Competitive Bidding with Two Suited Hands by Max Hardy

With this book, Max abandons his usual role as a reporter and consolidator of modern expert practice in favor of taking a critical look at the modern approach to describing two-suited hands when the opponents have opened the bidding. His major target is the Michaels Cue Bid and he shows it no mercy, not only demonstrating its inferiority but also proposing an alternative approach based on the Top and Bottom Cue Bid which is markedly superior both in theory and in practice. In his methods, the cue bid shows the highest and lowest ranking unbid suits (always a major and a minor) with the minor suit being either better or longer (or both) than the major (which is usually only a 4-card suit). With a good 5+card major, he is content to overcall in the major and hope to show the minor on the next round. He uses the jump overcall in an unbid minor to show the same sort of hand with the two lowest-ranking unbid suits. Again, the lowest-ranking suit is longer or stronger; the Unusual Notrump is reserved for two 5+card suits. With the two highest-ranking suits( Michaels country), he relies on a takeout double, and uses the principle of Equal Level Conversion to deny the lowest-ranking suit if partner is inconsiderate enough to respond in that suit.

Although a marked improvement over popular expert practice, this approach has two theoretical flaws: (1) Things can get out of hand if partner jumps in the lowest-ranking suit in response to the takeout double (and if he is forbidden to jump, the doubler must raise any time he holds support for that suit). (2)No method is available to permit playing in the Opener's suit when the opening bid has been in a 3-card club suit. The first problem can be solved by using conditional transfer responses to the takeout double, while the second problem requires switching to a different system based on conditional transfer overcalls after a 1C opening. Both of these methods were described in the reviewer's 1981 book, 3-D and the MAFIA Club.

Max also covers defenses to 1NT, as well as defenses to strong artificial club openings and weak two-bids. Against 1NT, he summarizes most of the methods used today and in the past, and recommends a Jerry Helms method called HELLO, in which double is for penalty, 2C is either diamonds or a major-minor two-suiter, 2D shows hearts, 2H shows both majors, 2S shows spades (!), 2NT shows clubs, 3C shows both minors, and 3D shows a very good hand with both majors. Against weak two-bids, Max recommends Roman jump overcalls to show two-suiters with the suit bid and the next higher-ranking unbid suit.

This book is much more readable than Hardy's treatise on Two Over One Game Force. The style is still too pedantic for my taste, but the book is highly recommended because of its daring and, in my view, successful attempt to point out the inadequacies of contemporary defensive bidding methods.