Recap Of /10/2/2019 28 Board IMP Individual

Today there were 6 hands with double digit swings where, again, bidding played the major role, but leads, defense and declarer play added opportunities that could have reduced/eliminated the swing.

 

 

This hand produced some exuberant bidding at one table, reaching a truly hopeless slam, while we subsided in game with no slam exploration.  Double dummy, the number of tricks available depends on the lead.  The only way to obtain 3 tricks for the defense is to start with a club and deliver a club ruff to partner when you win the ♥K (or, start with a diamond, North must win the ♦A and shift to a club and get the club ruff).  A spade lead provides the opportunity for 11 tricks as long as you take the right view in clubs.  

******Belated update.  As initially reported, I simply described the 6♣ bid as exuberant.  But I since learned that Mark Moss (who made the bid) expected a totally different hand for the 2♣ bid.  The 2♣ bid can work out wonderfully if partner has substantial extra values and knows that partner may have something much closer to a 3 card limit raise with short clubs.  However, K&R barely values the West hand as having enough value for a limit raise (10.25) – almost closer to a simple raise to 2♥.  We would still get to game after a 2♥ bid.  I failed to highlight this aspect of the hand (how good is West’s hand? how good is East’s hand? how could/should the bidding go?).  But, surely you can’t spring the 2♣ bid on an unsuspecting partner without discussion.  This is one of the dangers of playing 4 hands per month in an individual movement without substantial partnership discussions.

At my table, a club was led, but, upon winning the ♥K, clubs were not continued (they shifted to a spade), so I was able win the ♠A, draw trump, cross to the ♦K, take a club finesse against South, and arrive at 11 tricks, losing only a diamond and the high trump.

After the spade lead at the other table, declarer started to draw trump and was tapped in spades when South won the ♥K.  Declarer finished drawing trump, but then went astray.  To reach 11 tricks (the objective of 12 could never be achieved), it was necessary to cross to the ♦K and take a first round club finesse.  However, declarer crossed to the ♣A, won the club finesse, and saw trouble (since he could no longer pick up the club suit).  So, declarer tried a diamond to the ♦10, losing to the ♦J.  Another spade tap left him with no more trump while the defense still controlled the club and diamond suits, so when the dust cleared, he was down 4.  But, it all only made 1 IMP difference.  Down 1 would still lose 13 IMPs vs. the actual result: we were +650 and +400 to win 14 IMPs.

What about the bidding?  I guess the long strong clubs that opener held, combined with the singleton spade that the opponents were bidding, convinced the other player with my cards that slam was available.  It turns out, the double dummy par result for the hand is 4♠X (and our teammates did compete to that level, creating problems for the players with our cards).  When East-West pushed on to slam, a large number of IMPs were heading our way.  As you can see, at my table, rather than come in with 2♠, North elected to double to bring both spades and diamonds into play, but South had meager values and no further competition came from North-South.  So, it would seem that North’s decision to overcall, showing ‘just spades’ was more effective than the double that showed spades and diamonds.  Of course South still could have bid 4♠ over 4♥ (or even 3♠ over 3♣), but sacrificing at IMPs is sure costly when the opponents were not making their contract.  South doesn’t have much of a hand so I can’t really fault them for not bidding.

 

 

Another exuberant slam was bid on this hand, but a favorable diamond layout (3-2 split with the ♦A onside or the ♦J onside) could provide 12 tricks (as long as trumps were also 3-2), so 6♣ is certainly not a terrible slam.

When we stopped in game (5♣), a somewhat rare interesting defensive opportunity arose.  Declarer needs to start establishing diamonds early.  A common ploy for declarer holding a singleton is to immediately lead it at trick 2 (when the king with long cards are in dummy).  If the A is onside, 2nd hand may duck, allowing no losers in the suit, or they may rise, allowing an opportunity to work towards establishing the suit later for critical discards.  Here, of course, the ♦A was offside (and declarer did not have a singleton).  Playing upside down carding, when East leads a diamond and South plays the ♦9, North knows, with honest carding, that there is a singleton, but they don’t know if East has the singleton or South has the singleton.  The rare play I was talking about is that the winning play (to hold declarer to 10 tricks and defeat 5♣) is to duck the ♦A.  This deprives declarer of the entries needed to establish diamonds for spade/heart discards.  If declarer persists in diamonds, partner can ruff while you retain 2 top diamonds over dummy.  If declarer draws trump and then plays diamonds, you win, tap dummy’s last trump with a heart lead, and you still have diamond control (in fact, with this defense, declarer needs to stop drawing trump, but obtain heart ruffs with dummy’s small trumps).  If declarer tries to make 11 tricks by drawing trumps after they win the first round diamond lead with the ♦K, there will only be 9 tricks possible.  Declarer will lose a spade, a heart and 2 diamonds, winning only 5 clubs, a diamond, and 3 top tricks in the majors.

