Bright Start

13th June – Board 23: Game All. Dealer South.

Clever conventions are all very well but they can sometimes be of use to the opponents too. That should have been the case with the following hand when, after a bright start, the defence somewhat lost their way.

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

West	North	East	South
			1NT
No	No	2C	No
2D	No	2H	End

East has a close call between doubling 1NT or using an Asptro type bid of 2C showing, in this instance, a hand with five hearts and another four card undisclosed suit. Maybe with the opposition vulnerable double has the edge because a one-trick defeat will attain the magic +200, always a good result at pairs, whereas a non-vulnerable +100 will lose out to any E/W pair making 2H. At any rate 2H it was and South found the best lead of the seven of diamonds. North did well by ducking this and declarer led a top trump, won by South who continued diamonds and then got his ruff. So far, so good. But by this time South knows that East started with five hearts, three diamonds and another four-card suit. Can it be clubs? No, because then his partner would have started with six spades and would have transferred over 1NT so declarer is marked with a 4-5-3-1 distribution. Armed with this knowledge after obtaining his ruff South should have cashed the ace of clubs and exited with the ten of trumps. Left to play spades from his hand declarer would have suffered a one trick defeat, but sadly for N/S it didn’t go quite like that.

Black Suit Mix Up

27th January – Board 16: E/W Game. Dealer West.

On a theme similar to the one detailing hand No. 4 there was much confusion on the hand shown above when a bid didn’t show what it promised…..

West	North	East	South
No	No	1NT	2D
No	2S	No	3D
3NT	End

After two passes East opened with a strong no-trump of 15-17 points and South bid 2D, intending it as a natural bid but which in fact should have showed spades and another suit. West should really have doubled at this stage to show values – a bid of 2S, their suit!, would be for take-out – but instead waited for developments. North correctly bid 2S showing at least three cards in the suit, East passed, and South bid 3D. Now the rules of the EBU state that you cannot use an ASPTRO type bid as a two-way thing, namely either a two-suiter OR a single-suited hand, so in fact 3D should have been a game try in spades and had West passed 3D it would have been incumbent upon North to bid 3S. If he hadn’t have done so then the pair sitting E/W could have called the director and asked for a ruling if subsequent events went against them. However by this time West knew that South could not have a genuine spade suit and closed proceedings with a bid of 3NT when a double might have been better. Indeed if West had doubled then North would have had to bid 3S! Of course as in the other hand shown in this blog, by this time it was apparent what had happened, but that is not the point. And the laws of bridge will always come down on the side of the non-offenders.

In truth no one was to blame, and everyone has made bids they didn’t mean to. I once doubled a 5C contract, not because I wanted to but because I had run out of green cards and I hadn’t noticed when I played the next one in the box, which was red. The opponents redoubled and my partner, thinking I wanted an unusual lead found one – which resulted in them making an overtrick.

Oh yes, 3NT on the hand above went one down with 4S cold.http://www.davidhuggett.com/Conventions/asptro.html