Rare but Worth Noting

	A J 4
	K J 8 5
	Q 10
	A K Q 8
6 3		Q 10 9 8 7
6 4 3		A 2
J 7 5 4 3 2		K 9 8 6
7 2		6 3
	K 5 2
	Q 10 9 7
	A	Contract: 6 clubs, 6 hts
	J 10 9 5 4	Opening lead: 4 of diamonds

I was looking for a "Major over a Minor" hand to supplant one I'd just deleted as unsatisfactory, when I came across this, which has a secondary lesson on the value of the most balanced suit as trump. Six hearts makes with no difficulty. Then I noticed that two declarers were going down in 6 clubs. Why should they have any trouble with that healthy club suit? I wondered with a hasty look. And then I took a second look at the hand and saw why.

This is a classic hand, commonly given in bridge books, where the 4-4 suit works better as trump than the 5-4 suit because you get a sluff on the 5-4 suit if it's a side suit. You'll note that you've gotta have a lot of things go right for this to be the case. The 4-4 trump suit has to split 3-2 and there must be a guarded loser in another suit such that sluffing it brings in a trick you wouldn't have without that sluff.

Here if hearts split 4-1, there's no advantage, as just mentioned. If the Q of spades were onsides, there's no advantage. If by chance dummy had a singleton diamond and four spades, there would be no advantage, for you could only sluff a spade you could ruff anyway. But they all came together here to make the 4-4 suit a viable suit for slam while the 5-4 suit as trump doesn't work.

Now the reader might wonder, how do you know when you do have that situation? There are, to be sure, a few bidding sequences where one can have a pretty good idea. Two diamonds, Flannery, fr'instance, traditionally promises 4 spades and 5 hearts, and a responder with 4 spades and 3 hearts would know to pick the balanced fit. Similarly, if a partner opens a spade and rebids 2 hearts, he may or may not have 5 hearts, but you know him to hold 5 spades (by traditionally bidding today) and at least four hearts, and so with 3 spades and 4 hearts would do well to support the latter for the balanced (4-4) or more balanced (5-4) fit. But I would suggest that this (a 4-4 working better than a 5-4) is such a rarity where everything clicks that it's not worth concerning yourself with and you'd do far better to smoke out the 8-card-or-better major suit fits, preferring the major over the minor than to try to determine if you've got the situation above, which may or may not lead to a one-trick difference anyway.

Rather, I would say that there's something bigger at issue here, and that is that the bidders should have been smoking out and settling in the 4-4 major, period. Because majors will bring you more points than minors, by chance declarers would have settled in the suit that works best because it is balanced -- and most declarers did. I have the bidding schemes of the two down in 6 clubs, and neither pair bid hearts! At all. Furthermore, there was an easy road to the heart fit. For North in each case opened two no trump, each responder bid 3 clubs, and opener rebid 3 diamonds! One 3 diamond bid was alerted, for whatever that means, and the other was not. But they both seem to be denying a 4-card major!

Well, supposing we reverse the balance: we have 4-4 clubs and 5-4 hearts. Particularly given short-club openings, how are we going to smoke that out? As suggested above, that situation is rare and further, does not guarantee an extra trick, though such happens occasionally as in the hand above. If you look at every hand on every tournament of OKBridge, I would think you wouldn't find more than one a year. Since I'm recommending going for the major over the minor in the first place and since 10 tricks in a major will bring more points than 11 in a minor, and since the 4-4 suit as trump won't necessarily bring in a extra trick over the 5-4 suit, we're talking about a slam bid where the balanced minor brings in one more trick than a (slightly) unbalanced major. That I'm saying isn't likely to surface more than once a year with all the hands on OKBridge and hence isn't worth staking your energy on.

In short, I would not be ashamed to be in a 5-4 major when later analysis showed that a 4-4 minor would have brought slam. I might put it this way: when you have slam potential and a double fit, one suit a minor, the other suit a major, if both work, you're better off in the major, especially in matchpoints. If the major works and the minor doesn't, then obviously you're better off in a major. And if the minor works best? Well, I'll have to accept those times for the advantage gained from other instances. You can't expect to fine tune your bidding to get every hand just right, especially since the layout out of the opponents' cards will commonly have some bearing on the best contract, and you can't explore for knowledge of those cards. Not in the bidding.

Three clubs over two no has to be Stayman, allowing the 4-4 heart fit to be found. This is indeed exactly the type of hand Stayman was devised for! Why the bid was not responded to as Stayman I cannot say. And incidentally, though I have often inveighed against the practice of loading your style with too many conventions until you get real, real good, I have always touted Blackwood and Stayman as the two indispensibles, to be taught along with your first exposure to a bidding system.