[pmarjora]

My partner and I had an interesting hand at this week's bridge session and we were wondering how it should be bid. We were vulnerable against not. East deals and has:
S: Q
H: J93
D: JT8764
C: 865

West holds:
S: AK63
H: AKQ6
D: K
C: AK97

Our west opened 2C and, after a 2D response found himself with an awkward rebid. We eventually played in 4H, making, after the following auction:
Pass
2C 2D
2H 4H
but I am wondering what the is the recommended way of dealing with strong 4441 hands?
Any thoughts would be welcome. Also, would your answer change if we replaced the DK with Dx? What if we also replaced S6 with SQ, say?

Thanks, Paul

[ahydra]

Barring any special system for handling strong 3-suiters, it's often best just to treat them as balanced, particularly if the singleton is an honour. So for example 2C-2D; 3NT (25-26)-p

ahydra

[Zelandakh]

Hello Paul and welcome to the BBO forums. What ahydra wrote is basically the usual advice. You basically have 3 options here:-

1. Treat as balanced, particularly if the singleton is a high honour.
2. Open 1 of a minor, particularly if your hand is not too strong.
3. Treat one of your 4 card suits as a 5 card suit.

You chose option number 3 and this worked out ok. Treating it as 25 balanced would also have worked on this hand.

As ahydra hinted at, there is also a 4th option by using a conventional method to handle these hands. This is not a bad idea if it fits well to your system (and I actually use such a convention myself) but these hands are rare enough that it is generally not worth going out of your way to include such a sequence, so I would recommend sticking with the 3 methods above and developing your judgement on when to use which approach.