Still, for North to allow the ♦K to win, when declarer might hold a singleton diamond, could be very wrong.  A trick is a trick, and North still holds the ♦J to make suit establishment difficult.  Not knowing who holds the singleton, I cannot imagine ducking the ♦A defending against the slam.  And, even against the game, ducking could be wrong on different layouts.  There are two things to consider here, if a similar situation should arise and you are on defense.  1 – Declarer, holding the ♦KQ, always has a power trick in diamonds, whether you take the ♦A or not (so perhaps ducking doesn’t have such a large downside).  2 – Always (there are not many ‘always’ in bridge, but this is always true), pause at trick 1 to consider the whole hand.  Don’t play too fast.  What is declarer’s likely distribution?  What is partner’s distribution?  What line of play will declarer pursue?  What can you do to thwart that?  If declarer plays ‘this’ suit later in the hand, what card should I play (and be ready to play it so that your hesitation doesn’t give away your holding!)?

What about the lead?  I have always heard, if you have a singleton, lead it!  If South does lead the ♦9 (assuming standard leads), North knows 100% that declarer does not have a singleton, so ducking becomes far more attractive (should be automatic) and, in fact, if the ♦9 is led and the ♦K is allowed to win, 10 tricks is the maximum declarer can score on this layout.  And, when declarer is known to hold at least 2 cards in the suit, I believe ducking the opening diamond lead could never cost a trick (but it might be possible to construct a layout where it would cost – I’m not going to try).  I will also point out that many people make attitude leads (♦9 from ♦983 says I have no useful cards in this suit).  I like count leads (a lot), so that the ♦3 is led from ♦983.  Assuming you can see the ♦2, you don’t know where the high cards are in the suit, but you know the ♦3 is a singleton or else it is from a suit that is at least 3 long.  Defense is tough.  It becomes easier if you can work out the shape of every hand, but also easier if you know where all of the high cards are.  There aren’t a lot of simple answers, but it is important to understand principles and make certain the partnership is on the same page (lead high, middle or low from 3 small?).

In any case, at both tables, North won the ♦A when diamonds were led so 11 tricks were scored at both tables, +600 and +100 to win 12 IMPs.

 

 

I will refrain from describing the 3NT contract reached at the other table as ‘exuberant’ – I’ve used that enough already.  North (my partner Cris) took a conservative view and passed my 2♥ rebid.  North at the other table (Tom) took a more aggressive view to arrive at the 3NT game (4♥ might have been the preferred game, but it is too hard to compare the likelihood of 9 tricks in NT compared to 10 tricks in hearts.  There are certainly 9 tricks available in NT (2+4+1+2), but to score those 4 heart tricks, you must lose the lead twice, so the opponents are likely to reach (at least) 5 tricks before you get 9.

Conservative bidding won out, since only 9 tricks are possible in hearts on this layout against the best defense (lose a diamond, a spade and 2 hearts).  West is faced with an awkward opening  lead (I think I would chose the ♦10, but then partner must fly the ♦A or declarer gets an extra trick).  Here West chose the ♠K for an opening lead with East signaling the ♠10 saying I don’t like spades).  Then, when I played ♥A and another, West won and tried the ♦10 which was ducked around to my ♦Q, so all I lost were 2 heart tricks, 11 tricks in all.

Against 3NT by North, East has 12 cards (out of 13) that they can lead that all result in down 2 (assuming best play/defense after the opening lead).  Only the impossible ♥Q lead that no one would make would allow 9 tricks for declarer.  I didn’t get the details of the lead, the declarer play nor the defense, but the final result was down 3.  So we were +200 making 11 tricks in 2♥ and +300 for defeating 3NT 3 tricks to win 11 IMPs.

 

 

Wow – here what seemed like a normal auction (1♠-4♠) took a wild turn at our table.  At the other table, somehow North thought that they were too strong for a preemptive raise to 4♠.  Instead, they offered the club splinter bid.  Over the years, I have seen lots of different hands for the 1♠-4♠ auction, but I believe the “classic” is: 5 trump, shortness, 1 card (ace or king somewhere).  While you can vary somewhat from the “classic” based on personal style or personal whim at the time of your bid, assuming my definition is accurate, a “classic” 4♠ bid is what North has!

