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A Strange Selection.

Why would you ever want to choose a suit bid by your partner where you have only two cards in that suit and have three cards in your partner’s other suit…and indeed your partner might have equal length in both?

Let’s take a look at an example and see why:

 

 

 

We bid 1NT as we only had two card support for partner’s 1 opening suit. Whether 1 guarantee 5 spades or maybe just 4, we cannot support spades. We bid 1NT because we have less than 10 hcp and therefore cannot bid either of our 4-card suits at the 2-level. Yet, with more than 5hcp, we must bid: hence 1NT.

Our partner now bids 2. They have at least 4 hearts, possibly even 5, and their 2 bid confirms that the spade suit is longer or as long as the hearts. (Therefore, as we open the lower of 2 x4 card suits, they must have at least 5 spades.)

5 + spades and 4+ hearts. Yet, even though we have only 2 spades but have 3 hearts, our textbook tells us we should bid 2! That may seem strange. We may have a 5-3 heart fit but could only have a 5-2 spade fit. Let’s see why we should bid 2 even though we may only have 7 spades but could have 8 hearts between our two hands.

It comes down to the fit we “may” have and the guaranteed fit we do have. Let’s look at the actual 4 hands:

 

 

It is true that were South to have 5 hearts, we would be better passing 2. However, the only certainty is that South has at least 5 spades and as you see above, could indeed have 6. We can potentially make more tricks with a 5-card suit in one hand (declarer’s hand) than we can where declarer has only 4 and dummy only 3. It will usually be safer to play the contract where one hand has a five-card suit.

Look at the above hands. Against 2 or 2, the most attractive lead for West is 3. East wins the first trick with J (3 should promise an honour) and then plays A and a third club. With hearts as trumps, it is uncomfortable for South to ruff as more than half of the time, one of their opponents has four trumps. They can ruff and must play a small spade or else will stand no chance of making their contract. 

Whichever defender wins the trick, South can play spades for 1 loser and can just lose one spade, two hearts and two clubs, but it is hard for a declarer to do just that or perceive that is the winning line. They could easily lose three trump tricks or lose control of the play. 

Meanwhile, if spades are trumps, South has a much more comfortable time. They can ruff, cash A, and play a heart to the king in dummy. Discard a heart on the K before tackling trumps. They may lose two trumps, a heart and two clubs but they will make 8 tricks in comfort. Indeed, were they to play spades as above (leading low from the South hand first), it would be possible to restrict spade losers to 1, with a declarer making 9 tricks. (Note that declarer only has one entry to dummy, K, and cannot therefore play spades twice from dummy, without some help from the defence.)   

Having 5 certain trumps in one hand is overall better and means that when faced with what to do when South bids 2, the answer for North is to give preference to the suit in which you hold just 2 cards. There are even times when you give preference to a suit where you hold just one card…but we will save that example for another day.

Richard Solomon

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