Balanced hand
Hand with an even distribution of suits
title: "Balanced hand" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["contract-bridge-bidding"] description: "Hand with an even distribution of suits" topic_path: "general/contract-bridge-bidding" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_hand" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Hand with an even distribution of suits ::
A balanced hand or balanced distribution in card games is a hand with an even distribution of suits. In the game of contract bridge, it denotes a hand of thirteen cards which contains no singleton or void and at most one . Three hand patterns are classified as truly balanced: 4-3-3-3, 4-4-3-2 and 5-3-3-2. The hand patterns 5-4-2-2 (an example of a two-suiter) and 6-3-2-2 (a single-suiter) are generally referred to as semi-balanced.
In natural bidding systems, balanced hands within specified high card point (HCP) ranges are generally opened with a notrump bid, or rebid in notrump.
In the Netherlands, a bidding system called Saaie klaver ("Boring club") that reserves the 1 opening for all balanced hands (boring hands), has gained some popularity.
Literature
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::