In any case, after the splinter, North-South were allowed to play an unmolested game in spades and won the obvious 10 tricks, losing a diamond, spade and club.  At our table, East (Bruce, who said they just about never treat a 5-4 hand as though it is 5-5), decided to take a save (or, perhaps persuade us to venture to the 5 level which is potentially much more valuable).  I wasn’t going to take the push, so we ended up defending 5♣X and got our diamond and 2 heart tricks for down 1.  Nothing more can be done once East decides to save/push rather than sit and hope to beat 4♠.  The vulnerability was right.  Even if we were going down, the save might not cost that much.  When they hit a perfecto with partner (well, “perfecto” would be a singleton heart to allow 5♣X to make!), their bid resulted in us being +100 vs. -620 so we lost 11 IMPs.

The massive spade fit announced by the raise to game suggests E-W might have a fit also.  The cards could have been dealt such that you are forcing partner into a phantom save (4♠ goes down) while you suffer a substantial penalty (opponents have extra defense, partner has a much less perfect hand).  There is some risk, but, I think the odds are against that doomsday scenario, so I like the 4NT call, even though it hurt me to the tune of 11 IMPs.

 

 

The hand evaluation/bidding judgment on this hand came down to a single point.  When evaluating “points” I nearly always add 1 for my 5th card in a suit.  Here, with 25 high card points plus an extra point for the 5th diamond, I evaluated the hand as 26 points.  I hit partner with a perfect fit so 12 tricks were trivial unless diamonds were 5-0, and even then there were possibilities.  The same 12 tricks were scored at both tables, so the result was all in the bidding.

Many bridge players have found it difficult to bid balanced hand with lots of high card points, and so, many years ago, Eric Kokish created the “Kokish relay” (which he called “birthright”).

https://www.larryco.com/bridge-articles/kokish-relay

The article above describes the standard treatment, so that all hands above 24 (or 25) points start with 2♣-2♦-2♥-2♠-2NT.  The low end of Kokish depends on whether 2♣-2♦-2NT is 22-23 or 22-24.  Standard Kokish relay treats the 2NT bid as a game forcing bid and partner can try Stayman, Jacoby/Texas transfers or any other NT tools they have at their disposal to advance to whatever game/slam makes sense.

Bruce Tuttle popularized a variation on the standard Kokish relay (but he says it was not his invention – I always thought it was!).  Instead of 24+, there are bids available to describe all 2 point ranges (but one specific sequence is ‘out of bounds/not part of the structure’ – that is 2♣-2♦-3NT is not considered a valid sequence, not one of the choices of the “2 point ranges” to be shown – it just shows a powerful hand with 9 likely tricks (a long suit with stoppers) and has no interest in hearing Stayman, Jacoby or any other NT treatment).  Here is the structure:

1. 20-21: open 2NT
2. 22-23: 2♣-2♦-2NT
3. 24-25: 2♣-2♦-2♥-2♠-2NT
4. 26-27: 2♣-2♦-2♥-2♠-3NT
5. 28-29: 2♣-2♦-4NT
6. 30-31: 2♣-2♦-2♥-2♠-4NT
7. 32-33: 2♣-2♦-5NT
8. 34-35: 2♣-2♦-2♥-2♠-5NT

After all of these starts to the auctions, normal NT tools apply, just at higher levels than normal.  Bruce is my regular partner, so we have played this structure for many years.  It may seem needlessly complicated and causes you to get awfully high early in the bidding without knowing anything about shape, but it has mostly served us well.  Once, after showing step 6 (30-31), I could bid 5♠ showing at least 4-4 in the minors and partner bid/made 7♣ on our 4-4 fit (not bid at the other table).  Another time, believe or not, I produced the auction shown at the bottom of the list (step 8, 34-35) in a national pair event with Bruce.  Bruce did the math, but figured I must have done the math wrong so he bid 6NT when 7NT was cold!  Anyway, I’m not suggesting that these hands come up a lot, nor that this ‘system’ is a panacea for solving all bidding problems.  But it is fun!

With some mild table discussion, both tables confirmed they were playing this system where you can show 2 point ranges.  As I said, I treated my hand as “26 points” (26-27) so I bid the 4th step and partner had enough to insist on slam.  North at the other table (Cris) showed “25 points” (24-25) via the 3rd step and his partner’s flat hand with mostly queens and jacks saw 31-32 combined points and just signed off in 3NT.

 

Wow, last hand of the day to report.  I succumbed to the illusion that 9 tricks are easier than 11 and foolishly, after hearing partner raise my diamonds and both RHO and LHO bidding hearts, I STILL bid the ill-fated 3NT rather than the ice cold 5♦.  Wrong.  After the ♥8 lead, 7 tricks are the max possible for declarer assuming best defense, since the opponents take the first 6 tricks.  West played the ♥Q at trick 1 and when I ducked, per force, it gave them hope.  They continued with a small heart at trick 2 and my only hope was that the overcall included ♥AKQxx of hearts, so I went up with the ♥J.  East could win the ♥K and cash the ♥10 (and, the spots were sufficiently favorable, such that my ♥7 became mildly significant, West cannot overtake the ♥10 with the ♥A because that would establish my ♥7 for my 9th trick.  But, alas, after cashing the third heart trick, East continued with a spade to the ♠A and West could cash the rest of their hearts for 5 hearts and 1 spade, down 2.

