3 from yesterday

[mikeh]

Sectional Swiss, modest field. A few hands came up which I found interesting, and I hope you do as well.

 

1. N      E      S     W

    2♦    2♠    P    3♦

    P    3♥    P    4♥

    P    4♠    P    5♠

    P    6♠.....

 

You are East, red v white, imps, victory points. N, as dealer, opens what they describe as an undisciplined weak 2♦. Your partner (me) puts considerable trust in your declarer play.. you are world class and this hand may give you a chance to demonstrate that skill:

 

J6

K1097

A1098

A62

 

AK87xx

Ax

Q

KJ9x

 

The opening lead is the ♦5, which you win. You lead the 10, and ruff away the Jack, as LHO follows with the 2. Both follow to the top trumps and (as a clue) rho will turn up with the Q. Plan the play. Don't worry about the small spots and x's.. I could have put all x's but as dummy I put in the spots I actually remember seeing.

 

 

 

2. You are me this time. All red, your wc partner deals and opens 1♠. RHO passes and you hold J54 76 AK108xxxx void

 

Playing a fairly basic 2/1 with a handful of irrelevent (for this hand) gadgets... you choose 2♦.

 

LHO doubles, partner passes and RHO ups the ante with 5♥. Your call.

 

 

3. Once again you are me. This time, unfavourable.

 

You hold 7654 AJ6432 6 76

 

LHO opens 1♦, partner bids michaels (yes, we have at least 20 major card here, he will NEVER be less than 5-5) and rho bids 5♦. I think you have a mandatory 5♥, altho you really would prefer at least a ♠ honour.

 

Two passes follow, but RHO is not finished. He backs in with 6♣.

 

Is pass by you forcing? While this is undiscussed, the frequency with which you'd be bidding 5♥ as a red v white sacrifice must be so low that pass may well be better played as forcing... comments?

 

Anyway, your call....

 

 

Assume you pass, as I did. LHO corrects to 6♦ and this is passed around to you.

 

Once again, you have the fp issue to consider. You strongly suspect that partner has just made a forcing pass... your call....

[Finch]

1. Play a third spade (discarding a heart from dummy). Suppose they play back a heart. Win in hand, cross in clubs (if they return a club win in dummy, easy game) and ruff out the DK. Cash the last trump discarding a club from dummy. Cross on a heart to play the winning diamond (discarding a club) in this position:

 

-

10

10

x

 

-

-

-

KJx

 

squeezing West in the rounded suits.

 

I choose this line once East has turned up with 9 cards in the pointed suits; it only loses when East is 1-3 in the with the CQ, or 3-1 with a heart honour. In the latter cases I wanted to have ruffed a heart in hand to isolate the heart menace, but I don't think I had the entries. The alternative is to play East for something pick-up-able in clubs but that only gains on a very few layouts.

 

If West turned up with the SQ he was either going to pick up East's CQ or, I hope, had the HQJ or isolated the heart menace in his hand by returning a low one.

[Finch]

2. Aaargh... The gadgets are slightly relevant: I assume partner has denied 4 diamonds or 6 spades by passing the double; with only five spades opposite I really don't fancy playing in spades as it could be extremely nasty. I think partner must be 5125/5224/5215 and we could be off the first two heart tricks. I can't make the distributions add up, but I'm left with the choice of trusing partner and trusing opponents so I have to trust partner.

 

What would redouble have meant? If "natural" then I assume partner has also denied a strong balanced hand. What would 2NT have meant?

 

I think I'm going to pass, but only if I'm confident of the above inferences. If partner doesn't double we are definitely right to bid on; I have to respect a double.

 

The alternative is to bid 6D. I hate 5S, and partner will expect better than Jxx support.

 

3. I don't think pass is forcing. I understand why you think perhaps it might be, but I don't think it is. Red saves do exist. Anyway, if I think partner has made a forcing pass I bid 6♥. If partner is exactly 5-5-1-2 this might be more expensive than I'd like, but I can't see why they aren't making 6D however bizarre the auction. And maybe partner has AKxxx Kxxxx xxx - and we make it with RHO 2056

[pclayton]

1. Frances' line seems reasonable, although I might have played a ♣ up, ruff out ♦ and then the trump. I think it might be slightly better to pitch a club off the board on the 3rd spade, instead of a ♥.

