You are sitting South. North, your partner, is the dealer and has a balanced hand with 15 HCPs. He bids 1NT. You have a hand of 10 points with 4 spades, 4 hearts, 3 diamonds, and 2 clubs. You very much want to use the Stayman convention to tell your partner about your majors. East bids 2C. This wrecks your plans to bid 2♣ for Stayman. What do you do?
- Look at your
computer screen and scream, “East can’t do that to me!”
- Double
- Assume Stayman is
off and bid your hand at 2♥.
- Pass
Answer: Depending on how you and your partner are getting along, 2 or 3 could be the answer. Option 2 is called a “stolen bid’ double and tells your partner, East stole your bid, continue with Stayman. If you have no such understanding, you can assume Staymen is off and bid your hand in Option 3.
Reference
on Stolen Bid Doubles - https://www.bridgeaholic.com/download/stolen-bids.pdf
Before the advent of stolen bid double, the standard among good tournament players was with game values, and one or two 4 card majors, you would bid 3 clubs with this hand showing this.
They then show their clubs under control.
With this tool, many of us do not need stolen bid doubles which are not used by most good (experienced) players.
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