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For Junior, Intermediate and Novice players… and others! It’s Fri-  day!

How Good is a Void? 

When some players first sort their hand and see that they only have three suits, they think they have a wonderful hand. That may not be true. If the void is in one’s partner’s longest and strongest suit, it can be a liability…no good at all!

However, when one has found a fit, a void in a side-suit is usually a real asset. Let’s look:

 

12 high-card points and a void in the suit the opponents have opened. That sounds promising and we should certainly double 1. However, if our partner were to bid no trumps showing honours in clubs, our hand is relatively not that good as there is no fit, possibly no suit where we can easily establish tricks. Your void has become a liability. If partner invites game with 2NT, decline.

Yet, partner did not bid no-trumps. They jumped in spades. How good is our hand now? What should we bid?

The answer is our hand has improved vastly. We can add 5 points for a void in a side-suit where we have trumps we can use to ruff partner’s losers. So, we can certainly accept partner’s invitation and bid to the spade game. Let’s see why:

 

It is true that South will not always have a 6-card spade suit though their invitation could be based on less spades but more high-card points.

West chose to lead Q, a potentially good lead for the defence. Had West led a club, the only trick they could take would be the A. Declarer ruffs and plays trumps. South’s losing clubs could be either ruffed in dummy or discarded on the run of the heart suit, as indeed can their losing diamond. 

South has a problem on the diamond lead, especially playing Pairs. They can see that 12 tricks are likely to be easy on any other lead. They would get a poor score if they simply played trumps and lost a diamond as well as the top spade. So, to trying to avoid a comparatively poor result, they play hearts immediately and with both opponents following to 3 rounds, the diamond loser can be discarded. Only if the first or second rounds of hearts were ruffed (both unlikely) would South get a worse score than not playing hearts at all. 

Does that mean North-South should bid to slam with a combined 19 hcp (+ 5 for that void!) ? It would be tempting to say “yes” since only one lead threatens that slam. You cannot always bid to slam with such low high card points. Cue-bidding (bidding aces, kings and voids!) might get you to slam but good opponents will threaten that slam with here a diamond lead….and odds are against hearts breaking 3-3.

no clubs!

So, be satisfied to bid to 4 on your combined 19 hcp and get an above-average result for doing so. In a top-class field, just about every pair would reach the spade game and make 11 or 12 tricks. Not every club pair has read this article and seen how good their 12 hcp hand, with a void, really can be. 

Richard Solomon

Tonight is the final round of the Trans- Tasman Teams with Kiwi teams scoring rather well so far. Check out tonight’s results on Real Bridge through this link. https://www.aj92.com.au/results/results.asp?yr=2024&dir=ttc    Start time is 8.00 pm in New Zealand with a 30 minute time-lag for kibitzers.

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