Tuesday, September 16, 2003 12:55 AM

Hand Evaluation – Systemic ( NT Openers )

PITBULLS:

The strong NT bid is the cornerstone of standard bidding . It is a clear & unambiguous bid that gets your auctions off to a good quantitative start . Normally it describes a balanced hand which means a 4-4-3-2 or 4-3-3-2 or 5-3-3-2 distribution with the 5 card suit being a minor .Experts have given ‘practical considerations’ as a reason to modify the 1NT bid to show 5-3-3-2 hands with a major , 5-4-2-2 and 6-3-2-2 distributions. Why ? There is no practical rebid with these kind of hands if you open a suit , rebid the suit or make a simple rebid in a 2^ND suit . You have not described 15-17 HCP to partner so quite often games are missed or stretching occurs which causes partials to be blown.