What to do with 22HCP?

What to do with 22HCP?

Question: When do you use this?

Answer: When you have 22HCP and balanced, and you are considering bidding 2C.

In a nutshell: When you have a balanced 22HCP, you sometimes want to bid 2NT, and sometimes want to bid 2C. This articles explains why on the basis of estimating "Playing Tricks".

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With the above hand, would you open 

1. 1 of a suit? e.g. 1D

2. 2NT?

3. 2C?

Let's assume the usual basic agreement (let's call it Specification A)

2NT: 20-21 HCP

2C: balanced 22+HCP or shapely 19+HCP and 4 losers.

Would your answer change if your hand looks like this below? The HCP is still 22HCP. The only thing that has changed is you have swapped the Q and J in the spade and diamond suit.

For myself personally, I would certainly have a different bid for the first and second hands.

For the first hand, I would bid 2NT. For the second hand, I would bid 2C. What's the difference? 

Here's specification B

2NT : 20-21 (and sometimes 22HCP)

2C: Balanced 23+ HCP or 22HCP with 8 playing tricks. or Shapely 19+HCP with 9 playing tricks and 4 or less losers (10 tricks if the likely suit is minor)

What are playing tricks? If you imagine the cards in the 3 other players are distributed evenly, and your partner has zero HCP, you count the number of tricks you think you can get. With a balanced hand, 8 tricks is one less than 9 which is what you need for 3NT. With a shapely hand, 9 or 10 tricks is one trick less than the game contract in a major or minor). See this article for a detailed explanation.

Therefore, when I bid 2C and subsequently rebid 2NT after my partner bids 2D, I am saying to my partner "We may have a game if you have one decent honor or a pretty long but useless suit or both".  This is highly descriptive and allows me to bid game with very little or avoid game if necessary.

For the first hand, I can count 5 sure playing tricks. I would probably add 0.5 trick for the QS and the JD. That will make it a total of 6. I would bid 2NT in this case as the closest available bid (even though I am 1HCP over).

For the second hand, I can count 8.25 playing tricks. I would bid 2C.

Essentially, I'm saying that the "border" of 22HCP is a bit porous. Sometimes, it needs a 2NT and sometimes it needs a 2C opener.

What if I bid 1 of a suit instead?

Let's say you open the bidding with 1D. There are 2 potential problems, which may concern you if you want to improve your game with a more exacting method.

Problem 1. With 22HCP, your opponents have 18. There is roughly a 50% chance your partner will not bid respond (<6HCP) if he is disciplined.  Then you end up in a one level contract (this is not always a bad thing from a luck perspective - you may not be able to make game. You kept it low).

Problem 2. You have a rebid problem. Supposing you bid 1D, and partner bids 1H. What is your next bid? any bid below game might be passed by partner (who may have stretched even to give you a response). You probably have to bid 3NT. 

But that means you might miss slam!? That's because your partner is going to assume you have 19HCP only. You have basically underbidded your hand.

In summary, by opening 1 of a suit with 22HCP, you will, some of the time, miss game, and some of the time miss slam. This is fundamentally a problem of not describing your hand properly.

Conclusion

As with all things bridge, there are no hard and fast rules in bidding. However, for balanced 2C openers, I follow specification B, as I believe it is more accurate in the long run.

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