Inviting To Game
Honours working together can make a break a hand. When we're thinking of bidding game, points alone don't always give us the information we need. Which points partner has can be be more useful to know than how many.
Partner raises to 2 Of Our Major
We open 1♥ an partner raises to 2♥ Have we got enough to go to game? It depends a little bit on North's holding in the other suits.
Which Honours Would Be Useful In Partner's Hand?
Imagine North has got the ♣Q, that card would be useless to us.
Fitting Cards
Imagine North's got the ♦Q, or even the ♦A. Those cards would be really good because they would help us establish the diamond suit.
Trial Bids In Action
So what I can do here is use a bidding convention called a trial bid. North and South both know that hearts will be the trump suit. 3♦ says tell me if you've got anything useful in diamonds.
Source Of Tricks
North knows the ♦Q will be useful and bids 4♥. With nothing in diamonds North would stop in 3♥.
An easy one to play, we can just draw trumps and knock out the ♦A. The diamond suit gives us three tricks and we make 4♥.
