You Never Know

16th June – Board 8: Love All. Dealer West.

Picking up the North hand you might expect you were in for an easy time with little chance to do anything wrong. Well you never know.

West	North	East	South
No	No	2S	Dbl
No	2NT	No	3NT
End

East seems to have a perfect weak 2S third in hand making South no doubt somewhat aggrieved. It’s always best to start with a take-out double in these situations because a slam cannot be ruled out – indeed if you swap the West and North hands then you would hope to reach 7D. As it is North would respond with 2NT, Lebensohl of course, asking for partner to remove to 3C which he would either pass or bid 3H. Of course South would be wary of playing in a part-score and bid 3NT, so the hapless North would find himself at the wheel. There is little chance of this succeeding with that dummy on display and it only goes to show how much better it is if the points are more equally divided between the two hands.

More Lebensohl

12^th May – Board 16: East/West Game. Dealer West.

Lebensohl can be used in a variety of different places but perhaps the least well-known situation might be as in the deal shown below.

West	North	East	South
1S	No	2S	Dbl
No	3C	No	3NT
End

1S might seem a little frisky on the West hand but with support for three suits I think it is worth the risk if only for the pre-emptive nature of the bid. East has an easy raise to 2S and likewise South has a fairly obvious take-out double, but when West passes North is forced to bid – even if he has very few points. For this reason most top pairs play Lebensohl in this situation, whereby with a really weak hand you bid 2NT forcing the doubler to bid 3C which you either pass with clubs, or convert without. So on the actual hand a bid of 3C shows some positive values and South would be happy to convert to 3NT. Not that 3NT should make of course, even on a spade lead, but it requires little more than the opener to hold the ace of clubs. Those pairs who found the heart game can consider themselves unlucky, as with just about everything about as bad as it could be this would prove to be a losing enterprise.

Introducing Lebensohl

24h February – Board 24: Love All. Dealer West.

After partner has doubled a weak two and the next hand has passed, it can prove difficult for the responder to the doubler to differentiate between a goodish hand – say eight points or more – and a load of old junk, bidding because he has to rather than because he wants to. Because of this it is advisable to add the Lebensohl convention to your armoury. This is how it works: with a respectable hand responder to the doubler simply bids his suit, but with a weak hand he bids 2NT, which forces the doubler to bid 3C. Now responder passes if that is his suit or bids his longest suit otherwise. That would clear up any problems on the hand shown above when the bidding might go:

West	North	East	South
2S	Dbl	No	3C
No	3NT	End

3C shows values making the 3NT bid easy to find. If South had the same hand but with few values he would bid 2NT and pass the forced 3C response. The only drawback to this very useful convention is that you cannot bid 2NT in a natural sense, but that is hardly a problem. Just bid 3NT instead! As an aside and not wishing to sound picky, I think East should have bid 3S over the double, in effect bidding to the total number of trumps held. 3S is only one down but the likely upshot is that N/S will end up in 5C, and here a correct guess in diamonds will be needed to make the contract.