 

2. Double - When pard passes a double in a live 2/1 auction (even though its forcing), we can infer that he doesn't have diamond support (big surprise, I know), doesn't have 6 spades. Obviously he doesn't have a whole lot of hearts either. So I'm placing him on 5=2=2=4 / 5=1=2=5. The club length is really bad news for us; assuming a heart loser, it seems unlikely we can pick up the black suits for no losers, especially with the spade length on my right. I know double looks pretty odd with support and an 8 bagger, but I'm putting partner on something like: KQxxx, xx, xx, AQJx.

 

3. Brutal. I think this is the type of hand where the opponents will probably sac anyway. I would take the push immediately over 6♣.

[mikeh]

2. Aaargh... The gadgets are slightly relevant: I assume partner has denied 4 diamonds or 6 spades by passing the double; with only five spades opposite I really don't fancy playing in spades as it could be extremely nasty. I think partner must be 5125/5224/5215 and we could be off the first two heart tricks.  I can't make the distributions add up, but I'm left with the choice of trusing partner and trusing opponents so I have to trust partner.

 

What would redouble have meant?  If "natural" then I assume partner has also denied a strong balanced hand.  What would 2NT have meant?

 

I think I'm going to pass, but only if I'm confident of the above inferences. If partner doesn't double we are definitely right to bid on; I have to respect a double.

 

The alternative is to bid 6D. I hate 5S, and partner will expect better than Jxx support.

 

When I said that the gadgets were irrelevant, I meant that we had not discussed anything to do with this or any analogous situation. Partner is a friend of mine, and he used to be a teammate on a regular basis, but we have played maybe 5 times in the last ten years, and he arrived late for the game today so we had discussed only a few sequences between matches... we both play fairly often with the same small number of players so we have a basic understanding of how we approach the game, but we certainly have NO agreement, as such, as to what his pass of the double meant. However, I would have expected a redouble to be strength showing, ostensibly balanced and interested in extracting a big penalty (if I were short in ♠s as an example) but maybe a preface to showing slam interest by pulling a penalty double.. but this is my form of bridge logic, not agreement.

 

2♦ was an absolute gf. Anything beyond that is speculation... bridge logic, if you will. He is a very good player, altho with a slight reputation for idiosyncracy... but who doesn't?

[Apollo81]

2. 6♦. yeah yeah, off the ♥AK

I expect pard is 5224 but theres no reason he couldn't be 5134 or 5125 with bad blacks especially if we haven't discussed much.

 

3. ugh.....6♥ Id have been thinking about this bid on the previous round too.

[Finch]

1. Frances' line seems reasonable, although I might have played a ♣ up, ruff out ♦ and then the trump. I think it might be slightly better to pitch a club off the board on the 3rd spade, instead of a ♥.

I will buy discarding a club rather than a heart.

 

I want to leave RHO a diamond exit when he won the trump - if he didn't fancy playing a heart away from the Queen (which he won't) he might play a club away from the 10 or he might think a diamond is "safe" because the diamond position is known; that gives us the opportunity to ruff a heart in hand.

[Apollo81]

1. Play a third spade (discarding a heart from dummy). Suppose they play back a heart. Win in hand, cross in clubs (if they return a club win in dummy, easy game) and ruff out the DK. Cash the last trump discarding a club from dummy. Cross on a heart to play the winning diamond (discarding a club) in this position:

 

-

10

10

x

 

-

-

-

KJx

 

squeezing West in the rounded suits.

 

I choose this line once East has turned up with 9 cards in the pointed suits; it only loses when East is 1-3 in the with the CQ, or 3-1 with a heart honour. In the latter cases I wanted to have ruffed a heart in hand to isolate the heart menace, but I don't think I had the entries. The alternative is to play East for something pick-up-able in clubs but that only gains on a very few layouts.

 

If West turned up with the SQ he was either going to pick up East's CQ or, I hope, had the HQJ or isolated the heart menace in his hand by returning a low one.

Some comments:

 

If you play a club to the ♣A and ruff the diamond before playing to their high trump, you need West to have the third spade. Otherwise East will break up your squeeze by returning a club.

 

The heart spots are important...no matter what LHO returns in this suit (which he will play if he had the third trump) there are things to consider. LHO needs to lead an honor from Hxxx to break up the squeeze...most defenders wont find this play.

 

-------------

 

Phil said:

 

1. Frances' line seems reasonable, although I might have played a ♣ up, ruff out ♦ and then the trump. I think it might be slightly better to pitch a club off the board on the 3rd spade, instead of a ♥.

[Finch]

we both play fairly often with the same small number of players so we have a basic understanding of how we approach the game, but we certainly have NO agreement, as such, as to what his pass of the double meant.

