Harold Ogust

013: Ogust

ogust_harold_a_dukBefore I get started — the gentleman to the left is Mr. Harold Ogust, inventor of this convention that bears his name. I say this because, many years ago, I read about this convention in a book as being part of the Blue Club system played, and pretty much invented, by the great Benito Garozzo. I thought it was worth using and tried to interest various partners in it, with little success, because I presented it as being a product of the complex work of art that is the Blue Club System; people thought it was too complicated to play. Then an experienced player gently broke it to me that lots of other people played this convention, it’s just that they called it Ogust. So, Mr. Ogust, for any discredit I did to you by ascribing your work to Benito Garozzo, please accept my apologies in the form of making you as famous as I can.

Ogust is a convention that comes into action when one partner opens a weak 2; the subject of when and why and whether to open a weak 2 will be the topic of a future blog post, to be sure, but right now let’s just assume that partner has between 6-10 HCP, a six-card suit in any suit excluding clubs, no four-card major, no void, and no two aces.  (I know, I know.  Just accept for the moment.) For instance, vulnerability is none, your partner deals and opens 2H.

Most often, when it’s your turn to bid, you should be reaching for the “Pass” card. I think it’s most sensible to be pessimistic in this situation, considering how awful some of the weak 2s I have personally opened in the past have been ;-), and assume that partner has 6 points and 6 heart cards. The magic number to generate game is 26, and so that gives us some easy math with which to work backwards.  26 minus 6 is 20, the number of points you should have to force to game; 16 to 19 is the number of points you should have to suggest game; and 13 to 15 is the number of points you should have to hope to make 2S or another contract at a level below game. If you don’t have 13 HCP, there’s no point in bidding unless you’re deliberately sacrificing; you’re already too high at the 2 level.

So if you have between 13 and 15 HCP, you don’t need to know anything about your partner’s hand because you’re passing.  If you have 20+ HCP, you already need to know what you need to know about your partner’s hand, because it has 6 HCP; you need to make a game-forcing bid of some kind.

It’s when you have between 16 and 19 HCP that things get interesting. Sometimes they depend upon whether you have a solid 9 or 10-card trump suit between the two hands. Essentially you’re not sure if you can make a contract at the 3 level or the 4 level.  You want a way to say to partner, “I’ve got a good hand, but I need to know more about your hand. Tell me something.”

You do this by making an artificial bid of 2NT. Partner will alert this and, upon being requested to explain the bid by an opponent, should explain the bid (I’ll get to the specific language at the end).

There are two ways to play Ogust: the full-on complicated way, or a simple way called “for features”. That one is easy to describe.  After the sequence 2H (weak 2) / P / 2NT (Ogust) / P / ? — the opening weak 2 bidder will bid the suit that has her best card outside of hearts. 3C, for instance, would indicate some kind of high club card that’s worth showing.   (Usually not a jack.) This might look like this: S xx H AJTxxx D xx C Kxx. If you have two cards the same rank, bid the strongest suit. 3H would say, “I have nothing to say outside of hearts, partner, sorry,” and shows something like S xx H AQJxxx D xx C xxx.

Full-on complicated Ogust, though, is more detailed and more informative. This is the information you’re looking for: you want to know the strength and quality of the weak 2 bidder’s hand, overall, and suit specifically.  Here’s the responses to 2H / P / 2NT / P / ? :

  • 3 clubs shows a poor hand and a poor suit.
  • 3 diamonds shows a poor hand and a good suit.
  • 3 hearts shows a good hand and a poor suit.
  • 3 spades shows a good hand and a good suit.
  • 3NT shows AKQJxx in the weak-2 suit and nothing else. (Don’t worry, this NEVER happens.)

Now, of course, you immediately want to know the definition of “poor” and “good”.  Here we go.  Since your weak 2 bid is limited to between 6 and 10 HCP, poor = 6-8 and good = 8-10. If you have noticed that 8 HCP is on both scales, well done; just use your judgment and assess whether your 8 is good or poor. (Hint: 4 queens is poor, AKJ in a suit is good.) Note that the more points you have, the higher you can bid; you stick to the minors with 6-8 HCP and can get a little higher with 8-10.

