Bidding Quiz                                     12th September, 2007

 

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                                                    Board 1      Dealer North       None Vul

 

 

Before we get to the actual problem, do you agree with West’s first bid?  3NT is another possibility, but that’s a bid that could be made with somewhat less HCP’s and the danger with 3NT is that we might miss a Heart fit or a slam (or both).  The only danger with that Double is that Partner might leap to 4♠, but that’s not so terrible, if his hand is that good, we can take a shot at 6NT.

 

As it is, Partner obligingly bids 3♥.  Now what?  We think that the hand is too good to bid 4♥ so we’d make one slam try with a cue-bid of 4♣.  If Partner retreats to 4♥ we’ll give up, otherwise we’ll go to slam.

 

 

                                                    Board 2      Dealer East       N-S Vul

 

 

This may look like a Weak Two, and so it is, at least most of the time.  But here the vulnerability is favorable, we have a nice shape and lovely distribution.  We confess that we would be unable to bid less than 3♥ in the circumstances.

 

 

Board 7

Here we give both E-W hands and analyze their auction.

 

            West                East

            ♠ AKJT63       ♠ Q7

            ♥ A54              ♥ QJ3

            ♦ 94                 ♦ A76

            ♣ K4               ♣ AQJ62

 

            West                East 

            1♠                    2♣

            2♠                    3NT

            4♥                    4NT

            5♦                    5NT

            6♣                   7NT

            Pass

 

A very nice auction gets E-W to the perfect spot.  What does it all mean?

 

2♠:       2♣ was game-forcing in this partnership’s methods, so there was no need to jump to 3♠ to show extra values.  3♠ here is normally used to show a really good suit rather than an especially good hand.  The definition of a “really good suit” is a matter for partnership agreement, we like it to be a suit with no slow losers, so not AKQxxx, nor the actual holding.  But KQJTxx or AQJTxx would be OK.  Another matter for partnership agreement is whether that 2♠ shows a 6^th Spade, some (probably most) 2/1 players use it as a “neutral” bid whenever they don’t have a more descriptive rebid available.  Others use 2NT as the “neutral” bid.

 

3NT:   Showed 15-17 HCP’s and presumably stops in the unbid suits.

 

4♥:      Now here’s an interesting bid!  Can it be a natural Heart bid?  No, surely not!  If West had 5 Hearts he would have bid the suit earlier, and with less than that there would be no point in introducing the suit naturally at the 4-level.  No, West is making a slam try, but in what suit?  Surely Spades, if he wanted to agree Clubs he could have bid 4♣ (please don’t say this is Gerber!).

 

4NT:   Could this be an attempt to play it in 4NT?  No, we’ve already expressed our affinity for No Trump, but Partner is insisting on Spades anyway.  East has a pleasant surprise for Partner with that Qx of Spades and feels justified in trying Roman Key Card Blackwod.

 

5♦:       Playing 1430 responses, this shows “zero or three”.

 

5NT:   The King Ask.

 

6♣:      This partnership was playing “Specific Kings” (highly recommended) so this shows the K♣.  Note that if this partnership were playing “Number of Kings”, East would show one King, which is useless information, East will have no idea whether Partner has the highly prized K♣, or a far less useful red King.

 

7NT:   East can count 13 tricks, barring awful splits.

 

 

                                                    Board 8      Dealer West       None Vul

 

 

2♣ was “New Minor Forcing”, a method of checking back for a 5-3 major fit after a 1NT rebid by Opener.  South shows at least game-invitational values for that bid.  Two points of interest:

-         Should North bother to show that 3-card Spade support, considering that her hand is square and the trumps are so feeble?  We say “Yes!”, North has already declined once to show 3-card support, it would be perverse to refuse again to show it.

-         Assuming that North is going to admit to Spade support, what is his correct bid?  We would jump to 3♠, showing a maximum hand as well as those 3 Spades.  If North bids only 2♠, South will place her with a minimum and may pass.

 

 

                                                    Board 11      Dealer South       None Vul

 

 

LHO has opened one of a suit, Partner has doubled and RHO has bid one of a major.  What does Double here mean?  And also how about 2♠?  East is in a common psyching situation, and there is the possibility that he is trying to pick off our major suit fit.  With that in mind, a common treatment here is:

-         Double shows 4 of their (so-called?) Spade suit.  This bid is unlimited in terms of strength.

-         2♠ shows 5 Spades.  This bid is limited in strength and Partner can pass with nothing extra.

 

So, should South double here to show 4 Spades?  No, we don’t think so, the hand is weak, but worse is that the Spades are so bad, if East really has something in Spades he’ll probably score a bunch of Spade tricks on defense.  So, we would pass here.

