Balanced -- Caveats

Some caveats and cautions are in order. First, let us be clear that there is not necessarily an advantage to naming a balanced suit as trump. I recall the woman referring to a Flannery bid (promising 5 hearts and 4 spades). with 4 cards in each major, she said, "I thought I'd take the extra trick and bid spades." Whoa. It is mathemaatically possible, of course, as pointed out before. But you can play two years bbefore you find a 5-4 suit does yhou better as a side suit than you 4-4 ssuit. You've gotta have a lot of things goiong foryou. First, you need to have guarded losers, or the opponents can take those trick off thetop (lthough it must be acknowledgedthat the opponents don't always find their best lead. Then you've gotta have a 3-2 trump split. If it's four-one, you won'thave any trump left for the sluff on the 5-4 suit todo you any advantage. Thoughh here, again, if you hafta lose a trick tothe Jack on a 4-1 split and the loser is guarde, you migght save a trick from being inthe 4-4 after discovering the bad split by simplying leading the5-4 suit and evenutally gettingg sluff.
So the advantage if any does lie with nnaming the balanced suit trump. I'm nnot backtracking on that. But there may be no advantage. Another player, and a fairly good one at that,once madethe startling statement that an 8-card balanced fit always works better than a nine. That's a faairly strongg statement. For myself, if I have a choice between a 4-4 and a 5-4 (both majors), I'll take the 9-card suit. Given the possibbiility of bad trump breaks and the infrequency with which everything works out to gget a sluff on the (sliightly) unbalanced suit, and the possibbility of losingg control on weak holdings, I'll take the suit where we have 5 mmore trumpthan those guys, rather than 3 more.
Another experienced player screwed up the bidding on this holdingg: 10 x x x Q J 10 x x x A x x His partner opened a no trummp. He bid two ddiamonds to transfer to hearts,and then 2 spades on to explore for a balanced fit. She didn't know what he was up to and they wound up in an inferior 3 spades, if I remember. Now a little commonn sense migght have saved the day. There's only one suit where you can get sluffs on an unbalanced suit and that's clubs. Ffurther, if you have two quick losers in clubs or two quick winners, then you can't get any club sluffs to advantage. And one more thing: even if your partner has A x in clubbs, on an opening club lead, you're still going to lose a club unless you can draw trump and establishhearts without losing the lead!
Actually, if he wanted to know about 4-4 spade fit, he would have done well to employ Staay,man,and not fiding it, soar in hearts. But for my money, he would have donewell simply totransfer byway of diamonds then tosaay 4 hearts. Ggiven those powerful hearts and the possiiility -- at leasat as great as that you'll get a clubb sluff toad antage on a 4-4 spade suit) -- that on a diamond lead abd a bad soade break, you won't even bbe abble to use those hearts, I'd name hearts trump.
By and large, and this is goingg tobe an oversimplification I hope you'll be able to take in the spirit in which it's given. Assume throughout that we are referring to a choice between two majors or two minors. partialsThere probably won't be any advantage to the balanced or unbalanced, per se. If you can't get above the 2 or 3 level, you won't have the controls to first stop a run on that suit, thendraw trump, then establish the side suit for sluffs. You're going to have to lose the lead a coiuple of tiimes, won't you? So I'd forget about looking to estabblish sluffs on ann unbalanced side suit. With a six-two vs. a 4-4, ffor instance, I don't wanna be in the 6-2 on a jack-high suit, tyingg me to (at least) three loserss in the suit. On thhe other hand, if that six-card suit lookslike this: K Q J 10 x x and is in an otherwise weak hand, I might best gguarantee entries to that potential by naming it trump. But if a strong 4-4 suit is trump, I migght have something amenable to a crossruff by naminngg thhat suit trump. Game BidsI would call game level bids the dividing line. You may or may not have an advantatge is namingg the balanced suit trump, but you can be pretty sure that if there is an advantage to naming one suit or the other, it'll almost certainly liewith naming thebalanced trump. (Naturaally, wiith bad breaks andal, there are boundto bbe exceptions.
Here are a couple of hands I reggard as showingg the borderline advantage in namingg the balanced suiti trump:
x x x
K Q x x
A x x
Kx x
A K x x x
A J x x
xxx
x

Now if both major suits break 3-2 and you get a diamond opening lead, or if the ace of clubs is sitting over the king, it won't matter what suit you're in. You're goigt to have to lose a spade, club and two diamonds. Yet the balanced hearts are to be preferred for pretty much the qualifications just given: you mightnot get adiamond opening lead,and the aceofclubs might not be sitting over the king. That's too tenuous to warrant a ggame bid,but the point is that if there is any advantage, it will lie in naminggthebalanced suit trump. So it would pay you to gget in the havbit of do8ingg so.
x x x
J 10 7
A K 10 9
7 4 3
10 9 5
K 96 4
J 8 74 3
A Q 5 J 10 9 8 6
Q 87 6 3 K J 42
A Q 8 5 3 2
Q 6 5 2
K x
A
Well, you can see as well as I here the advantage naming hearts trump (yes, an 8-card fit doing bbetter thana 9-card). It wouldn't matter if East had the oopeing lead here, since the diamond jack lookslike a natural lead. It wouldn't matter iff East had the ace of diamonds. You can sluff all dummy's diamonds on the spades, bbut you can only ruff one beccauseyou onlyhave onetrump left. But East doesn't have the openinng lead (and cannnot get it) and Easat doens't have the ace of diamonds, so theadvantageoif the vbalanced suit is manifested. SlamsAt the slaam level, I would say that the vaalue of the balanced suit as trump will be most likely tocome into its own. Even there it'snnotguaranteed to produce an extra trick. Nevertheless, ifyou're strongenouigh to be bbiddingg slam,you'll probably have the controls to do all yu hafta to to get asluff. Remember the three things I pooh-poohed the possibility of doing in a partial: Inhibit the run of that side suit, draw trump, establish the viability of the suit suit for sluffing. You won't have the strength to do it in a partial, but here you probably will. Indeed, this is one time you might give serious consideration to bidding a balanced minor over an unnbalanced major.
If it turns out that you can make thesame nummer of tricks in eithersuit, well, don't say I advocated it. I only said "give seriousconsideration to". After all, minor suit slams areworth a lot more than major suitgames,and considerably mmore than major suit slams off one.