Later On

You may have wondered about the last few posts. Just WHY were you voting?

As a bridge teacher I am continually asked the question "If I have a five card major and 15 to 17 High Card Points should I open the bidding 1 of the major or should I open the bidding 1NT?"

Very good question.

No great answer.

It is certainly easier to show your point count by opening 1NT. But that ignores your five card major and most systems people play cannot find that all important 5-3 major suit fit later on in the bidding.

If you open your five card major most systems people play cannot show 15 to 17 points with a balanced hand later on in the bidding.

I did google the answer as to whether or not "experts" say to open the major or 1NT and most of the websites from bridge players I respect do say to open 1NT.

But I'm not so sure of that answer.

I asked some players I know to see what they thought.

Comments I got were:
"Open 1NT if you also have the other major stopped with three cards in it otherwise open the major"
"Open the major if your suit quality is poor and open 1NT with a good major suit" (the idea here is that low trumps can score tricks as trump but might not get set up in NT)
"If you have Aces open 1 of the major" (Aces are controls here and Aces work best in a trump contract)
"If you have slow values open 1NT" (Queens and Jacks are slow values. They work well to set up length in suits but are not good when you want to win tricks quickly!)

Lots of opinions here. I want a good, solid, easy answer to give to my students.

So I started looking at some hands. I just generated a bunch of random hands and looked at them.

Those hands seemed to indicate that it is actually better to open the bidding 1 of a major because you can find the major suit fit much easier and that tends to play better.

Hmmmm. Interesting. This clearly needs some in depth study.

So I decided to randomly generate 64 hands with a five card Spade suit and 15 to 17 HCP. Just how many of them are you better to open the bidding 1NT?

A few results depend really on what the people at the table do. Which is why I conducted the survey.

Here is the very first hand I generated:

	North ♠AQ754 ♥J76 ♦AQ ♣K42
West ♠KJ983 ♥52 ♦T82 ♣J86		East ♠T ♥AKQT83 ♦J653 ♣T3
	South ♠62 ♥94 ♦K974 ♣AQ975

As you can see N/S can only take 7 tricks in NT. E/W can take the first six tricks.

But they can take 8 tricks in ♠. (Even with that bad break!)

However they do have 25 HCP between them. They will no doubt get too high in any case.

Enter the Opponents!
If E/W come into the bidding they will play in ♥ and they will go down.

So my analysis on this hand was that it was clearly better for North to open this hand 1♠. I thought that over a 1♠ bid East would definitely bid some number of ♥. 2 or 3 ♥. (I personally would bid 3♥ to show a weak hand. Sure I'm supposed to have seven of them but I want to overcall and show length in my suit but no strength otherwise. So I have to pre-empt.)

So East just might get to play the contract if they overcall 3♥. I don't think South is strong enough even to make a Negative Double. East will go down at least two and probably three tricks with the right defence. Good for N/S.

If East bids 2♥ then South will probably make a negative double to show both minors. The bidding is lower so they have enough points now. North will be stuck bidding 3♣ (they can't do much else since they don't have a ♥ stopper!) but N/S do find a fit and can take 10 tricks with ♣ as trump. So this works out well in either case.

What happens if North opens 1NT?

Well a sneaky East might just PASS! AHHHHH!

Watch what happens then. South will bid 2NT to invite a game and North with 16 HCP and a five card suit will bid 3NT.

Ooooops. Do you think East will find the ♥ lead?

I bet they will. E/W can take the first six tricks.

Not so good for N/S.

However if East overcalls 2♥ or 3♥ N/S will be "rescued" from their bad 3NT contract and they will defeat East and get a positive score.

So really this hand depends on just how many East's will bid over 1♠ and 1NT.

Drumroll please:
% of voters bidding over 1♠: 92.3% with 39 votes
% of voters bidding over 1NT: 90.7% with 43 votes

Which is very close to the same.

So on this hand it turns out it really didn't matter much whether or not North opened the bidding 1♠ or 1NT. Both results ended with East coming into the bidding and rescuing N/S from getting too high.