Blogs

“Fourth Highest from Longest and Strongest”. There is good reason for this ‘rule of thumb’ for making an opening lead against a No Trump contract. Board 16 from Thursday 3/7/5 at X-Clubs gives us a wonderful example.

Board 16. Dealer W EW Vul

	4 JT4 KT843 AT98
AT96 Q853 QJ J63		KJ75 K962 52 K72
	Q832 A7 A976 Q54

Now that I have given a basic summary of opening leads, we need to look a bit further and introduce some important and very useful additions and variations:

Vil is starting a new series to be emailed to Hutt's Thursday players (but I'm sure he wouldn't say "no" to including you if you sent him your email address to villyn@xtra.co.nz). He's billing it as Thursday Tips. Here's the first installment

Board 4 from last Thursday is a good example of when you need STAYMAN, and not only that - but when you need Stayman at its most effective, and that is, when you can use it without restriction on point count, from zero to 20!

What part of “Fourth Suit Forcing” do people not understand? It seems very simple to me, but clearly not so simple to some others. Even natural bidding without any need for the confusion of the idea of the fourth suit should land EW on this deal in 4H and not the very much inferior 3NT or 4S. But let’s see this full deal:

Board 14 from Thursday 22/05/2025
Dealer E Nil Vul

	K54 KQJ T843 T93
QJT872 A743 KJ J		9852 AQ762 AQ72
	A963 T6 95 K8654

Unusual No Trumps, partner? And how, and when do you play it? What about Michaels? Same question: how and when do you play that? And a final question: have you heard of ‘leaping Michaels’? The answer is possibly that you have, but what about leaping Unusual No Trumps? When you think about it, why not play the Unusual NT and Michaels to include leaps to a higher level depending on your distribution and strength. Here is a great example of the use of the UNT.

Board 10 from Friday 16/05/2025
Dealer E All Vul

	KQ8763 K KJT764
QT875 9 94 Q9853		AJ96 52 AQT875 A
	K432 AJT4 J632 2