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To open or not, pre-empt or not

Reel 25 of 28
0 today

My opponent was dealt this hand. Vulnerable, as dealer.

Opening the bidding and preempting are both good things if you can.

There are select reasons I sometimes choose not to preempt.

  1. A decent spade suit, can be 3 cards.
  2. Balanced hand - "do less with balanced hands" 6322 for example is balanced.
  3. A bad long suit.

Reasons I love to open and/or preempt

  1. Distributional hands - Do more with these, voids are reasons to do more, not less.
  2. Not Vulnerable, especially versus Vulnerable (also called favourable vulnerability). This is the time to be most aggressive, don't talk yourself out of preempting or opening here, if it looks at all like a preempt - it is a preempt! Don't worry about suit quality, etc etc.

To me the void is EXTRA reason to bid. It makes the hand quite special. If the hand had 4 card spades I may be concerned that our side has 4 contract on. However, the heart suit is not nearly as relevant because, even if we have 4 on, the opponents are probably going to have a 9-10 card spade fit (or more!), and be able to out bid us. For me this is a 4 opening bid

Rule

Do 1 more with a void. So, if you would open 3 without it, open 4 with it.

Don't talk yourself into passing or find reasons to not preempt such as "I had a 4 card major so I didn't bid".

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