How far to go?

It is a common dilemma with highly distributional hands - and even sometimes with not so distributional hands - just who should stick their neck out furthest. Take a look at the West hand in the following deal from last Wednesday 29-March:

Board 16 Dealer W EW Vul

Q2
JT6
T96
AJT96
T643
AK532
Q732
KJ985
Q5
QJ8
K54
A7
AK987432
74
8

West is first to bid. It is a good hand but hardly good enough for an opening bid, so West passes, as does North. East opens 1S and the moment that happens, West should be thinking: 4S. Why? Because East will almost certainly have five spades, even when you are opening four card spade suits. Most pairs these days play 'five card' spades, which makes things more certain, but if playing four card spades as well as all other suits, West must realise that the ONLY time East will open with a four card spade suit is when East has 15+ HCP.

Whatever the case, West has enough to bid to 4S if East has an opening bid in spades. South, of course, will bid 4H, which should not stop West from bidding 4S. Even more reason to do so, because now West's heart void is worth even more than before, because East is unlikely to have wasted points in hearts.

Should North then carry on to 5H? North can be sure that South's hearts won't provide many (if any) defensive tricks, so probably should soldier on with 5H, but if not, South should bid 5H, based on the number of losers he expects, which is only four. Then the problem is whether EW go on to 5S. Remembering the old motto that the five level belongs to opponents, West might double rather than bid on, but everything is pretty much guesswork. At least one thing should be certain: EW should bid to 4S and NS should bid to 4H, after that the questions arise.

As happened at my home club of Hutt, two Souths were allowed to play in 4H, very poor judgement by the respective Wests, who might make the excuse that they didn't know what to do, with ONLY nine points. Those Wests were surely not looking at what the hand was worth instead of how many points they had. Then, we had two Easts who were allowed to play in 4S, again due to lack of proper hand evaluation by both South and North. I believe that NORTH should bid 5H, knowing that South has at least eight cards in the suit, but if North passes 4S, then South certainly has enough to bid 5H. With only four likely losers and not vulnerable, it is unlikely to end in a bad result, is it, given that you expect 4S to make.

Astonishingly, ONE South bid only 3H and was allowed to play there! And one EW pair went on to 5S which was down two. Knowing how far to bid certainly helps!