BRIDGE MASTERCLASS

YOU open 1 ♣ and to your delight, partner responds 1 ♥ . What would you rebid? BID 4 ♥ direct, and consider yourself extremely unlucky if you go down.

even if partner is absolutely minimum, you should have not more than three losers, as long as he has one of the missing heart honours.

You don’t need masses of honour points to make game. here you can do it on as few as a combined 15 once you have discovered your distributional fit. however, there is always the likelihood that the opponents will compete for they surely must have a spade fit here.

Your direct jump to game will not prevent partner from making a slam try if he is strong; on the contrary, it might encourage him to make a try with slender values, but with key controls, knowing that you are distributional.

For example: ♠ Axx, ♥ Kxxxx, ♦ Axx, ♣ xx — and 6 ♥ is a racing cert on a combined 21 count!