Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Can you trust partner's signal?

First of all, a lead problem.  The bidding has gone:
W
West
N
Partner
E
East
S
Me
1
21
3
3
5
All Pass
(1) weak
You hold:
S
South
Axx
A10x
xxx
xxxx

What do you lead?

I reasoned that a passive lead was probably unwise, since West's clubs rated to be very good.  Partner having shown 6  hearts, it appears to be reasonably safe to lead the ace of hearts.  Dummy comes down:
S
Me
Axx
A10x
xxx
xxxx
.
Lead: A
W
Dummy
Qxx
x
KJxx
AKQJx
Under the ace, partner plays the 8 of hearts. Your agreements are quite simple: upside down count and attitude.   What is partner trying to say?


In this case, partner's count and attitude are both already known. He has 6 hearts and any heart continuation is going to be ruffed in  dummy.  So, it must be suit preference.  I am a little doubtful though, because we have not quite agreed on suit preference situations.

I decide to trust partner to be signaling suit preference and I plop down my second unsupported ace. The ace of spades.

Under the ace of spades, partner plays the 8 of spades. What is partner trying to say?  What do you do next?

At the table, I decided that partner had probably forgotten about suit preference and was emphatically discouraging both hearts and spades. Ergo, he must be void in clubs. I led a club, hoping for a ruff.

That was not the right move, because declarer now proceeded to make his contract:
.
Vul: E-W
Dlr: West
N
North
KJ108
KQ8xxx
x
xx
.
W
West
Qxx
x
KJxx
AKQJx

E
East
xxx
J9x
AQxxx
xx
.
S
South
Axx
A10x
xxx
xxxx
.
Partner had not forgotten.  The 8 of spades was his lowest spade and he was encouraging as best  he could.

The thing is, once he'd given suit preference for spades, his job was done. I need not have looked at what he played under my Ace of spades. Put another way, with a club void, he'd have played low under the Ace of hearts.  That is, if he and I are agreed to play suit preference when dummy has a singleton in our bid and raised suit.

What are your agreements regarding suit preference? Are they complete enough to avoid a mishap like ours?

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Can you trust the opponents?

Playing against two good players, who would go on to win the game yesterday evening, I pick up:
S
South (Me)
AK10x
KQx
Q10xx
Jx
The bidding goes:
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
Me
1
Pass
1NT
?

What would you now bid?

We are at favorable vulnerability and the bidding, if one can trust the opponents, seemed to indicate that partner was likely to have length in spades.  I bid 2S, which was passed out.

This did not play very well, to put it mildly, as the hand turned out to be:
.
Vul: E-W
Dlr: West
N
North
9x
A9xxx
xx
Qxxx
.
W
West
xx
J10xxx
AKJx
Ax
Lead: A
E
East
QJxxx
xxx
K10xxx
.
S
South
AK10x
KQx
Q10xx
Jx
.
With 5-5 in the black suits and a void in partner's suit, East had bid 1NT!  Unfortunately, the rest of the field was either in 1NT our way (making) or 2NT their way (down 1 or 2).

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Bidding slams

Playing online with one of my regular partners, we ran into two slammish hands.

Here is one that we missed:

N
Pard
Q108
KJ9
AQ109654
Lead: K
S
Me
AKJ6
A106532
7
95

This was the bidding:
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
Me
Pass
1
Pass
2
Pass
2
Pass
3
Pass
31
Pass
42
Pass
4NT3
Pass
54
All Pass
(1) cue-bid
(2) cue-bid
(3) RKC
(4) 2 keys without trump queen

Partner's told me (I thought) that he had the club Ace, and now we missing either the Ace of diamonds or the king of trumps. And no queen either.  I passed 5H out.

Dummy came down and, with the club lead, I had the tempo to ruff my clubs in dummy and play the king of trumps. When hearts turned out to be 2-2, I made 7.  Obviously, 5H+2 was not a great result.  Where did we go wrong in the bidding?


As if to compensate, we ended up in a no-play slam on this hand:
W
Me
A108
K4
J1073
10965
Lead: K
E
Pard
KQJ2
AQJ872
A
Q7
Here, the bidding went:
W
West
N
North
E
East
S
South
Pass
Pass
2
Pass
2
Pass
2
Pass
2NT
Pass
3
Pass
3NT
Pass
41
Pass
62
All Pass
(1) 6-4
(2) a bit rash?
Once partner showed me a 6-4 hand, I was stuck.  4S would be a preference for spades, not a cue-bid. I like my hand though, because I have two monster cards in partner's two suits. I guess there is no harm in asking for aces, but since I have no keycards in partner's short suits, it's no panacea -- off one keycard, I would still have to bid the slam. So, what's the right approach here?

Slam bidding is, of course, one of the most pleasurable parts of the game, so I need to get better at this stuff.