The hand commentary can be downloaded here

Almost all declarers made 12 or 13 tricks, but how to bid the slam - is this a "do you feel lucky?" hand?

This is the only squence that got there.

As South, how do you bid this hand?

The hand commentary can be downloaded here

The question on this hand is whether last in hand you should open the bidding after 3 passes.

Your bid?

4S or 3NT?

This hand was extraordinary in that all the tables finished in hearts, diamonds or clubs yet the best safe contract was up to 5 spades!

The standard opening was 1 heart by East with partner replying either 1 spade or 2 diamonds. The immediate overcall by North varied from 2 clubs to 5 clubs and whatever the final call, nobody was able to successfully achieve their contract.

The best East/West results were by those who doubled North/ South when they pushed in clubs and for North/South it was also best to not push too far as hearts or diamonds always failed.

The play was not so challenging, but we thought it was the fun hand of the evening.

Four pairs played in 6H, but apparently none checked that W held a singleton Spade.

3D indicated good support for Hearts with a Diamond stop. We were helped by North bidding aggressively in Diamonds and Spades so perhaps 6 Hearts was less of a punt with East holding 6 Spades!

Bidding

Six out of 12 pairs opened a weak NT. The strong no-trumpers may have had less of a problem with this hand as they won’t have the nightmare of their weak no-trump opening being doubled which all weak no trumpers dread. As a 1NT opening is a pre-emptive bid, players can become unstuck when the opposition is strong, a DOUBLE is thrown in and their partner does not have a 5+card suit to escape to. It pays to have a system where you can escape, to a 4-4 fit or at the very least a 4-3 fit. Four pairs out of six managed to navigate to 2S which was a 4-4 fit. Two pairs including ourselves arrived there conventionally (it’s unclear about the other two because no alerts were made). Either way, a conventional approach would have assured that the partnerships would get there. We use Halmic, which after a double, if a suit is bid, it is the lower of two equal length suits (usually 4 cards, can be 5). If this lower suit has hit the NT doubleton then opener will re-bid the next suit up and then responder will pass, or correct to their other equal length suit. There are a number of other systems equally as effective that can achieve this.

As the cards lie, we were lucky enough to be doubled in 2S, which looking at East’s hand is very tempting, but doubled or not doubled the play is key:

Play

East opening lead is D4. From the bidding the points are evenly distributed between the pairs. We have 19 pts and EW 21pts with the majority 15-17 of the opponents points held by east after his doubling of our opening 1NT bid. East also doubled the final contract of 2S and as we have 3 missing honours AQ&J we can place the top two and most likely all three honours with east.

East is under pressure to find an effective opening lead. The D4 was lead, if any other suit was chosen then East will be leading away from strength as he held honours in the other three suits. However, the lead of a diamond gave north a big advantage as dummy held a doubleton headed by the ace. With KJTx in hand West was forced to play the Q and the trick was won by north’s K. A small diamond was led to dummy’s ace with east playing the D8. This confirmed east held at least one more diamond.

A small club was led from dummy to the ace in hand and two more rounds of diamonds followed, jack & ten were played enabling declarer to discards two losing clubs in dummy. On the second round east can ruff but would have to play his SJ, so he discarded a heart. Play continues with a club ruffed in dummy and a heart led back won by east. Life is no easier for east as to what to do next. He plays ace of hearts followed by ace of spades and then the queen of spades. This last trick is won in hand with king of trumps and another club is ruffed in dummy. The opponents can only make one more trick with east’s Jack of trumps. The contract is made with an overtrick and a top board to NS secured by having an effective defence system in place when opponents double your weak no trump opening and there is no 5-card suit to run to.

Commentary_20211108.pdf

In a night of many spade contracts played by NS this one is in many ways the most interesting.

At our table partner passed and E bid a weak 2D. Over to you and what do you bid with this shapely hand. I think it has to be 2S, 3S or 4S. Although partner has passed, 2S looks too weak for this hand.  3S is a possibility depending on what this shows your partner but really do you want to be in anything other than 4S. So, you bid 4S and hope for the best.

On QD lead what do you do?
 

There were a variety of contracts on this board

Some Norths opened a very light 1S, which got passed round to W who bid 1NT.

On one hand, at least, two passes went to South who opened, an even lighter, 2H. One way or another, some NS pairs found a H contract even though they’ve only got 15 pts.

Where 3 passes went to W who bid 1S most pairs got over-excited and went down in S or NT game. If E leaves 1S that steals the contract and got the best EW score.

