When responding to your partner’s overcall (or weak, pre-emptive opening) your focus is to continue their aggressive stance. The whole style of bidding as overcallers is based on suit quality and fits rather than strength of hand, and our responses to overcalls follow a similar vein. It is all about how much you ‘like’ your partner’s overcall (ie if you have a fit with them) and not whether you have a good hand or not.
We use ‘the level of the fit’ to dictate how much we bid in response to our partner’s overcall. The level of the fit states that the number of trumps your side holds is roughly equivalent to the number of tricks you will take if you end up playing the hand (with your suit as trumps!). What this means is, when your partner overcalls (promising 5+cards) you add your length in their suit to their known length of 5 and bid for that many tricks, regardless of overall strength of your hand. Your suit quality is unimportant when supporting as your partner will have a good suit for their overcall. Below illustrates how this works:
| Support for partner’s suit | Suggested bid |
| – | Pass |
| x | Pass |
| xx | Pass |
| xxx | 2 level |
| Qxx | 2 level |
| Axx | 2 level |
| xxxx | 3 level |
| KQxx | 3 level |
| AKxx | 3 level |
| xxxxx | 4 level |
| J10xxx | 4 level |
| KQJxx | 4 level |
As you can see it is all about how big your fit is with your partner and not necessarily about how good your support is or even how good your hand is! The idea is that if you don’t make your contract then you can be fairly certain the opponent’s would have made their contract so it is still a net gain to go down!
If you do happen to have a good hand as responder to an overcall then you can bid game if you think this is a reasonable bet, but don’t forget your partner doesn’t necessarily have an opening hand for their bid. Also note that game in NTs (as ever) is preferable to game in a minor.
You can also change the suit as an responder to an overcaller but to do this you must meet the requirements as if you were bidding your suit independently and you must also have a fit for partner’s suit (3+cards) as they need to be able to return to their suit if they do not like the suit you introduced. A bad idea is to try and ‘save’ your partner from a poor contract because they have bid the ‘wrong suit’ as far as you’re concerned. If you do not have a fit for their suit, you do not have a bid*.
*In exceptionally rare circumstances when you hold a VERY strong hand (16+ points) you are entitled to bid without a fit as responder to an overcall, but this hardly ever happens
