Hand evaluation - Suits II

Monday, July 03, 2006 12:07 AM

Hand Evaluation – Suits ( Moyseans )

PITBULLS:

Hand evaluation is a dynamic process of promoting & demoting hands. You like your controls , you do not like your queens & jacks . You like your 5 card suit , you do not like your 4-3-3-3 distribution . You like the location of your HCP cards ( behind the opening bidder ) but you do not like your honours in the suit bid in front of the person who bid them. You like the location of your honour cards as they are in your long suits , you do not like the location of your honour cards as they are in your singletons & doubletons or too concentrated.

Bridge is a game of suits says Garazzo . I feel that bad 5 card suits should be demoted to 4 & good 4 card suits promoted to 5. ♠AKQx ♥Jxxxx ♦Ax ♣xx these Flannery hands are difficult to bid so I have no problem opening this hand 1♠ & rebidding 2♥. I promote my spades to 5 , demote my hearts to a 4 card suit. ♠Axxx ♥AKQx ♦xxx ♣xx I promote the heart suit to 5 & open 1♥ rather than the ridiculously bad bid of 1♦ .

Time after time , bidding quizzes have the magic Moysean as the optimum spot. How do you get to these Moyseans ? You promote good 4 card suits is the easy answer. Here is an auction in a Vanderbilt that won Zia & Rosenberg 17 IMPS.

♠ KQJ10 ♥ xxxx ♦Ax ♣K10x , Rosenberg opened a weak NT & Zia bid Stayman. With their methods when they have both majors they bid hearts first but Rosenberg promoted his spades & demoted his hearts by bidding spades first.

Over Zia’s forcing 2NT bid ( their methods ) Rosenberg bid 3♥ showing that he had both but he deliberately reversed the order of showing them. Zia caught on & put the hand in 6♠ instead of 6♥ with ♠Axx ♥AJ9x ♦KQJ10 ♣Ax. This won 17 IMPS as the opponents were in 6♥ down one at the other table. Colour me impressed ! The club ruff was the 12^th trick in spades & the hearts got discarded on the diamonds. 6NT does not make nor 6♥.

This auction shows that experts value hand evaluation skills over rote rules & totaling HCP’s. That’s why they win . They use their superior hand evaluation skills.