When people begin to play bridge they often have pages of notes about what to bid with what holding. At every turn, they refer to their notes, and come up with a bid. Have you ever asked yourself, "Why do I need 13 points to open?" "Why do I only need 6 points to respond?"
Let's stop and think about what we are trying to accomplish with the bidding. Some of you might say, "to let my partner know what my hand is like." Well, that is true, but why does your partner want to know? The purpose of the bidding is, first of all, to decide whether your side should be playing as declarer or as defenders. If you and your partner decide that you should be playing the contract, you need to figure out where you have a good trump fit, or if you are better off playing in no trump. Finally, you need to figure out if you should stop in a part score, bid game, or bid slam. Let's examine these questions.
Should we take the contract?
Generally speaking, you want to take the contract if your side is stronger than your opponents. If you are the first to bid, it can be hard to figure this out. That is why it takes 13 points to open the bidding. There are 40 points in the deck, counting just high card points. That gives every player 10 points on average. When you have 13 points, you can expect that your hand is about 1 trick stronger than average. If your partner has an average hand, you can expect that your side will take one more trick than the opponents. That is a good enough reason to open the bidding.
Sometimes you will decide to take the contract even though you expect that your side has less than half the strength. These are pre-emptive bids such as an opening bid of 3 of a suit when you have a weak hand with a long suit. The object of these bids is to interfere with the opponent's ability to assess the strength of their combined holding. You hope that any penalty you incur for going set will be smaller than the positive score that your opponents would get for finding their best contract.
Finding a trump fit
Most contracts are played with a trump suit. Once you have decided that your side is stronger than the opponents, you want to find a good trump suit between your two hands. An adequate trump suit should have at least 8 cards between you and your partner. That leaves, at most, 5 trumps for the opponents. With reasonable breaks, your side should be able to pull the defender's trumps if you have 8 and they have 5.
OK, so you want to find an 8-card trump fit. How do you know when you are there? The key issue is knowing how many trumps your partner is promising with her bids.
If your partner opens with a major suit, you know she has 5 cards in that suit. Adequate support for her suit is 3 cards. If she opens with a minor suit, she might have just 3 cards. You need 5 cards in her suit to support her. Similarly, there are many bids that show a 4-card suit. To support that suit, you need 4.
Sometimes you will have a hand with adequate trump support for your partner's suit, but a good suit of your own. Should you show it? In general, if you have found a trump fit, you should be happy and let your partner know about the fit. There will be times when you should show your suit, instead, because of your point count. You will also prefer to show your 4-card major rather than supporting your partner's suit when responding to a minor suit opening. We'll cover those situations in a future post. In the meantime, your mantra is, "When you have found a fit, be happy. Let your partner know you are happy."
Part Score, Game, or Slam?
I won't go into too much detail here, but as you go about the bidding, you should try to determine how many points your partner has and add your points to hers. If that total comes to 26 points, you should bid in a way that gets your side to a game contract. If you know that your side has less than 26 points, you should try to end the auction as soon as you have found a trump fit.
Sometimes, you don't have a good estimate for your partner's strength. For example, if she opens 1 heart, she might have a minimum opening hand of 13 points, or she could have 20 or more. That is why you respond with just 6 points. You want to give your partner another chance to bid, so she can give you a better idea of her point range.
We'll cover these topics in more detail in future posts.
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