Raptor convention

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This article concerns contract bridge and uses terminology associated with the game. See Contract bridge glossary for an explanation of unfamiliar words or phrases.

The Raptor 1NT overcall over an opposing major suit opening is a contract bridge convention that indicates a two-suited hand with exactly four cards in the unbid major and a longer suit in an unbid minor.

The idea to utilise a 1NT overcall to denote a 5-4 two suiter seems to have originated independently in Sweden and Poland in the early eighties of the twentieth century. The name, however, comes from Ron Sutherland and his son who re-invented this approach and published it in a Toronto magazine in 1993 under the acronym "wRAP around TORonto" style.