12th May – Board 7: Game All. Dealer South.
It is often difficult to decide between a softly-softly approach in an effort to discover more about the nature of partner’s opening bid, or a full-bloodied gung-ho launch into suit agreement albeit at the expense of taking up bidding space.
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West
|
North
|
East
|
South
|
No
| |||
1D
|
No
|
2C
|
No
|
2NT
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No
|
3D
|
No
|
3H
|
No
|
3S
|
No
|
4C
|
No
|
4S
|
No
|
5H
|
No
|
7D
|
End
|
7NT is of course laydown but I think any pair would be happy to reach any grand slam. There are several things to note in the sequence given above. The first is that it is important to make a 2NT rebid after partner has bid at the two-level as game-forcing, if for no other reason than that it gives the partnership more room for exploring bigger things. So 3D becomes forcing initiating a sequence of cue-bids. Note that it would be entirely inappropriate for East to ever bid 4NT as there could easily be a grand slam available without the ace of spades. I suppose the other approach might be to bid 3S over 1D. This has the merit of setting diamonds as the trump suit immediately but at the loss of bidding space. Keen readers can work out a realistic sequence after that start! Also if E/W happen to be playing a strong no-trump then they must be up to speed with their minor-suit transfer bids.
It would be interesting to know the contracts other partnerships reached on this hand. I played in 6c [1c 2c(inverted minor) 3NT 6c] and made 7. Our partners defended against 4NT.
ReplyDeleteWell Joan,
ReplyDeleteHow does 4 Spades by West sound?
Robin :-)
That would explain the laughter! How many did it make - or perhaps I shouldn't ask....
ReplyDeleteJoan,
ReplyDelete9!