At the other table, the same ♥8 was led (but a different auction) and West judged that declarer possessed ♥KJT (and possibly more hearts) and decided perhaps partner can score 3 tricks in diamonds to go with 2 major suit aces for down 1.  So, rather than insert the ♥Q at trick 1 (fearing it would set up even more heart tricks for declarer than which they were entitled to), West went up with the ♥A and shifted to a diamond.  Since hearts were still blocked, declarer could knock out a spade (he had to establish a spade trick because there were only 8 tricks in the minors).  Upon winning the ♠A, West persisted in diamonds allowing 10 tricks for declarer, 3 for the defense.  

West (Gary) at my table remarked that the ♥8 was hard to read.  If East had 3 small hearts headed by the ♥8, the typical lead would be the ♥8.  If they held ♥K108, they would also lead the ♥8!  West reasoned that defeating 3NT was unlikely unless the defense was scoring heart tricks.  Also, because I had bid 2♦ rather than 3NT, it gave West a chance to raise hearts which greatly increased the chance that the ♥8 was low.  It was far from a sure thing that the ♥8 was ‘small’, but Gary decided that was their best/only chance.  After playing the ♥Q and winning the first trick, West continued hearts and took their 6 tricks.  What happened with our teammates?  Thinking that the ♥8 was top of nothing, they abandoned hearts at trick 2 and the defense was finished.  Should West get it right?  West at this table did not have the benefit of the heart raise.  I claim the ♥8 is unreadable – you can hope, but you cannot know.  It could be low.  It could be top of nothing.  But, what about the rest of the high card points in the deal?  Between their hand and dummy, West can see 8 points in spades, leaving at most 2 in that suit for declarer.  Likewise, at most 4 points in hearts and 1 point in clubs, from what they can see between their hand and dummy.  Even if declarer has all of those cards, that only gets them up to 7 points, yet they jumped to game.  That leaves virtually no chance that partner can produce 3 tricks in diamonds (they cannot have ♦AQ10 because the ♦10 is in dummy and they cannot have ♦AKJ because that would max out declarer’s HCP at 9).  So, even though it might be unlikely that the ♥8 is low, West must assume it is low as the only path to defeat 3NT and defend accordingly.  Sometimes declarer’s ‘stopper’ in NT is only as good as it sounds from the bidding.  It doesn’t make 3NT the right call, but 3NT sure was successful when North jumped to it over 1♥.  We were -100 while our teammates were -430, lose 11 IMPs.

Still, I could have saved my teammate his grief by simply bidding what was in front of my face – 5♦.  Partner is marked with a heart singleton (or void) after hearts are raised by East.  I have very strong diamonds, so we aren’t in trouble there.  Certainly I cannot be 100% assured that 11 tricks can be found (I might lose a heart and 2 black tricks), but 5♦ still should have been my bid, especially at IMPs (we weren’t playing matchpoints).

I have heard inexperienced players state that they have a ‘rule’ – 6 or smaller is ‘small’ and 7 or higher is ‘big’.  Of course that ‘rule’ is nonsense – you need to at least look at your suit and dummy, as well as notice what declarer played (declarer is usually false carding to add extra confusion)!  But, sometimes, after looking at all of that, you still don’t know.  That is what makes bridge such a challenging and fun game.

One last comment about bidding agreements.  What does the double of a splinter show? Since leading the suit where dummy is short is rarely an effective start to the defense (that is what declarer wants to do so that they can obtain ruffs), some play the double is a directive to partner to lead the higher suit (or lower suit) – whatever they have mutually discussed/agreed with partner.  Some play the double is length in the suit, suggesting a potential to take a save over the pending game bid if partner is so inclined.  Today there were 2 splinter bids.  One of the splinters (3♥) was doubled resulting in partner leading the heart suit (no harm done, the diamonds are placed such that the slam will never make).  Still a diamond lead should have resulted in down 2-3 after a holdup of the ♦A.  The other splinter (4♣) was not doubled, resulting in the missed opportunity to take the save in 5♣ over 4♠.  I’m not preaching any particular theory here, just suggesting that doubling splinters is yet another area for partnership discussion and agreement.  The double is a ‘free’ bid – the opponents will not be playing that contract.  The double of a splinter should have SOME meaning, just decide, agree and remember.