On Board 6 this week N/S could make 6H but the slam wasn’t bid at any of the three tables and twelve tricks were made only at one table.

It is difficult to predict the bidding when both sides are likely to bid to quite a high level.

East has only 10 Hcp but has a Rule of 20 1C opening bid.  If East opens 1C then South has a choice between a 1D overall and a take-out Double.  I think Double is slightly superior.  The hand doesn’t have a four-card major, and with only 15 Hcp it is arguably a bit weak to Double and then reject partner’s suit with a Diamond bid, but the Spades and Hearts will provide excellent support if partner turns out to have a five-card major suit.  Whatever South bids, West should bid 3C, bidding to the level of fit with a weak hand.  If South has Doubled then North would be justified in jumping to 4H.  West can then give N/S a problem by bidding 5C.  If West Passes at this stage then it will be easy for South to use RKCB, find that partner has two key cards, and bid 6H.  If West bids 5C then South will have to guess whether to bid 5H or 6H.

If South merely overcalls 1D on the first round of bidding, then I think it will be difficult for N/S to reach 6H.

The play of the hand is also of interest.  Suppose East starts with the AC and then switches to a Spade.  North will have to dispose of two Spade losers.  They can only disappear on dummy’s Diamond suit.  One way of doing this is to ruff the suit good.  Assuming that the Diamonds break 4-2, then it will be necessary to ruff three Diamonds in the North hand.  Declarer wins the second trick in hand, crosses to the AD in dummy and ruffs a Diamond in hand.  She then plays a trump to the Ace and ruffs a second Diamond in hand.  On this trick East shows out of Diamonds but cannot overruff.  Now declarer can draw the last trump by laying down the KH and still has two entries to dummy, the KS and the JH, so she can cross to dummy to ruff out the KD and return to play the last two of dummy’s Diamonds to dispose of her two Spade losers.

A second method is to finesse the KD but with only a singleton Diamond this must be done by a ruffing finesse, leading Diamonds from dummy.  To do this it is safe to draw trumps in two rounds and to then play the AD followed by the QD, ruffing if East plays the KD or discarding a Spade if East plays low.

As the cards lie both lines of play allow 6H to make.

Board 11 was played at all tables by South with Spades as trumps.  At two tables the contract was made but at the other table declarer was defeated and also the defending side had Doubled.  So this hand is a test case in how to achieve 100% on a hand.

As with Board 6 the bidding will vary from table to table because both sides will have something to say.   Again as with Board 6 the dealer has only 10 Hcp but has a Rule of 20 opening bid.  After South opens 1S West should probably Double.  She doesn’t have a Spade stop but she does have 16 Hcp and a four-card Heart suit.  North can Redouble to show 8+ Hcp without Spade support.  East certainly doesn’t want to play in 1SXX so will have to bid 2D.  Thereafter South will rebid Spades and is likely to end up as declarer, but the level of the final contract is unpredictable.  At two tables the contract was 3S and at the other it was 2S.

At one table West (I presume it wasn’t East) chose to Double 3S.  It is always brave to make a penalty Double that will give the opponents a game bonus if the contract makes.  West presumably hoped he was looking at four defensive tricks and also hoped that partner could make the vital fifth trick.  So it proved as the contract was defeated by one trick.  Even so the defence was clearly challenging as at the other two tables South made at least nine tricks.  The opening lead is a bit of a gamble and looks as if there may be a danger that West will be end-played later on.

Unfortunately the opening lead was not recorded.  A Heart lead would be a poor start, giving a trick to declarer’s KH, but even then there should be five defensive tricks, three Clubs and the two red aces.  A Diamond lead will set up a trick for dummy’s KD, although the lead of a low Diamond would work well if declarer fails to play the KD on the first trick.  A low Club lead would lead to rapid success, giving the defence the opportunity to take the first five tricks.  And a Spade lead would be safe: although West would probably lose one trick later on through being end-played, it should still be easy to find enough defensive tricks to defeat the contract.

However the hand was played, the E/W pair who Doubled 3S managed to take their five tricks and to score a deserved 100%.  So my Players of the Week this week are that pair, Mike O’Shea and Angela Greenfield.

Last week I asked how could East make 6NT against any lead on the following hand:

Nick Evans and Chris Ruff both came up with the answer, which depends on squeezing North in the black suits.  To do this you have to get to a position where North is guarding both suits, which can be achieved by leading the JC from the East hand.  South must cover and now North’s Club holding is all that prevents East’s 8C from being promoted.  East cashes dummy’s KS and plays on the red suits, cashing the high cards in dummy last.  When the last of the red suit winners is played from dummy, South having won the KD on the way, North has to discard before East.  Whatever North discards, East can discard so that her hand is high and she will have the AS or the KC as an entry.  Thanks and congratulations to Nick and Chris.  Of course this was a purely academic question.  No declarer would play the hand in this way.  You would try for one of the two finesses to work and finish up one off.

