Fourth suit forcing is bridge a convention useful for when you're not sure what game to bid or if you just want to find a bid to keep the bidding going before setting a suit as trumps.
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Hi everyone, 1♥ from North, so we are bidding to game. I just don't know which game to bid yet so i'll start with 1♠. North bids 2♣ and I still don't know which game to bid. I could bid three 3NT, but my diamond suit's a little dodgy and I do have a five card spade suit. Maybe 4♠ is the right contract. Maybe 4♥, maybe 5♣.
Because I don't know I'm going to just explore a little more and I'm going to bid the fourth suit. Notice hearts, spades and clubs have been bid already. When I bid the fourth suit it doesn't necessarily have to be a four card suit. But it is forcing so I can get a little bit more information from North.
And that's fine. If North had spade support or partial spade support he would have bid spades. So North will have something in diamonds and that's good enough for me.
Well, North didn't have a lot in diamonds! But it's enough.
Fourth suit forcing is useful for when you're not sure what contract you want to be in or you just want to find a way of keeping the bidding going before you bid partner's suit or re-bid a suit of your own.