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The Lost “Master-suit”.

Spades is usually the “boss”  or “master”-suit and if you hold that suit, then you are normally in a fine position in most competitive auctions. Yet, even spades can get lost in some auctions:

 

It is quite common to open a 5-card higher-ranking suit when you have a 6-card suit below it. Auctions flow more comfortably if you do that when your hand is not very strong. In other words, you do not have to reverse with a minimum hand.

How far does one take this theory? What about with the above hand? Our Panel gave it a resounding “no”:

Nigel Kearney “1: Not even close for me. There is far too much risk of getting preference to spades. If you rearrange it to AJ864 Q108652 9 A then I would consider it a fairly close decision between 1 and 1.”

Kris Wooles “1: I’m sure not going to open 1. I hope that as the auction unfolds I might have an opportunity to bid spades to better complete the picture lying perhaps about my points to get both suits in. Awkward hand. Would bid 2 over a 1NT response.  

We are still therefore denying spades.

Stephen Blackstock “1: 1 is too likely to cause problems such as losing the 6^th heart and getting unwelcome preference to spades. In effect I will treat the hand as 4-6 shape, which is very close to reality given the poor quality of the spades.”

Steph Jacob “1: I have 6 decent hearts which are hard to ignore rather than opening a poor 5 card spade suit. A lot of good things can still happen like how about partner responds 1? Or the opponents  could overcall 1 which is entirely possible with even 4 e.g. AKxx or AKQx.…

With no interference or over a 2/1 minor response, I will now bid 2. This should promise a shapely hand and will pattern out as able. However, over a 1NT, I response will have to be content with a 2 rebid.

Michael Cornell “1:  it is  not even close. Only possible advantage of opening 1 would be if you have a 5-3 fit there and partner is short in hearts.

Every other time and in particular lead directing 1 will be superior. If partner does have a strong hand, it will be normally possible to get the 5-6 across.”

We will see shortly a situation about putting partner on lead. Summing up is :

Peter Newell : “1: clear cut - I have more hearts and far better ones and my spades are bad. Partner will find it very hard to evaluate his hand after 1. Say with a singleton spade and 4 hearts that would be rather good whereas Qxx of spades and a singleton heart would be bad.

Further by opening 1 if partner has 4 spades, they are likely either respond 1 or bid 2 of a minor followed by 2 so 5-4 spade fits are unlikely to get lost. It will probably be better to play in hearts if partner has 3-2 in majors, certainly will be with equal length.  After opening 1 over a 1NT or 2 of a minor response, I'll be happy to rebid 2...

If my 5 card spade suit was good, then there would be a case for opening 1.  With a bad spade suit and a longer and far better heart suit, I wouldn't dream of opening the 5-card suit.”

Similar comments are made by Bruce Anderson, Andy Braithwaite, Wayne Burrows and Leon Meier.

Is it then rather unfortunate that partner’s hand fell between a 1 response and Pass and chose the latter?

 

Some days, it might be right for West to bid 1 and on others, that bid would drive the partnership too high. On this day, North might even have opened 1 but did not. However, their overcall prompted South who was one point off a strong no-trump overcall, to try for game.

If it was wrong to open 1, then could you really introduce the suit after North’s overcall?

Back then to the spade suit and 3NT. If West could find a spade lead, then the defence should take 6 tricks (4 spades and 2 aces) before declarer can manage 9. After that lead-directing heart bid and heart lead, South will actually play a black suit to get their 9^th trick.

Beating 3NT (+200) would normally give East-West a reasonable score though those who found their spade fit could even make game, as a few did. That becomes a little easier if South has bid no-trumps along the way as to make 10 tricks, declarer needs to start trumps by playing J (there is twice as much chance of North holding a singleton high-honour as 10, though if spades are 3-1, the only way to avoid 2 trump losers, other than a 2-2 break, is the actual lay-out).

Yet, to reach the spade game as some did,  means one partner had to bid the suit first and the big disparity between East’s 2 majors made that much harder to do.

Richard Solomon

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