1S opener, partner balanced with < 3 spades and with stoppers in unbid suits

What else do you know about this deal?

Just five recipes into rebuilding this cookbook, the deal generator helped me gain some insights that don’t always jump out at me when I’m reading about deals or when I’m playing bridge.

The scenario is an opening bid of 1S, so a 5-card major with 12-21 points. I want responder to have a balanced hand, fewer than 3 spades, and stoppers in unbid suits. At first, this sounds like a quick and easy variation of the previous recipe in the cookbook; it’s the same as that one, with the addition of stoppers in unbid suits. So I did that in a simplistic fashion:

By the way—when developing a new recipe, set your phaser to stun: Max Number of Shuffles set to 10,000.

This recipe works just fine. It is a quite literal translation of the requirements into Recipe-ese. “Fewer than 3 spades” = (0-2)XB. “Stoppers in unbid suits” = either an ace, a king with at least one card in support, or a queen with at least two in support (could go on down to a jack with three in support, but then we’re getting into excessively long side suits).

I don’t really like the literal-mindedness, though, because with this recipe you lock in three very specific honors in the unbid suits. But if you need a stopper, don’t you need to make sure it has support cards?

Yes, our stoppers need to really be stoppers, so kings and queens need support.

But then, something else about this recipe jumped out at me. When I generate deals from it using the Red Button, which applies both shaper and recipe, I always get exactly two spades in South. When I first noticed this, I suspected an error in the generator or a strange coincidence. Then, after many clicks of the Red Button, I realized it was simple logic: if you require a hand to be balanced, and you specify 0-2 cards in one suit as I did with South’s spades, then the only conforming shapes are 5-3-3-2 and 4-4-3-2. We will never get 4-3-3-3 because we need at least one doubleton, and we will never get an unbalanced or semi-balanced hand because our shaper forces a balanced hand.

So this recipe, and our previous recipe as well, are using loose language when they say “balanced, with < 3 spades.” They should say, “balanced, with 2 spades.”

Revelation. The inescapable logic that drives these results is also operating at the table when you play bridge. If, during an auction, your partner has responded in a way that indicates no support for your 5-card major, and a balanced hand, you don’t have to wonder if they have 0, 1, or 2 of your major. They have exactly 2 spades, and one of only two balanced shapes. Old hat for experienced players? Maybe. It never occurred to me before.

Let’s fix South at 2 spades in that recipe:

Now, I started off not liking the specificity of South’s recipe, but I wound up making it even more specific in order to reflect the reality of the possible number of spades if less than 3. That kind of specificity is fine. But I still don’t like the overly-specific cards in the unbid suits. How can I generalize the stoppers while making sure they have support cards?

Wait—we just learned that South will have 5-3-3-2 or 4-4-3-2 shape, didn’t we? And spades will always be the 2-card suit. Therefore, all other suits will have at least three cards. If we’re happy with ace, king, or queen as stoppers, then we will have no unguarded honors. Let’s generalize our stoppers using the “G” placeholder, which translates to an ace, king, or queen:

Along with generalizing the stoppers, I ditched the spot card placeholders (“X”) in the unbid suits since I know the balanced shape will provide enough for each stopper.

Now this recipe is as specific as it needs to be, and no more. It is pleasingly general where it can be, so that you get an interesting mix of stoppers when you generate multiple deals from it. This version is going into the cookbook.

One more thing to think about when using such recipes: the effect of changing the point ranges in the shaper.

Notice that while I made South balanced, I left their HCP up to the luck of the draw by leaving the 0-to-37 default in the shaper. That’s fine for playing around with the basic shape. But the most typical way I explore a scenario is to vary the point ranges, especially responder’s. The point ranges of interest to me are typically 0-5, 6-9, 10-11, and 12+.

When you vary point ranges for an existing, validated recipe, you are actually creating a new, possibly untested recipe, so you still need to keep Max Shuffles at 10,000.

For this recipe, if you decide to explore the 0-5 HCP range for responder, you are going to be disappointed:

Though perhaps I should not say “disappointed.” You are going to be slapped awake or, more gently, prodded into an enhanced state of understanding. The “G” placeholders will give you at least a queen in each of three suits, for a minimum of 6 HCP. Therefore, the deal generator will never find a conforming deal with fewer than 6 HCP.

Look at that. One seemingly simple recipe walked us through some useful—and new, to some of us—thoughts about card distribution.

Happy dealing!