Defences were interesting, too.

West's 4C is a cue bid and highly encouraging.
E with nothing to cue bid but a strong hand after this bidding bid 5D.
West decided he would have a good play for slam.

A 3-0 trump break was the main danger but with that safely negotiated there was a straightforward line to 12 tricks.

The 2S bid by W shows 5-5 in H and a minor, 5-11 pts.

Sitting W, what do you lead against 4S by S?

After a competitive auction we (EW) ended in 4H doubled which makes due to the position of the J Clubs.

At the point we bid 4H it was unclear as whether this would make or if off improve our score over letting the opponents make 3 Spades. The danger is that you provoke opponents into 4 Spades and if this happens the best you can do is double them for one off. Even this is fraught with danger as the scoresheet shows with some making 4 Spades. Hopefully you lead a top Diamond and see a somewhat scary dummy. The only hope is that partner has a Club trick and you need to switch, if you don’t they discard the losing club on a Heart.

A thin line between success and disaster!

We promptly made 11 tricks and got a bad score.
Should West have done more? Should East have done more?
What would you have done?
 

Do you bid 4C or pass?

How do you play following KD lead by S?

20210906_commentary.pdf

Interestingly, we were the only ones in 6H.

This was an interesting hand with games possible in Hearts and Clubs by N/S and in Spades by E/W, and all 3 contracts were sometimes bid and made if left at game level only.

With 1 spade opening does North bid to shut out West or move slowly (which was my thought) to look for a slam?

Every table followed up with a variety of competitive bidding. There should be no slam, but you need a very correct defence to stop 5 spades and a more obvious defence to stop 6 clubs and 5 Hearts but sometimes both were successful.

Hence N/S varied from 100% against 2 Robots (nice to criticise them!) when in 6 clubs, to 4% when leaving West in 5 Spades!

John Skinner

Lots of people didn’t get to slam, how should the board be bid?
 

How does E play when partner leads KS?

Why I hate robots

At the end of an evening where there seemed to be more than usual part-score hands, we encountered the robot pair. As South I opened a fairly obvious 3S. West's (robot) 3NT overcall is described as "2-5 ♠♥♦♣, 16-22 HCP, stop in ♠". What does East (robot) bid?

I liked hand 6 where declarer was booked to make 1NTX but got the timing wrong so we got lucky and ended up +500 rather than -180.

It’s a fascinating play hand. How do you play 1NTX on the auction shown?

Tony's (South) double showed an opening hand and short C; whilst we do not necessarily have the balance of points (indeed we haven’t – 19 versus 21 for declarer) all suits appear to be breaking badly for declarer so I doubled in case we could get it off. Double dummy we can’t. But declarers don’t always get it right.

I was happy with my double, and still would have been even if declarer had made his contract.

Tony led KH and hastily switched to a S when I showed out. Declarer correctly ducked the first S leaving me on lead with the QS to return a S which declarer won to switch to a D – 6-3-J-A. I returned a 3rd S, which declarer needs to win and then play on C to get home. AC followed by small to the Q will surely draw all South’s clubs and, if 1 only of the minor C honours is with South (surely likely?), declarer can then finesse against me to make 4 C tricks and then throw South in with the last S for an end play and his contract.

Instead, declarer ducked the 3rd S leaving the tempo with us: he now can’t end play South. Tony won and then put declarer in with his last S: declarer is now doomed. In an effort to get to dummy for the marked C finesse he then ended up going 2 off.

In such ways do tops emerge!

Andrew Moore

This week several hands were very distributional, but this was the most interesting.

Should East open at the one level, as being strongish, or pre-empt? Should South then overcall or jump to 4S?

Play looks quite tricky: everyone received the lead of QH - there are potentially 1 diamond and 3 club losers. Declarer made 9, 10 or even 11 tricks, though only one of those who bid game made it.

Board 19 was a tricky hand to declare. 4S was made by Jo Bell, Caro Hunt and Helen Mason but they all received relatively favourable leads. Everyone else went down. My partner received a spade lead. How would you plan the play with trumps breaking 4-0?

This hand (double dummy) can be game in diamonds for EW (slam if played by W) or game in hearts for NS. But most E ended in 4S or 3NT. Either is doomed to failure against the right lead but a few escaped intact. Look here for details.

Even by Clare standards this hand was unusual, played 10 times it managed to produce 9 contracts and 10 different results. Can you work out (guess!) what these might be before looking at Board 7 in Monday 14th June results.

What do you bid sitting W?