Happy New Year! I’m in Salt Lake City visiting friends. I had a wonderful December—a lovely trip to Punta Cana with my sister and a nice holiday celebration with my family in Massachusetts. We saw the Boston Pops holiday concert, which is always spectacular.
I didn’t see many shows this month—I was travelling too much. I did see the Wicked movie, which was fantastic. The highlight, though, was the 15th reunion concert of Lincoln Center’s production of South Pacific, starring Kelly O’Hara. It was worth taking the red-eye home from Las Vegas for!









Learn Bridge Online, where I teach my online classes, is offering a special holiday offer—30% off your first 3 months. Use this discount code—adam30—for my Monday “The Expert Thought Process” class or my Thursday declarer play class. They make a great belated holiday present!
My bridge results in Las Vegas were disappointing. I’m going to be going over them over the next month. This is an essential part of my Leveling Up program. Playing is important, but analyzing what you did right and what you did wrong is even more important.
I hope you will all follow along and join me in this Leveling Up project. I’m really excited about it—both to see how much I can improve but also how I can help you improve your game. Most of what I post will be free, but if you want to contribute to the project, a paid subscription will be immensely appreciated and get you some members-only content. A reminder that if you’re already a subscriber to my website, your subscription will move over to Substack automatically until it runs out.
My Monday "Expert Thought Process" and Thursday "Thinking Through Declarer Play" classes are on their normal schedules until the end of January, when I head to the regional in Honolulu. You can get information about both classes here: https://learnbridgeonline.com/adam-parrish/
Upcoming topics in my Monday class are (schedule always subject to change if things take extra time):
January 6 Defense
January 13 Advanced Slam Practice
January 20 Minor Suit Keycard
January 27 Declarer Play
If you have topics you'd like to see me cover in the Monday class or hands that you think would be interesting, please send them along. You can send me an email (adam@adamparrishbridge.com).
I hope you're all well and playing lots of bridge! As always, feel free to email me with questions. Speaking of questions...
There are some conventions that no experts play. That’s usually a good indication that they’re not the best agreement.
Hi, Adam,
What exactly are “Mirror Doubles” and should I play them?
“Mirror Doubles” is another name for “Stolen Bid Doubles.” These apply when your right-hand opponent overcall’s your partner’s 1NT opening. You can play that “systems are on,” so double would say, “That’s what I was going to bid!” (i.e., “they stole my bid”) and everything else would be as if there was no overcall.
For example, if partner opens 1NT and RHO overcalls a natural 2♥, double would be a transfer to spades—you were going to bid 2♥ to transfer to spades, so your double has the same meaning. Bidding 2♠ or 2NT or 3♣ would mean whatever it would mean in your system if they hadn’t bid. (A transfer to a minor or Puppet Stayman or whatever.)
No experts play Mirror Doubles, so it’s not something I recommend. It’s much more valuable to have a takeout double available. The standard is that systems are on over a double or 2♣ overcall. (So double of 2♣ is Stayman, 2♦ is a transfer to hearts, etc.) You lose the ability to transfer when they overcall 2♦ or higher, but you can use Lebensohl (or, even better, Transfer Lebensohl!) to compensate. If you haven’t learned Lebensohl yet, here’s a simple agreement: suits at the 2-level are to play and at the 3-level they’re game forcing. So after 1NT (2♥), 2♠ would be to play (the sort of hand that would transfer to spades and pass) and 3♠ would be game forcing.
Adam
There are lots of “Rules” out there. Some are more useful than others. The Rule of 20 is one you should be familiar with.
Dear Adam,
Can you please explain the “Rule of 20” to me?
The Rule of 20 says that if you add the number of high card points in your hand plus the length in the two longest suits and it totals 20 or more, the hand is strong enough to open at the 1-level. For example, ♠ AQ873 ♥ 2 ♦ KJ842 ♣ 65 meets the rule of 20: 10 HCP + 5 spades + 5 diamonds = 20. So does ♠ 3 ♥ AQJ872 ♦ 62 ♣ KT52: 10 HCP plus 10 cards in hearts and clubs. These are both opening hands.
It’s important that your honors are concentrated in your suits. Aces can always count, but otherwise, only honors in your suits count toward your 20 points.
For example: ♠ A8732 ♥ J ♦ Q8 ♣ QJ742 is not an opening bid. You can’t count that jack of hearts or queen of diamonds when you’re using the Rule of 20. You should pass. Put those honors in the spade suit, and it’s a clear opener: ♠ AQJ32 ♥ 2 ♦ 82 ♣ QJ742.
Adam
Here’s a practical application of the Rule of 20.
Dear Adam,
We had these two hands in the same tournament but did not get to the game, never mind the makeable slams.
The two hands' commonality is that they met the Rule of Twenty with length in a minor.
♠ AT ♥ — ♦ KQJ96532 ♣ 975
On this board, I was North and opened 4♦, where the bidding ended.
Technically, it meets the Rule of Twenty. Would you have opened 4♦, 5♦ or 1♦?
♠ AQT6 ♥ J ♦ Q98743 ♣ J2
Would you open this 1♦ or 2♦ or pass?
The first one is definitely 1♦. Your values are all in your strong suit, plus an ace. You would open 4♦ without the ace of spades, so your hand is an ace better than it should be for a preempt. That makes it a 1-bid.
The second hand is not an opening bid. You shouldn't count queens and jacks outside of your suits to get to the rule of 20. So I would only count this as 8 points + 10 cards in your suits, so not enough.
As to whether you should open 2♦, that depends a bit on your style. For me, it would depend upon what seat you’re in and what the vulnerability is. The weak suit and 4-card major are flaws, so you should only preempt if you are in a very aggressive position, like first seat favorable. I wrote a whole book about this!
Adam
That's all for now. I encourage you to send me questions about my column or anything else at adam@adamparrishbridge.com. Maybe they'll end up in the next newsletter!