Winners Play Major Suits
Why? Bridge scoring is biased toward the major suits. This is especially important in competitive matchpoints bridge where a difference of 10 or 20 points can be the difference between winning and losing. It's less important at IMP scoring, but is still a consideration. Get the Best Start. Opening bids of 1 Heart or Spade get the bidding off to the best possible start. Our system, like all five card major based systems, insists that any five card major be opened, no matter how weak the suit, if the hand qualifies as an opener.Only Five+ Card Major Openings. 1% of duplicate players will open a four card major suit. All the rest, including us, only open major suits with five or more cards. They can be of any size -- 9,6,5,4,3 of Hearts is an OK opening suit. All responses depend on this rule, so adopt 5 card majors as your very first change to duplicate style if you now open four card majors.
Finding Your 4 - 4 Major Fits. All response systems will strive to find a major suit fit, so don't be concerned that you'll miss bidding your A,K,Q,J of Spades -- you won't.
The Negative. The negative implications -- NOT opening a major suit -- are important. If you don't open a major, the hand has no five card major suit. Period. Simple.
There are others ways to treat hands with two five card suits, but we like this simple, easy to remember rule.
(c) Robert D. McConnell, 1998 All Rights Reserved