Saturday, June 9, 2012

Not the right +200

+200 is usually matchpoint magic.  It usually means that the opponents went down two in a vulnerable part score.  And since that's usually better than any offensive part score (+110 or +140), +200 is usually a top.

Not all +200s are tops though. Especially when they come like this one from a recent club game.
Vul: None
Dlr: North
N
North
A10xx
xxx
AJxx
Kx
W
West
Qxx
Jxxx
Kxx
Axx
E
East
J
Axx
xxx
QJxxxx
S
Me
Kxxxx
KQx
Q10x
xx
The auction went:
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
South
11
Pass
1
Pass
2
All Pass
(1) 2+ diamonds and <= 15 pts

the lead of a low diamond and quickly made 11 tricks for +200 (After a 1S-2S auction, if they don't lead spades, you can pretty much assume that the opening leader has the queen of trumps. So, I played a club towards the king and led towards the king of spades and finessed the 10 on the way back. Then, I led hearts towards my hand twice. East took his Ace on the second round and I had my 11 tricks.).  I thought this was a good enough board -- 11 tricks on 22 points should be.

But this +200 was not match point magic -- several of the pairs bid and made exactly 4S. How would you have found your way to game?

p.s. Thanks to JRG of Bridge Blogging for sharing his HTML tools with me.  What do you think of the diagrams in this post? Beats the 1980s look of my previous hand diagrams, doesn't it?

If you reading this somewhere (RSS reader, syndication site, etc.) where the hand diagrams and auction look goofy, please leave a comment underneath this blog post.

5 comments:

  1. The cards lay extremely well for you, but not inviting with a seven-loser hand, a fifth spade and no disconnected honors seems an awfully deep position.

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    Replies
    1. I suppose I can bid 3D, a help-suit game try but zt the table I felt that my hand was too flat. You are right, though, that I have only 7 losers, which (after the fit is found) would be worth an opening hand, so I should issue a game try. But with a flat 12 points and 8-loser hand, should partner accept it?

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    2. Just looking at your side's 26 cards, this is not a game you want to be in. But that is mostly because of the matching club doubletons. Change partner's hand to ATxx, xx, AJxx, Kxx, for example, and game is reasonable, even though partner still has eight losers.

      Whether partner should go on over a game try depends, I suppose, on the partnership's game try structure; there are quite a few sophisticated game try structures out there. Over a straightforward 3D help suit game try, partner's hand looks reasonable, when you consider that the auction would have been the same to that point had his red suits been reversed (in which case he has a clear rejection). Imagine, for example, KQxxx, xx, KQx, xxx opposite partner's ATxx, xxx, AJxx, Kx.

      At mps, do you expect the field to be in a game like this? If "yes", then I would hate to bet the board on a marginal bidding decision to not be there, thinking that my side is at least, I hope, "better than most". Even if game goes down, for example, you can expect to beat some pairs who were in game but who might go down two because they play the spade suit for one more loser than do you.

      Btw, I neglected to congratulate you on your sectional KO win. Way to go!

      Delete
  2. The diagrams don't show up properly in a RSS reader (which makes sense, since the CSS for the diagrams is in the Blogger template).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Can you try two things:
    1. Put the non-breaking spaces in (4 of them)
    2. Add a style="background-color: #fcfcfc;" or similar to an HTML tag

    This will allow me to see if the feed+feed-publication mechanism preserves in-line styles.

    ReplyDelete