As with balanced hands, you also have to make a ‘2 bid plan’ if you open an unbalanced hand. The difference is that with an unbalanced hand, you do not bid No Trumps and instead you bid your suit(s). There are many more possible combinations of unbalanced hands, and we bid them following these 2 rules:
1) Bidding the same suit twice, promises 6+ cards in that suit
2) Bidding one suit, and then rebidding a different suit promises 5:4 in those 2 suits (5 in your first bid suit, as you always bid your longer suit first!)
If you do not have a 6+ card suit, and you do not have 5:4 in two suits, then your hand must be balanced, and you follow the NT ladder, as discussed here.
To show your strength with a balanced hand you either opened NTs or rebid them (sometimes with a jump). With unbalanced hands you always open 1 of a suit, and you are always rebidding a suit. As such we split our opening range into 2 parts (called minimum and maximum). When we open the bidding at the 1 level we promise 12-19 points, so a ‘minimum’ opening hand has 12-15 points and a ‘maximum’ has 16-19 points. Following the golden rules above, when you are rebidding, if you have a minimum you rebid at the lowest available level, for example:
1♠- (Pass) – 2♣- (Pass)
2♠
The 2♠ bid shows 6+ spades and a minimum.
If you have a maximum, you jump (miss a level out):
1♥– (Pass) – 1NT – (Pass)
3♦
You could have bid 2♦ but instead you bid 3♦ to show that you have a maximum (16-19 points) and 5 hearts, 4 diamonds.
The reason you are bidding your suits is to hopefully find a major suit trump fit. As so, if you find a trump fit before you get a chance to bid twice (your partner bids a suit you have 4 cards in or your partner agrees your first suit as trumps) then you don’t have to go through with your 2 bid plan, as you achieved what you were looking for.
For example, let’s say you hold 5 spades, 4 clubs and 19 points, and the bidding goes:
1♠ – (Pass) – 2♠ – (Pass)
4♠
Your partner’s 2♠ bid agreed spades as trumps and showed 6-9 points. Thus, you have at least 25 points between your 2 hands and a spade fit, so you don’t need to show partner your 4 card club suit, as you have all the info you need to go to game in spades.
