Wednesday, December 06, 2006 3:49 PM

Hand Evaluation – Suits ( Dominant Feature)

PITBULLS:

Quite often in our game , you have many possible routes you could go about to show your hand to partner. When confronted with this choice of bids how do you decide the best bid ? Quite often this decision amounts to identifying the dominant feature of your hand. Take this hand for example , ♠Qxxx ♥AKJ ♦void ♣KQJ10xx , partner opens a strong NT. You could bid Stayman & find your spade fit. You could treat this hand as single suited club hand & use that systemic route.

The best feature of your hand is the long , strong club suit with a void. You have 16 HCP also so you have a desire to get to a grand or small slam in clubs. Bidding Stayman might hamper this objective , when partner does not make the magic spade response. I would ignore my spade suit & bid 2♠ which shows all club hands. Partner surprises you by bidding 2NT , a super accept in clubs ! When you now bid 3♦ which systemically shows shortness in diamonds , what would a jump to 4♦ mean ? I contend that this should be exclusion KCB as a bid at the 3 level already shows shortness ( systemic agreement ) . Over your 4♦ exclusion bid , partner bids 4NT showing two aces outside the diamond suit. You now bid 5♦ which is exclusion for specific kings . Partner bids 5♠ so you have now heard enough to bid 7♣ which is cold.

The key to this auction is the systemic agreement that any immediate bid in these 4 suit transfer auctions is supposed to be a short suit. This allows a jump to be defined as exclusion KCB. Where there is a will , there is a way to use your tools properly to get the optimum spot. These understandings are why established partnerships are worth their weight in gold on any team. Poetry in motion.

The 2^nd key to the above auction is the realization that Bridge is a game of suits . A good suit should be given priority over all remaining hand evaluation elements according to none other than Benito Garozzo. Weak players give HCP’s precedence over everything. They think “totaling HCP’s” is Bridge bidding. Sadly , all that really means is that they do not understand the game of Bridge. Suits , distribution , fit , quality of HCP’s ( quick trick combinations) are all better hand evaluation indicators than totaling HCP’s. Do not forget that HCP’s came into vogue long after Bridge was invented. Bridge players communicated to each other by indicating tricks , suits & distribution before that. These principles never went away because HCP’s were invented.

Bidding by broadcasting the dominate feature of your hand works well. When the dominate feature of your hand is a vast total of HCP’s , make a quantitative bid that shows that feature. When your hand is distributional , jump the bidding to show that feature of your hand. When you have an 8 card or longer suit , indicate that by opening

at the 4 level or higher. When you have a collection of garbage HCP’s , announce that with a pass. Avoid ambiguity in the language of bridge bidding when you can.