Overcalls in a suit (Acol)

Length: 10 minutes

So far, our auctions have all been uncontested: opener and responder have been bidding in order to decide which contract to play in and their opponents have passed throughout the auction. That is all about to change as we learn how to overcall. This is the first step in learning competitive bidding.

Why overcall?

There are a few reasons that you might want to overcall:

  • You have a good suit that you want your partner to lead.
  • You have a good hand and may therefore want to find a game.
  • You want to make the opponents’ lives difficult by taking up bidding space.
  • You want to steal the contract from the opponents.

Criteria for an overcall

Bearing all these things in mind, what do you need in order to overcall?

  • Suit length: You should always have 5+ cards in a suit to overcall it. Your partner will then know that he can raise you with 3-card support.
  • Suit quality: more important the weaker your hand is. You should really have 2 honours in the suit – your partner is almost always going to lead it and you don’t want that to give a trick away. Sometimes, though, you will have a strong hand with a less good suit but will want to bid because you have lots of HCP.
  • Strength: to overcall a suit at the 1-level, you should have 8+ HCP with a nice 5-card suit. To bid at the 2-level, you should have an opening hand of your own: 12+ HCP with a nice 5-card suit or 10+ HCP with a nice 6-card suit.
  • Shape: Unbalanced hands are better for overcalling than balanced hands. Singletons are better than doubletons.

As you develop your judgement, you will start to refine your decisions about whether to overcall based on a trade-off between suit quality, HCP and shape.

Responding to Partner’s overcall

A general way of thinking about how to respond when your partner has overcalled with a suit (which gives you the role of Advancer) is to respond as though your partner had opened the bidding. Although competitive auctions are different and Partner has shown a different type of hand (especially if he overcalled at the 1-level!), you should stretch to support your partner as much as possible.

So if you support, remembering that Partner will always have at least 5 cards in his suit when he has overcalled, you are showing 3+ cards in the suit and a different HCP range depending on how high you bid:

  • Raise by 1 level = 6-9 HCP
  • Jump-raise = 10-12 HCP
  • Game = 13+ HCP

If you change suit, which should show 5+ cards in your suit (except at the 1-level) and does not include jump bids:

  • New suit at the 1-level = 6+ HCP
  • New suit at the 2-level = 10+ HCP
  • New suit at the 3-level = 13+ HCP

Note that new suits are still unlimited and forcing; and a new suit at the 3-level is forcing to game. Same principles as normal!

Back to: First Steps: How to Bid in Bridge (Acol)