Self-Harm

25^th April – Board 5: North/South Vul. Dealer North.

It’s amazing how often the mere presence of a seven card suit so inflames the holder that he feels honour bound to adopt a gung-ho approach. That’s just what happened on the hand shown below.

	North: S A 9 7 5 4 3 2 H J 5 4 D 10 C 9 8
West: S K Q 8 6 H Q 10 9 8 D 8 4 3 C A 7		East: S 10 H K 3 2 D Q 9 5 2 C Q J 6 4 2
	South: S J H A J 6 D A K J 7 6 C K 10 5 3

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

I give the auction as I think it should have gone. When responder rebids his suit at a minimum level after hearing his partner bid two suits he is really begging to be left alone. Here, despite holding a seventeen count, South should respects his partner’s decision and leave well alone. 2S will probably make despite the bad break and par bridge has been obtained. However at more than one table North felt impelled to open 3S, a truly horrible and desperately wrong bid. South raised to game – quite correctly – and a grizzly result ensued. There are so many things wrong with opening 3S; the suit is meagre in the extreme and the vulnerability is the worst it could be and while I might be tempted to open 2S at favourable vulnerability I wouldn’t here. In the old days you were supposed to be able to ‘see’ about seven tricks for a vulnerable three-level preempt. Now it seems anything goes