Help Suit Trial Bids
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 we 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 bid game if you have 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♥.
Long Suit Trial Bids
A Long Suit Game Try shows length in the side suit. It's similar to a help suit game try.
Short Suit Game Trial Bids
A Short Suit Game Try turns this logic entirely upside down. Your new suit bid announces a singleton or a void. Instead of asking for help in that suit, you are warning partner, "I am short here. Do not count any secondary high cards you hold in this suit, because I can just ruff my losers."
For partner, hand evaluation becomes a matter of assessing duplication of value. If partner holds the King and Queen of your short suit, those points are completely wasted, and they will decline the invitation to game. However, if partner holds absolute trash in your short suit (like three small cards) and has their high-card points in the other side suits, your hands fit perfectly. You can ruff their losers, and their high cards will win tricks elsewhere.
Perfect Cards!
South makes a short suit trial bid and North has no wasted values in the club suit.
Which one should you play?
Many experts have strong opinions about it all but if you and your partner pick one method and stick to it you'll be 99% of the way there.