Thursday Bridge Club: Heavy Weather

8th December – Board 20: Game All. Dealer West.

A lot of pairs made heavy weather of the featured hand but maybe that was because some basic bidding theory was missing – namely that when partner has responded to your opening bid of one in a major by responding at the two-level in a minor (as here) a jump to four in that minor by opener is game forcing. The reason for that is clear, because it enables responder either to start a cue-bidding sequence at a low level if appropriate or to give delayed support for opener’s major.

West	North	East	South
No	No	1S	No
2C	No	4C	No
4S	End

With such a poor club suit and with wasted values likely in hearts West should have no ambitions beyond game and I imagine that South would lead the jack of hearts, whereupon declarer has an easy route to at least twelve tricks, but even if South is inspired enough to lead a diamond the defence are only likely to make three tricks at most. Looking at the two hands you can see that four spades is easily the best contract, needing as it does just for the club finesse to work or for the trumps to be 3-3 or for a non-diamond lead.

3 comments:

Robin11 December 2011 at 10:26
Letting the opposition play in 3 Spades (so missing out on game), and then getting back to the table to see you have achieved minus 10 IMPS!

It's a funny ol' world init tho? Init?
davidhuggett11 December 2011 at 11:15
Well E/W were in 3NT and declarer had to decide which black suit to bring in. He chose clubs - rightly as a finesse represents better odds than a 3-3 break. So the operation was successful but the patient died. Although it has to be said 3NT was a very inferior contract!
Robin11 December 2011 at 11:19
Blast those NHS cuts.

:-)

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