using a redouble to ask your partner, the preempter, to double their right-hand-opponent's bid if they have shortness (a singleton or a void) in the suit bid. This helps find games or slams when you are concerned about quick losers in a suit. It helps you determine whether to bid or penalize your opponents.
If your partner opened a Weak 2, you can invite game using an artificial 2NT response. The most common agreements for the 2NT response are:
- 2NT asks opener for a feature. See our Feature Asking article.
- 2NT is Ogust, asking opener to describe the quality of their suit and the quality of their hand.
See our Ogust asking bid article.
In our "Preempts by Seat Position" article, we discuss why a 2nd seat preempt should always show a good suit. With that understanding, it is best to use 2NT to ask for a Feature. If you and your partner agree to preempt aggressively in 1st seat, we recommend playing Ogust opposite a 1st seat Weak 2 to get a description of the preempter's hand.