 

                                                    Board 12      Dealer West       N-S Vul

 

 

What is your plan?

-         A craven Pass?  Not our favorite, surely we can do better than that!

-         Bid 2♣ and later double if they agree Diamonds?  We don’t think that our hand is nearly strong enough for that, this is not a viable plan.  Well it might be if 2♦ came back to us, but our opponents are not usually that obliging, it’s more likely that they will get to the 3-level in a hurry.

-         Bid 2♣ and then remain silent?  This could work.  But we wish that our Clubs were stronger, and we cannot help but wonder if we have a major suit fit on this hand.

-         Double immediately?  This would be our choice.  Not ideal with only 3 cards in both majors, but at least we give Partner more options with this bid, and if she has a 5-card major we’ll have done well indeed.  Also, a 4-3 major fit is likely to play well, the Diamond ruffs are coming in the short hand.

 

 

                                                    Board 13      Dealer North       Both Vul

 

 

We have sufficient extra values to go to game, do we just bid 3NT and hope for the best in Diamonds?  No, of course not!  We don’t believe in overly scientific auctions which help the opponents more than they help us, but here there is the definite possibility that we belong in 4♠ or 5♣, and we should bid accordingly.  We would bid 3♣, letting Partner know where our values are.  Now, if she bids 3NT anyway, we’ll know that she has a robust Diamond suit, and if she doesn’t there is a chance that we have a 6-2 Spade fit or a big Club fit.

 

 

                                                    Board 14      Dealer East       None Vul

 

 

East can approach her hand in one of two ways:

-         Either, bid the hand as if it is 5-5, opening 1♥ and rebidding Diamonds;

-         Or, open 1♦ planning to reverse into Hearts.

 

We like the second route, the hand may have only 12 HCP’s but it also has only 4 losers, which is quite enough playing strength for a reverse.  It’s true that Partner will expect more high-card strength and more defense from us but he’ll no doubt get the message when we bid Hearts twice.

 

 

Boards 16 and 17

 

Here are a couple of back-to-back hands where E-W had to decide whether or not to open 1NT.

 

            Board 16                     Board 17

            West                            East

            ♠ AJ3                          ♠ K83

            ♥ AJ6                          ♥ A5

            ♦ 97                             ♦ K9765

            ♣ AKT54                    ♣ AK4

 

The question here is “Do you open these hands 1NT, or do you open one of a minor, planning to rebid 2NT (over a one of a major response)?  Both hands have 17 HCP’s and a 5-card suit, and there are some who would say that that alone is too much for a 15-17 1NT opening bid.  We consider that to be an extreme view, there’s a lot to be said for working intermediate cards, we just love those well-places Nines and Tens.

 

Starting with Board 16, we would open that hand 1♣, this one we do think is too good for a 1NT opening, that nice Club suit (with its useful Ten) is powerful indeed.  As for Board 17, we’ve looked and we’ve looked again, and there do not appear to be any Tens in that hand.  Also, that Diamond suit is feeble indeed.  So, even though it’s hard not to really like 3 Kings and 2 Aces, we’d choose to open that hand 1NT.

 

Feel free to disagree with these assessments (as if you needed an invitation to do that!), our main goal is to remind our readers that hand evaluation goes beyond just counting up the HCP’s.

 

 

                                                    Board 19      Dealer South       E-W Vul

 

 

It’s standard procedure to look at our vulnerability before we plunge into the auction after their 1NT opening.  But the opponents’ vulnerability is a consideration also and this hand illustrates that point rather well.

 

Let’s suppose that our South here dives right in with a 2♣ DONT bid, showing Clubs and another suit.  You can go to the Hand Analyses if you want to see all the hands, but here we’ll just say that 2♣ is likely to get passed out and likely to score 7 or 8 tricks.  Let’s say that it’s 8 tricks, and that N-S score up +90.  Pretty good, eh?  Not especially, because that is still worse than the +100 N-S could have got defending and beating 1NT.

 

Remember, the point here that it’s not just our vulnerability that matters when we compete over their 1NT, their vulnerability is also a consideration, all the more so when we are competing with a minor suit.  For 2♣ to succeed, South needed help from Partner, and perhaps that help would be enough to beat 1NT on defense.  If that is the case a Club contract needs to score 9 tricks to beat 1NT down a vulnerable undertrick.  To put it simply, there should be less of an imperative to interfere with a vulnerable 1NT than there is when they are non-vulnerable.

 

Does that mean that here, with the 1NT opener vulnerable, we would not compete with 2♣?  Actually we would, but with less alacrity than if the 1NT opener was non-vulnerable.

