Opponent preempts to 3S

[Charlie Yu]

E/W Vul, you are West, North deals. You pick up

 

♠K97

♥A98

♦AQT854

♣Q

 

(P)-P-(3S)-?

[gszes]

3nt

 

rho hand at these colors can be quite variable as to both suit quality and length. There is still a very good chance we can limit the ops spade winners to 2 and then worry about how to score another 8 tricks with the defenders communications cut. rho wont often have more than 8 hcp for their 3s bid so that 8 + our 5 = 23 which means on average the remaining 17 hcp will be split 8.5 for lho and p. If we further cut down those numbers the opps will score 2spades and we score 1 then we need 8 trick with our remaining 20.5 vs the opps 9.5. If we were balanced this would be a daunting task indeed but our 6 card dia suit gives us a superb shot at scoring enough tricks to make getting the rest in the majors easy. So on average we should be playing 3n at MP. The question then becomes is it worthwhile to trot out 3n at IMPS where the risk is significantly increased as well as the reward. I say yes because if lho x 3n we can retreat to 4d and this lowers the overall risk vs reward to acceptable levels.