In suit terms, “good” means that you have two of the top three honours, AKQ, or three of the top five honours, AKQJT. Some people only want to think in terms of the top three honours; that’s a matter for partnership agreement. I don’t require my partners to refrain from opening a weak 2 with a suit that contains no card higher than a 9, when the rest of the hand is right, and I have done it myself more than once. There are no minimums, so you might want to be very sure that your suit will run by focusing on the top three honours.

Let’s look at a couple of hands with which you would have opened 2H, and see what you’d bid with them after partner starts the ball rolling with 2NT.

  1. S Kx H AKxxxx D xxxx C x
  2. S xx H AJxxxx D Qx C xxx
  3. S AKQ H xxxxxx D xx C xx
  4. S Jxx H Kxxxxx D Qx C Qx
  5. S xxx H AKQxxx D xx C Jx
  6. S xxx H AQJxxx D xx C xx

Here’s what I would be thinking:

  1. I have a good hand and a good suit: bid 3S.
  2. I have a poor hand and a poor suit: bid 3C.
  3. I have a good hand and a poor suit: bid 3H. Well, what would you have opened?
  4. I have 8 HCP and a poor suit. Is this a good 8 or a bad 8? In fact it’s an ugly 8 since both those minor-suit queens might be so much waste-paper. So you have a poor hand and a poor suit; bid 3C.
  5. Sorry, not 3NT. You need the full AKQJxx to bid 3NT; partner needs to be 95% sure that your heart suit will run for 3 NT. Here, you have a good hand and a good suit: bid 3S.
  6. I have a poor hand and a good suit: bid 3D.

The textbooks suggest that the Ogust bidder who has heard her partner describe his point range and his suit quality is now in possession of all the facts required to place the final contract exactly. It’s important to note that the Ogust bidder is in charge of the final contract, since she knows more about the combined hands than the weak-two bidder. In other words, what you bid at this point should be pretty much it, because the weak-two bidder should automatically pass.

Two contracts will generally suggest themselves; 3NT and 4 of the major in which partner opened a weak 2. This depends, obviously, on whether or not you have a fit for that major and whether you have a balanced or unbalanced hand. If you’re the kind of person who will bid 3NT with a singleton in partner’s weak 2 suit and 20 points in the three other four-card suits, well, I’ve done that, and sometimes I make it, sometimes I don’t. Honestly, my experience is that you’re frequently better off with a 6-1 trump fit and playing 4 of a major rather than struggling along in 3NT with no transportation and short suits.

If you have a suit fit, great: most often you should play in that major at the game level. Occasionally, if you are very much on the ball, you’ll realize that you have a suit fit and acceptable no-trump stops in the other suits, so you will make 430 or 630 in 3NT rather than 420 or 620 in a major. You will score very well with this because many partnerships won’t look far beyond game in a major; all you have to do is make the same number of tricks as they do.

In closing: I promised you the alerts, above. I try to make my responses to alerts exactly the same, word for word, every time I explain the bid. For Ogust for features, I say, “My partner is asking me to identify the best card in my hand outside my weak 2 suit.” And for full-on regular Ogust, I say, “My partner is asking me to describe the strength and quality of my hand and suit.” And then my partner will alert my response and explain it as, “My partner has a {good/poor} hand and a {good/poor} suit.” And be prepared to explain your methods; top-three and/or top-five for strength, etc.  Your opponents are entitled to know all your agreements; it’s a good idea to be prepared to explain them in the right way.

By the way, some people use Ogust on any hand with 16+ HCP, much like they would make their first bid an auction in which they would expect to end up in a slam by making a transfer bid. Yes, it could be a minimum, but it’s a mechanism that requires partner to respond, and that can be the tempo that the Ogust bidder needs to fully get it across to partner what’s going on.  For instance, 2H / P / 2NT / P / 3C / 4NT — which would ask for aces. The 2NT bidder may have been planning on bidding a slam in either hearts or NT, depending on the strength of partner’s suit. In fact, the sky’s the limit, and Ogust can be a useful first step as long as partner doesn’t pass! So you can find this convention more helpful with a wide range of good hands; 16+ HCP, any distribution.

As long as both partners know what’s forcing and not forcing, Ogust can be a very useful tool to get you to some precise contracts. It helps you find thin games and, even more usefully, keeps you out of unmakeable ones. Give it a try!