This week there were two hands where I noticed one player take a bit of a gamble in the bidding.  On both occasions the gamble was successful.

Board 12 was played at all tables by North with Spades as trumps.  At three tables the contract was 4S and at one table it was 6S.  The thing I find surprising is that it was not once played in 5S.

North opens 1S.  If East Passes then, if N/S play Jacoby, South will bid 2NT showing sufficient value for game together with four-card Spade support.  If Jacoby is not being played then South, with a seven-loser hand and Spade support, might bid an immediate 4S.  In either case North has a strong hand with at least second-round control in each suit, making the hand suitable for a Blackwood enquiry.  She bids 4NT and South bids 5C (if playing RKCB 1430) showing one key card.  Knowing that there are two aces missing, North signs off in 5S.

At three out of four tables N/S finished in 4S. I find this surprising.  Surely one or both of the partnership should think about the possibility of a slam?

Of course East might muddy the waters by intervening after North’s opening bid.  I was sitting East and I chose to bid 3H, a weak jump overcall.  South then bid 3S, which was surely an underbid?  But it would have worked out satisfactorily for N/S because given the chance North surely would have bid 4S.  However my partner now came up with a brilliancy by bidding 6H.  He reasoned that 5S would certainly make and that we might make a profit if we played in 6HX.  In fact E/W can make eight tricks in Hearts and making 6HX-4 would have given us a score of -800, whereas the opponents’ 5S= or 4S+1 would have given us -650.  But of course West’s 6H bid made it difficult for N/S to decide what to do and South, no doubt aware that her 3S bid was an underbid, bid 6S.  And 6S might have made – at two out of four tables North made twelve tricks.

Leading an ace against a small slam is a popular lead but I don’t normally like to do so.  On the bidding however, I decided to lead the AH in the hope that it would stand up and with the near-certainty that a second round of Hearts would be ruffed.  I was worried when I saw dummy’s Heart holding as if declarer were void I would have set up an unnecessary trick for the KH, but fortunately (from the point of view of the defence) declarer had a Heart.  I then had to decide what to lead next.  Looking at all four hands it is clear that East must lead a Club to trick 2 as otherwise North’s Club losers will disappear on dummy’s Diamonds.  On the first trick my partner had played the 3H.  We play reverse attitude signals (“high hate, low like”), but with the KH in dummy there was no point in encouraging Hearts, so I took the 3H as a suit-preference signal and led a Club.  So 6S finished one off.  My Player of the Week is my partner Alan Shackman for the combination of his 6H bid and his suit-preference signal.  (Of course it wouldn’t have worked out so well if 6S was maing.  We would have scored 0% instead of 100%.)

Last week I gave the advice is that if, at pairs, partner opens with a Weak NT, with a flat 11 Hcp hand you should Pass.  The key word in the advice is “flat” as this week’s Board 5 showed.

The first bidding sequence shown occurred at my table.  North’s 2S bid was announced as showing exactly 11 Hcp.  I thought that maybe this was a hand that should have been Passed.  South bid 2NT, indicating 12-13 Hcp.  North should really have Passed this, but he chose to raise his partner to 3NT – clearly showing confidence in her ability at declarer play.  The other three players were all a bit surprised by the 3NT bid, but when dummy went down we saw the five-card Club suit and the three Tens and we could see North’s thinking – of course he might as well have bid a direct 3NT, but no doubt the decision to bid 3NT was made at the last minute as a bit of a gamble.

In the event 3NT made, so the gamble paid off.  So my second Player of the Week is the North player who bid 3NT, Nick Walton.  I must also recognise Sarah Bowman, who also sat North when her partner made 3NT.  I presume she also made the brave 3NT bid.

An interesting point arose in the play of the hand.  When South led the JC West covered with the QC.  The trick was won by the AC in dummy and subsequently E/W won just one Club trick, the East’s KC.  If West had withheld the QC on the first round of the suit, E/W would have made two Club tricks.  Declarer would have probably run the JC allowing East’s KC to win the first round.  Subsequently West could have covered either of South’s remaining Clubs cheaply and would have made a second Club trick for the defence.  I believe the principle is that you should cover the second of touching honours played by the player of your right.  Of course on this hand it would have helped if West had known whether the TC was with South or East.

