Bid Your Third Suit Naturally: Keep the Auction Clear
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One of the central purposes of bidding is to communicate shape and strength to partner.
I want to explore a particular issue that most players are getting wrong at the table. Its easiest to explain the concept by way of example.
Starting off with a fairly simple example.
What would your bid be? If you decide that your hand is worth more bidding, its generally a good idea to tell partner more about your hand. Imagine if you could put your hand face up on the table and say to your partner, "please choose the best contract". You can get close to that if you focus on "bidding your hand". Partner already knows that you have five spades and four clubs. Communicate your three card heart suit, by bidding 3♥.
A brief but significant side note
Why does that show three hearts and not four? Say opener was 5404, how should that be bid? With four hearts, its standard to bid them immediately, lets just quickly look at that.
The standard bid here is 2♥. So, the moment opener rebids 2C or 2D, as in the first example, opener is denying four card hearts.
The key point is to fully bid out a hand. Lets look at some more examples
You have reversed by bidding 2♥ , showing a strong hand (generally 16 or 17+ points). Bidding 3♣ now looks sensible, its communicating to partner that you have a singleton spade, and painting the likely picture of 1453 shape. Its true that 0454 shape is possible. But thats pretty good, your partner is within one card of knowing your exact shape. You don't know what partner is going to do with that information. They may judge that 3NT is the best contract (if they have points in spades), or if they have not many or any points in spades, they may think its a good idea to be in game, or even slam in any of the other three suits.
A similar example
Here 3♥ is the correct bid. There is no reason why partner can't have a five card heart suit. For example this may be the full hand
And 4♥ is the best contract.
In summary - when you are strong enough to bid on, and have not yet found a fit, its generally a good idea to "bid your hand". This includes bidding your third "suit" which is often a three card suit.
When is it not correct to fully bid out your hand like that?
The strength of our hand dictates whether we have the luxury of making a bid or not. This is obvious when we make an opening bid, we can't open 1 ♠ just because we have five of them, we need enough points as well. That is the same for making additional bids later in the auction. Lets look at an example.
On this hand we have done enough, pass is clearly correct, we are high enough in our 5-2 spade fit. Partner knows we have 12+ points, five spades and four hearts. We don't have the luxury of continuing to bid our hand since we don't have any extra points. Bidding on here would show significant extras. Or in other words, forcing our side to the third level should naturally require more strength.
Where to next
Build the habit with guided practice
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