Responding to Strong 2C opener

[badderzboy]

Playing aggregate bridge your Partner in first seat opens 2♣ showing 23+

 

If 2♦ is a bid showing 0-7 or less than a trick & a half do you bid 2♦ and follow up with a ♠ bid after partner bids or bid 2♠ directly normally promising a good suit with the following :-

 

♠1097xxxx

♥x

♦x

♣AQxx

 

Partner had the following so all roads lead to 6S/6NT anyway :-

 

♠AKQx

♥KQxx

♦AKx

♣Kx

 

You can get there any route with

 

2♣-2♦-2NT-3♥*(Tfr)-4♠(super accept)-4NT-5C(0/3)-5NT*-6S-6NT

or

2♣-2♠*-3♠-4♣(cuebid)*-4♦*-4♠-6♠ or 6NT

or other bidding but I would welcome advice for future hands with a long suit but light in honours?

 

Thanks

 

Steve

[inquiry]

Bidding not terribly interesting, I would bid 2D waiting, hoping to be able to transfer into spades and let partner play it, but I don't respond this way anyhow. This is an automatic 2D bid the way I play. However, play could be fun for an overtrick if they don't cash the heart ace at trick one.

 

On black card lead, you have two squeeze possibilities, if the hand with the heart ACE has four+ clubs, you have a fall down easy simple squeeze.

 

If the hand with long clubs doesn't have the heart ace, you have a double squeeze, if EAST has heart ACE and West long club, with the small diamond in your hand the double threat.

 

Even if EAST has long clubs and west has the heart ACE, you have a wicked psuedo-compound squeeze.. where EAST has to keep a heart like the seven or nine to beat dummy's x while throwing away from some high diamond spots, coming to just one diamond.

 

On a diamond lead, even the potential for the pseudo squeeze and double squeeze goes away, so you have to revert to the simple squeeze. I probably would win a club lead in the strong hand and run spades (planning on the simple squeeze for seven using diamonds as squeeze card) unless something interesting happens on the run of spades that makes me believe the double squeeze is working (real or mock compound).

 

Ben

[EricK]

With the given hand it probablty doesn't matter whether you bid 2♠ or 2♦.

 

With a similar hand but with long Hearts, I think a bid of 2♥ id preferable to 2DI]. The point being that partner's most likely non-balanced hand is strong with the other major. If I bid an immediate 2♥ I can get to make a complete hand description. With the hand as given, if the bidding starts 2♣ 2♦ 2♥ I will be able to bid my hand naturally anyway.

 

Eric