Strong Jump Shifts: Suit Quality, Self-Sustaining Suits, Losing Trick Count
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Greetings Bridge Friends,
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Marching forward with our lessons on Losing Trick Count/Cover Cards and Self-Sustaining Suits/Suit Quality, it’s time to delve into bidding where we have strong hands with unbalanced shape. Sure, we all love picking up a hand with nearly half the points in the deck, yet it can be a bidding challenge when holding a shapely hand with most of the points in two suits. So what’s a player to do? Let’s consider how the strong jump shift can help the opener eloquently describe their hand and drive towards a game contract. But first, we have a bit of sad news. While our recent three lessons Losing Trick Count and Cover Cards has served us well, we cannot always use LTC/CC hand evaluation criteria to immediately count our winners and losers. Of course as we’ve previously seen, when you do hold a semi self-sustaining suit then by all means go right ahead and begin using LTC (but use caution when both are minor suits).
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Let’s take a moment for a brief review:
Highlights – Losing Trick Count and Cover Cards
– Prerequisite: 8+ card trump fit or self-sustaining suit
– Ace-King-Queen are not losers in 3+ card suits (except Q x x in a side suit)
– Generally, fourth card and beyond are not losers
– LTC – CC equals losers, as 6 LTC – 3 CC = 3 losers (major suit game)
– Extras: 5+4 trump, working Queens and Jacks, shortness
Trump Fit or Self-Sustaining Suit
- LTC is normally a 5-3 or longer major suit fit
- Occasionally one player has a long, strong suit
- We need an independent method to determine the suit quality and LTC when one player has a long, strong suit
- When evaluating Suit Quality, we generally assume partner may hold a singleton to ascertain the losers (LTC) in a long suit
- Adjust the above when partner bids Notrump, indicating 2+ card support
Self-Sustaining Suit and Suit Quality
- Limited to 1 loser when partner holds a singleton
- Reserved for situations when a player holds a long, strong suit
- Suit Quality equals the number of useful honors plus the suit length
- Self-Sustaining Suit usually equals a Suit Quality of 10 or more, lose 0-1 tricks
- Semi Self-Sustaining Suit equals a Suit Quality of 9, lose 1-2 tricks
Self-Sustaining Suits – Examples where SQ = 10
A K Q x x x x = 3+ honors + 7 length = 10+
A Q x x x x x x = 2 honors = 8 length = 10
A K Q J x = 4+ honors + 5 length = 9+
K Q J 10 x x = 4 honors (without Ace) + 6 length = 10
Q J 10 9 x x x = 3 honors + 7 length = 10ish (discount 1 missing Ace and King)
J 10 9 8 x x x x = No! Inadequate with primary honors and Queen
Semi Self-Sustaining Suits – Examples where SQ = 9
A Q x x x x x = 2 honors + 7 length = 9
K Q J x x x = 3 honors + 6 length = 9
Q J 10 9 x x = 3 honors + 6 length = 9ish (body card 9 is helpful)
A K Q x x x = 3+ honors + 6 length = 9+ (count extra for top 3 honors in long suit)
Please refer to our Lessons 76 – 78 for more on LTC and Cover Card hand evaluation.
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