The right-hand, or front, side of the convention card is mainly designed to cover constructive bidding ... opening bids and responses. Previous articles have covered the auction after opening bids at the one and two level. All that is left is the area for OTHER CONV(entional) CALLS. This is shown in Diagram 1.

If your partnership uses very standard methods, you can ignore this section. Everything is marked in red, indicating that anything you put in this section is alertable.

For some partnerships, however, this is the most crowded section of the card. It’s where you put anything that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else. There’s a myriad of possibilities, most of which are well outside the scope of this article. However, there are also some popular practices that you might want to consider. If so, read on.

FOURTH SUIT

Suppose you pick up this hand and partner opens the bidding 1 . Your first bid presents no problem. You respond 1 , looking for a fit in that suit. Partner rebids 2 . Now you are faced with a challenge.

With 13 high-card points plus 1 length point for the five-card suit, you want to go for a game bonus opposite partner’s opening bid. But what’s the best game contract? You haven’t yet found an eight-card major suit fit. Although you prefer clubs to hearts, you don’t want to support that suit since partner’s second suit may be only four cards in length.

It looks as though notrump may be the best spot. However, a jump to 3NT with three low diamonds is a little unilateral. Partner may be short in diamonds ... and the opponents are quite likely to lead that suit after this auction. If opener does have strength in diamonds, a notrump contract will likely play better from partner’s side, with the opening lead coming up to partner’s high cards.

A popular solution to this dilemma is for responder to bid the fourth suit in this situation, 2. Even partnerships playing standard methods would treat 2 here as forcing ... a new suit by a responder who didn’t pass initially. If you bid 2 with this hand, however, it is conventional and must be alerted. The reason is that you are using it as a totally artificial call, saying nothing about your holding in diamonds. You might have three low cards, as on this hand, or you could have no diamonds at all. This useful convention is referred to as fourth suit forcing.

ONE ROUND OR GAME

Before marking this convention on the card, the partnership must decide whether a bid of the fourth suit commits the partnership to the game level or whether it only forces opener to make one more bid.

The most popular approach is to use fourth suit as forcing to game. If that’s the agreement, you would check the appropriate box:

If you do agree to play fourth suit forcing to game, be careful when you hold a hand like this as South and the auction begins:

Much as you’d like to, you can’t bid 2 as opener will keep bidding until game is reached. What should you bid? Tough call. 2NT would be an overbid, showing an invitational hand of about 11-12 points. If this hand were given to a panel, you’d get votes for pass, 2 , and 2. You’ll just have to guess ... perhaps while wishing you’d never agreed to play fourth suit forcing to game!

EXCEPTIONS

Suppose you have this hand as South and the auction begins: