[dickiegera]

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Do you open this in 1st seat?

I don't like to open with 4♠ having an outside Ace. Maybe 3♠?
I chose to pass and after LHO bid a♣ and RHO bid 1♦ I now bid 4♠.
Very poor result. They cannot make more than 3 of anything and 4♠ was down 3.

Opinions please

[SteveMoe]

Would open 3♠ at equal (NV) vulnerability (and listen carefully to Rule of 2-3-4 advocates who would insist on opening 4), and 4♠ at favorable vulnerability.
Give them the last guess.
By passing you let them exchange information they would otherwise be without.

[mikestar13]

I'm one of those 2,3,4 advocates, so this is 4♠ except at unfavorable. Though I can see a case for pulling in a notch when you have spades. A reasonable partnership agreement might well be 1,2,3 in spades and 2,3,4 in other suits. In any case, be aggressive with that middle number when neither side is vulnerable and conservative when both sides are vulnerable; but the given hand is a pretty clear 7 tricks.

[gwnn]

I will always bid 4S with this hand. If you don't like having an outside ace for 4S, you should like having an outside ace even less for 3S. It makes sense to have a wider range for game-level preempts than non-game level preempts. That's because partner will often need to decide whether or not to bid 4S (in competition or not) but gauging slam is not so important, usually if you just forget about slam on most birderline hands you'll be fine and those strong hands don't come up that often as the game raises anyway.

[the hog]

4S opener. Passing and then bidding is losing bridge.