Question:
My partner and I held the following hand and our auction was as shown. With the distribution that occurred with this hand, we went down three. Some people chose to open 2NT and played it in 3NT making four or five. How should we bid strong 4-4-4-1 hands?
Answer:
First, 4H is a reasonable contract and will be successful most days. In addition, if the opponent on opening lead held the QJ9x or better and chose to lead the queen, 3NT would not make. So, don’t despair.
Strong 3-suited hands are a problem for all natural bidding systems. In Standard American and Two Over One, if you chose to open a minor and then jump to show strength, partner reads you for at least 5-4. Worse, your ‘natural’ third round suit usually gets interpreted as a 3NT probe.
For me there are three options available for this hand. First, you can open 2NT to show a balance or semi balanced 20-21. Some say, to do this with a singleton, you should have a singleton honour. The reason is that if partner transfers into your singleton, a singleton honour would most times be better than 2 small cards. Second, you could try opening 1D (hoping your partner responds) and then jumping somewhere to try and describe your hand. Third, you can open 2C and over 2D or 2H (double negative) make a bid you hope doesn’t give you a problem further on in the auction (2H or 3C).
There are a couple of conventions out there that are designed to handle these types of hands. However, they tend to be complicated (memory work/partnership understanding) and strong 4441 hands don’t happen very often. However, when they do, they can pose a problem.
For this hand, if you are comfortable opening 2NT with a singleton, then, by all means do so. If you are not comfortable with that, then this described auction is perfectly good and most times it will make and maybe more than 3NT.