The Seattle area had the "sweet-heart" sectional this weekend. My sweet heart agreed to cart the kids to their various activities, so I got to play in the A/X Swiss.
After a roaring start where we quickly dispatched three good teams, we ran into a buzz saw and lost rather badly to the teams that would ultimately place #1 and #2. That put us in the middle of the pack after the fifth match. We blitzed #6, and got ourselves back in contention.
To place, we needed to win match #7, and at our table was the best pair in the room. They needed to blitz us in match #7 to win. So, they had motivation.
Along comes this hand. Partner deals and opens 2C (strong). Righty overcalls 3C (natural). They are white and we are red. This is my hand:
What do you bid? Options are to pass, which shows 4+ points or double, which is weak and shows 0-3 points. What's your bid?
Obviously, I have only 2 high card points, but what is the 5th heart worth? How about the singleton spade? I took a pessimistic view of the hand. It appeared that partner would be long in spades, and so I decided to warn him off by doubling.
Partner, with 4-4 in the majors and two clubs passed. They got 6 tricks, but down 3 doubled is worth only 500 points whereas 4H making 4 is 620. That difference is worth 4 imps.
"Take the sure plus," my opponent advised me, "it's better in the long run." He is a Grand Life Master and all, but it still didn't feel good (By the way, in what other game do you get to play significantly better players, and have them coach you during the match?).
I would have been better off treating the hand as non-minimum, just in case partner had something other than spade length -- doubling to show weakness would win if partner had long spades, and lose against every other hand that partner could have. In hindsight, passing to show a decent hand stands out. Had I passed, partner would have doubled for takeout, and I can happily bid 3H or 4H (if I bid 3H, partner with AKJx of hearts and 25 points would have no problems raising me).
The rest of the boards were essentially pushes. They bid their games. We bid our games. They bid a game, and we got it down 1. At the other table, they got it down 2. We passed out a hand. They bid too high and went down 1. Net effect? One huge push. We're still down 4 imps.
Then, on board 29 with both vulnerable, I was West and held:
Partner opens 1D and over my 1S, he bid 1NT. Options are to pass, to bid 2C which relays to 2D at which point you can bid whatever you want (non-forcing) or to bid 2S which shows six spades. What would you bid?
I chose to bid 2S. It's a bit of a masterminding bid, but my partner never bids 1nt with a singleton, and my lousy spades indicated that I would be better off in a trump suit.
Anyway, you are in 2S. They lead a heart and dummy comes down with:
How do you play it?
One option is to play on clubs like a man who needs to ruff a couple of them. Maybe they will pull trumps for me. Unfortunately, that idea didn't strike me until now. At the table, I was more boring. I won the heart and led a spade. They won, and played another spade. At this piont, they cashed two clubs and let me ruff a third.
Now what? Do you play for 4-2 trumps or 3-3 trumps? Since neither opponent had balanced, I figured spades were likely to be 3-3, and I heaved a sigh of relief as the spades came crashing down on the third round. I could ruff the club return and enjoy dummy's diamonds and hearts.
I felt pretty good about the hand because 1NT is down 3 at least (5 clubs and 3 spades off the top).
The hand was good, but for a different reason -- at the other table, East opened 1NT with his 2-4-5-2 hand, got transferred to spades and proceeded to play it for down 1 because he didn't have the balancing inference available to me.
Making 2S vs. going down 1 was worth 5 imps.
We won the match by one imp, and that was enough to get us to 3rd in A (first in X).
p.s. When I started to write this blog, my mishaps were gross ones -- failing to count trumps, cardng improperly, misdescribing shape, etc. Now, the mishaps have to do with deciding whether a hand with a 9-high 5-card suit and two high card points is too good to show weakness. Nice, eh?
"A book about bridge that is not really about bridge at all," is how Sandy Balfour describes his book "Vulnerable in Hearts". It's about his dad in South Africa who taught him to play in "the golden age of apartheid", and about his son who was born knowing how to play bridge.
