Four of a Major

Author: Larry Cohen
Date of publish: 02/01/2010
Level: All Levels

In this series, we are analyzing 1,000,000 deals which were played on-line. These deals cover a wide range of level of play and were provided by Stephen Pickett with Bridge Browser.

On how many deals was 4-of-a-major the final contract?

Answer: 248,980 -- or 24.9 % of all deals. 

3NT, last month's question, was the final contract on 18.1% of deals. That was the singular most popular contract.

4? alone was 11.7%

4? alone was 13.2%

All three of these pieces of information are not surprising. You'd expect 3NT (the lowest-trick game) to be most frequent. You'd also expect 4? to be more common than 4? (you can bid 4? over 4?, but not vice versa). So, 3NT, 4? and 4? combined account for 43% of all deals played.

FYI:  5? Was played on 2.3% of all deals and 5? on 2.9%  (So, a game contract in a minor occurred on 5.2% of 1,000,000 deals). That means that GAME was bid on just less than half of all deals played.

Next month's question: On how many of the 1,000,000 deals was a slam (6 or 7) the final contract?