That should be enough to know that partner would have done something descriptive over the double with e.g. 6 spades as opposed to playing a style where partner's pass just shows a minimum and he could still have a good spade suit.

[Winstonm]

Kind of quick so may be wrong.

1. Duck third spade and pitch a club. Organize a heart/club squeeze depending on RHO's return. Only thing to keep in mind is that after RHO covers the 3rd diamond, the winning diamond must be the squeeze card so finish the trumps and cash A and K of heart, then last diamond.

 

2. Too bad my 2D call put us in FP position. I can't pass and I can't double so all I can do is bid an immediate 5S.

 

3. This isn't a forcing pass in my book. I pass and if partner meant it as forcing we'll have to talk about it.

[Codo]

1. phils line

 

2. If the x was a clear take out and 5 HEart preemptive, the chances are there, that pd has good spades, which is more or less all I need to justify a 5 spade bid.

But I still would double.

 

3. 6 Heart. If pd has no outside values, they may make their slam, so I pay my insurance fee.

[mikeh]

I am not at all sure that the decisions we made, other than the play problem, were theoretically best... and, while they worked, my posting was more as a reality check than to demonstrate how good a guesser I was B)

 

On the first hand, partner adopted Frances' line: rho returned a ♥, won on dummy, the ♦K got ruffed out and so on. ♥s were 1=6, so he knew ♣s were 3-3, so he had what was essentially a 50-50 finesse/squeeze ending. Of course, he chose the squeeze on the basis that anyone can take a finesse :P Fortunately, the squeeze worked.

 

On the second hand, no way was I bidding 5♠, to be tapped at trick one and risk seeing that ♦ suit become almost worthless. OTOH, passing (forcing) didn't seem correct... it is difficult to construct a hand on which partner can make an informed bid: I will almost always have a far different hand than I held. And I surely couldn't pass and then pull, which, in our methods, would be stronger than an immediate bid. So I decided to trust the opps, in two regards: I assumed that rho probably had 6 bad ♥s to bid 5♥.. thus there was an excellent chance that partner held a stiff... and once we get that far, there must be a good chance that dummy will afford me a play for slam. Further, even if dummy held xx in ♥s, the opps might assume that I wouldn't bid slam with xx myself, and so might try to cash a ♣ winner... if partner lacked the A.

 

So I guessed to bid 6♦...doubled for 1540.

 

Now, partner's hand is not at all what the posters here expected, nor what I expected... we did not discuss his reasoning, but I think he wanted to see what happened, and then pull to his long suit: he held AQ9xxxx x xx Kxx: not everyone's 1♠ opening, altho I don't mind it, and certainly not everyone's pass of 2♦ (not mine, that is for sure). So I am not holding this out as a 'how to bid' exercise from either side of the table.

 

The 3rd hand was the toughest, I felt. I usually feel pretty good about working out forcing pas situations, but this one had me struggling. As I mentioned in the original post, I felt that it was likely that we ought to be in a fp situation, if only on the basis of frequency. However, when 6♦ came back to me, I had a very tough time coming up with hands on which they could make 6♦ and we'd escape for 500... and I wasn't interested in doubling to get +100 or saving to go -800 and win 3 imps when right. As for our slam making: no way did partner pass 5♥ with any hand on which slam is a good bet.... and the auction tells me that xxxx in ♠ is probably inadequate to bring the suit home for no losers.

 

So I passed. Partner cashed 2 black Aces: dummy was Kx void Kxxxx KQJ9xx.

 

Declarer had Jx Kx AQJxxxx xx At the other table, our hands reached 6♥ doubled for 500 so the failure to double 6♦ cost zero. Better lucky than good B)

[han]

Nice problems. I wouldn't play the last auction as a forcing pass situation. I don't understand why you say that the frequency should make this a fp auction, why would a rare auction demand a fp situation? I don't think it is, and I would pass.

[Finch]

2nd hand: At least partner was bidding over my forcing pass (due to having zero defence), and it looks as if I am probably going to play in 6S making.

 

Jeffrey bid 6D when I gave him the hand. He made muttered comments about not defending with an 8-card suit.

 

3rd hand: Ha! So partner hadn't made a forcing pass at all, if he thought it was forcing he'd have doubled.

[mikeh]

 

3rd hand: Ha! So partner hadn't made a forcing pass at all, if he thought it was forcing he'd have doubled.

Ha! right back at you :) Partner intended his pass as forcing: AQ10xx Q109xx void Axx... after all, I suppose, I might well have had Jxx AKxxxx xxx x for my bidding, and now slam is on a hook through the (apparently) more balanced, stronger opponent.