Bidding at the 1 Level Basics (Part 1)

In this 1st official post I’ll be covering the basics about opening the bidding with 1 of a suit. Why? 

What’s the very 1^st thing you do after the hands r dealt? (besides rearranging ur cards -_- “)

Yes, u look at them & decide how to start off with your opening bid. 

Most people have an intuitive sense of how to do this…

•  “Hmm my hand has the most Hearts, so I'll bid Hearts”
•  "My hand has an equal amount of Spades & Diamonds but I have an Ace in Spades but only a K in Diamonds, so Spades 4 me” 

So what’s the biggie, right? However, the decision is sometimes made tougher under certain scenarios...

• “Err, I have 5 Clubs the highest being the Q. I also have 3 Spades but they’re like the A, K & Q… So how?” (Scenario 1)
• Wow 6 Diamonds, but the highest is only a J. Besides, the rest of my hand is crap except for the A out of my 4 Spades. Hmm what should I bid?” (Scenario 2)

& here’s the answer. Most of the rules in bridge btw are never concrete, in fact there are always exceptions to every rule where u have to exercise your own judgment. But this first one is almost as concrete as they come:

The Length of a suit is more important than its Strength

Apart from having a nice little ‘ring’ to it, what does this ultimately mean? Simply: Having a lot of cards within a suit is more important than having high cards of a suit.

So in Scenario 1: We bid 1 Clubs even though they are much weaker than the spades & in Scenario 2: We bid 1 Diamonds

Why? Hmm, there are many reasons but this is the most important one. & to do that, we have to dive for the 1^st time into the world of Contract Bridge…

Whenever any contract is reached (besides playing NT), the ideal situation is always for the partnership to have an 8-card suit fit between their hands. So if the trump is Hearts, the winner of the bid or “Declarer” (as it’s known in Contract bridge) + his prospective mate err… I mean partner should have at least 8 Hearts between them. This widely excepted standard is applied to Contract Bridge & is just as applicable here… Obviously to play a suit as trump you must have more trumps than your opponents or “defenders” & 7 cards of the trump suit is simply too risky. 8 represents a safe majority.

Ok, u might say. That sounds reasonable… but it doesn’t tell me what to bid -_-

To bid at the 1-Level in any suit requires u to have at least 4 cards in that suit.

Having 4 cards in any suit means you have an above average number of cards in that suit, since 4 is greater than 13/4 = 3.25… but also because of this.

Everyone has come across one of those moments when for instance you bid 1D then sometime later another player goes 2D and what this? You’ve found yourself a partner! :D 

Why is this good? Because if the guy who bid 2D isn’t a complete noob & bid with at least 4 cards as well (thankfully, most people do) & if u guys end up being partners then the partnership already has an 8-card suit fit, yay! (In fact this happens a lot more often than you may think...)

But hold on? What if I have:

·      Spades: A, K, 3, 2

·      Hearts: Q, J, 10, 9

·      Diamonds: Don’t care

·      Clubs: Don’t care

Bid Spades. Both are equal length but Spades are stronger. This hasn’t been covered yet but it’s really just common-sense…

But how about now?

·      Spades: A, 8, 3, 2

·      Hearts: K, Q, 3, 2

Bid Hearts. Hmm this is slightly less obvious...

& now?  

Spades: K, 8, 3, 2

·     Hearts: Q, J, 3, 2

·     
   K think u get the point. Sometimes it’s a really close call between 2 suits. We need a more objective system to help evaluate the strength of the cards in a player’s hand. 

 But oops, I'm running out of stamina, so more on that next time!