Five-card majors for offensive purposes. However, if the trump cards break 4-1 or 1-4, then drawing trump will result in no trumps left for offensive purposes. The value of five-card majors can be understood then on two levels: But five-card majors have several drawbacks: Both partners must agree to follow the five-card major bidding treatment on their opening bid. Opener must have at least five cards in hearts or spades to start the bidding with that suit. Responder is expected to show support with three-card support, indicating an eight-card fit. With only four cards in a major suit, the opening bidder is
Auction theory than any other bidder (or equivalently a special bidding fee of $X – Δ). This bidder will still win the lot, but will pay more than would otherwise be the case. The winner's curse is a phenomenon which can occur in "common value" settings—when the actual values to the different bidders are unknown but correlated, and the bidders make bidding decisions based on estimated values. In such cases, the winner will tend to be the bidder with the highest estimate, but the results of the auction will show that the remaining bidders' estimates of the item's value are less than