 

 

                                                    Board 22      Dealer East       E-W Vul

 

 

At first glance this might seem like a no-brainer.  We bid 1♠, right?  Actually, no, at least not in our opinion.  Consider this auction:

            East     West

            Pass    1♥

            1♠        2♣

            2♥

What has East shown so far?  Not much, he might well have 2 Hearts, or else perhaps 3 Hearts and a weak hand.  What has East actually got?  Real 3-card support and a singleton and that lovely A♦.  It will be hard for Partner to visualize such a good Heart hand in this sequence, so we think that it is better to show the Heart support right away, by raising 1♥ to 2♥, this way Partner will know that we really mean it and are not retreating to 2♥ under duress.  Yes, this gives up on the Spade suit, but, on balance, we think that it’s very much the way to go.

 

                                                    Board 22      Dealer East       E-W Vul

 

 

This hand (and its variants) has come to be known as the Bridge World Death Hand, it’s a frequent visitor to that fine magazine’s Master Solvers’ Club and has spawned a number of obscure conventional treatments (for example, Cole) to solve the impossibility of West’s rebid problem using standard methods.

 

Here are the options, all of them quite unsavory:

-         2NT?  Hardly!

-         3♥?      You would no doubt get some votes for this, but we don’t like this because it reduces the chances of finding the 5-3 Spade fit, if there is one.  If Partner has a moderate 5-card Spade suit, he’ll hardly want to rebid 3♠.

-         Spade raise?  No, we’d want to raise to 3 or 4, and both of those bids show 4-card support which we don’t have.

-         3♣?     That would be our choice.  It’s far from perfect, our hand is not quite strong enough to force to game.  But when we do get to game we have a good chance of getting to the right one!  Bidding 3♣ gives us a chance to support Spades at the 3-level (for example, if Partner bids 3♥), we choose to overbid slightly in order to get to the right strain.

 

 

                                                    Board 24      Dealer West       None Vul

 

 

What is the top end of your overcall range?  At what point is a hand just too good to overcall, when is it a hand where you must double first and then bid your suit on the next round of the auction.  What’s the cut-off point?  Is it 16, 17, 18, more?  We urge you to make it quite high, more than 16 or 17, let us gently nudge you up to 18.  Are you OK with that?  Let’s say that you are, and that you are prepared to overcall with some quite strong hands.  Now we come to the actual question “What do you do with the West hand?”

 

You could just pass, of course.  Or you could try 2♦, keeping the auction alive in case Partner has one of those super-strong overcalls we were just talking about.  The way that we like to overcall, we’d say that West is just about strong enough to keep the auction alive.  The way that others overcall it would be better to pass.  It’s all about partnership calibration.

 

                                                    Board 27      Dealer South       None Vul

 

 

West has a pretty fair hand, but over 1♥ he has nothing useful to say, clearly Double is out of the question with that singleton Spade.  However, the development of the auction gives him a chance next time around, when he gets the chance to make a “pre-balancing” Double of 2♠.

 

We all know that a “balancing Double” occurs in the pass-out seat and can be made on all sorts of hair-raising hands in an attempt to push the opponents one level higher.  A pre-balancing Double is much the same, West is not in the balancing seat, but he is short in the opponents’ agreed suit, and he knows that, if he passes, Partner will probably not have a convenient balancing bid, he’s likely to have too many Spades to take any action.  So, West anticipates Partner’s problem and pre-balances with a Double.  The goal is more to push them to the three-level than it is to buy the contract in 3♣ or 3♦ (though that might also happen).

 

By the way, if E-W had been vulnerable, that pre-balancing Double would have been a bit too strong for our stomachs.

 

                                                    Board 27      Dealer South       None Vul

 

 

Just when we thought we had the auction all to ourselves, one of those pesky opponents chirps in with a Takeout Double.  Of course, we know exactly what they’re up to, don’t we?  Yes, they want to push us to the three-level.  Are we prepared to do that?  Yes, of course we are, we have an extra trump, and a singleton to boot!  There’s no time like the present in these situations, North should bid 3♠ directly, notwithstanding her minimum values.  3♠ is not a game try, with a better hand North could just redouble.

 

The bottom line on this one?  It’s E-W’s hand and bidding 3♠ is the best way to steal it!

 

 

                                                    Board 29      Dealer North       Both Vul

 

 

We have an aversion to overcalling 1NT with a doubleton in the opponent’s suit, but are happy to make an exception when the enemy suit is double stopped.  The problem with doubling here is that we won’t have an easy follow up if Partner bids 1♥.  So better to limit our hand right away and let Partner take charge.

 

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