9th June – Board 16: E/W Game. Dealer West.
Sometimes our sophisticated bidding can turn round and bite us and that might well have happened on the featured hand although I have a suspicion that it didn’t.
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West
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North
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East
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South
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No
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1H
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No
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2D
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2H
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Dbl
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3C
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Dbl
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End
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West cannot be blamed for wanting to get into the action and while ‘double’ might have some appeal after South has bid 2D it seems to me that that bid should be reserved for a flatter hand with 4-4 or 4-5 in the black suits. By bidding 2H you are merely showing a Michaels type hand, with 5-5 in spades and clubs. Nothing wrong with that except it warns N/S about the bad spade break! In any eventuality a bid of that suit by either North or South would not be natural, as who in their right mind would want to play in the suit best held by the opposition? North should double to show a good heart suit and East will doubtless find it easy to give preference to clubs! But with the weight of high cards behind them South should double and lead a trump. Leading a trump is in fact mandatory whenever the opposition have outbid you but hold considerably less in the way of high cards. Obvious really, because how else will they make tricks other than by cross-ruffing?
As East, I would have interpreted West's 2 hearts as an unusual cue bid, asking me to say something about my hand.I can see that west would probably have spades and clubs, but how do you infer 5 of each?
ReplyDeletePeter F
West can't have a strong hand because he has already passed but he has a reason for bidding and if he only had one suit he would surely bid it. Therefore he has two suits which must be the unbid ones - spades and clubs. If he had a flatter hand with four of each but a few more points he would double. And he would do that with four spades and five clubs too. So think of his bid as a Michaels type effort. Of course here it should deter N/S from ever wanting to play in spades.
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