Should You Invite with 11? Practical Guide

In general, people often do too much with 11 points opposite an opening hand. Lets look at some examples

Bidding 2 ♠ is adequate. Your hand is balanced, you have a bad 11 points. 

Just pass and expect to go positive, game is too much of a stretch. This is a poor 11 points with bad trump texture. As mentioned in earlier articles, trump texture is important to consider before bidding game. 

Using the same auction as above

Now we're talking, quality long suits and good trump texture. An invite or even just bidding game is reasonable. 

In a different auction altogether,

Passing is fine, you don't have points in your partner's suit and you are misfitting, keep the auction low and hope to go positive.

A similar hand to above,

Here your points are not in your partner's suits. You have a fairly poor hand with no 10's and 9's. Your hand looks very flavourless overall. Passing is maybe a bit risky if partner can have say 16 or 17 points still, but bidding 2NT here I would say is an overbid (it shows a highly encouraging invite, not just a very lousy 11 which this article is suggesting you be a bit more reserved with). Simply bidding 2♠, which won't encourage partner unduly, is in order.

A different species

Now we're bidding game for sure. We have an excellent hand. Our spade holding is excellent to compliment partner's hand, we have a useful doubleton and a nice quality 5 card suit of our own. 

Overall, not all 11's are equal. Don't get too excited by 11 point hands unless they are actually good quality hands.

Where to next

• -> Next: After 1NT: Respond More on Balanced Hands
• -> Related: Weak Stayman: Know When It Helps
• -> Back to Bidding Articles Hub