My partner and I scored 57% on Board 1 for bidding and making 6H.  We thought we had done well to avoid 6NT as two key cards, the KD and the QC were poorly placed from declarer’s point of view, and surely there were only eleven tricks available in a NT contract?   We, on the other hand, could ruff one loser to create the twelfth trick.  But it turned out that four of the E/W pairs who played in NT, always with East as the declarer, made twelve tricks.  This might have been the consequence of generous defending.  Maybe South led the fourth highest of her longest suit, the 3C, so that East’s JC made a trick?  But the app says that E/W can always make twelve tricks in NT. 

I cannot see how East can make 12 tricks in NT except with a Club lead (or a Club switch after South wins the KD).  So I can offer this as a challenge to those of you who like a double dummy challenge.

On Board 6 there was likely to be a competitive auction.  The pair with the better cards, in this case E/W, have to decide if they can make game.  The other pair have to decide how high to bid.  There are two possible pitfalls in bidding too high.  First you might push the opponents into a making game that they would otherwise fail to reach.  Secondly you might finish up losing too many points if you are Doubled. 

East opens 1D.  She has 20 Hcp and a three-loser hand, so it is close to being a 2C opening bid, but probably the Diamond suit doesn’t seem quite good enough to insist on a game contract.  North has a standard 1S overcall and East, with a weak hand including three-card Diamond support, bids 2D.  South might well now bid 3S, bidding to the level of fit.  What should West do?  She knows that her partner has a weak hand and that the opponents have a Spade fit.  3NT is out of the question – a Spade will be led and with the minor suit aces missing ...  With partner having a weak hand, 5D is unlikely to make.  Double seems sensible.  As both sides have identified a fit, this should be taken as a penalty Double.  West has excellent defensive values with certain or at least likely tricks in all four suits.

At my table the bidding was slightly different, following the second sequence shown.  South was more cautious than I recommended above, and was maybe wise to be cautious, in which case maybe North’s 3S bid was unwise.  The question was, how many tricks could N/S make with Spades as trumps?  If they could make eight tricks, then even Doubled they would show a profit compared to allowing E/W to make a Diamond part-score.  In the event they could only make seven tricks, so playing in 3SX gave N/S a poor result.

One of my Players of the Week this week is my partner Alan Shackman, who saw that the route to a good result was by Doubling 3S rather than rebidding Diamonds at the four-level.

I made a mistake on Board 15 – one that a number of other players also seem to have made.

At the club on five out of eight tables the final contract was 1NTX by South.  Presumably the first bidding sequence occurred at all those tables.  I was sitting East and Passed without much thought.  But although with a very weak hand it is tempting to forget to think, you really should think before you take any action at the bridge table!  I should have reasoned that partner has shown something like 16-18 Hcp and I have 1 Hcp, so therefore the opponents have over half of the high-card strength and are likely to make 1NT.  So I should have bid something.  Fortunately I had a five-card suit, so I had an obvious 2C bid (and when I Passed I had no excuses).  In all probability this would have been Passed Out. The app says that E/W can only make seven tricks in Clubs, but -50 would have been a much better score than the -380 we achieved when South made 1NTX+1!

If East bids 2C then North might make the same calculation that East should have made and might have tried 2D – the app says that N/S can make 3D – but with no guarantee that South has a Diamond suit North is more likely to Pass.

My second Player of the Week is the one East player who found the 2C bid, Pauline Shelley (although I know that Pauline and her partner Sue Reeve sometimes get their names in the wrong way around, so it might be Sue who deserves the accolade).

One last hand this week to illustrate a potentially valuable piece of advice.

If N/S play a Weak NT system, then South opens 1NT.  Suppose West Passes.  Should North bid or Pass?  With 11 Hcp North might reckon that if partner has a maximum opening hand then the partnership will have 25 Hcp, usually thought to be enough for 3NT, so she might bid an invitational 2NT.  I think this is an unwise bid.  The chances are that South has 12 or 13 Hcp and also North has no five-card suit.  It is odds on that 3NT will fail, in which case it must be better to play in 1NT.  It is true that on occasion 3NT will be making, but in the long run I think Pass is the best bid at pairs scoring.  If you happen to make 1NT+2 you will in all probability still get a decent score, even if 3NT is bid and made elsewhere.

Of course on this particular board, West might overcall.  Playing Multi-Landy 2S is a possible overcall, showing a Sade suit and an unspecified minor suit.  If West does bid, then North can Double, to show that her side has the majority of the points.

The app says that N/S can make exactly 1NT, which would score +90.  2NT-1 would score -100.  The app also says that E/W can make exactly 1S.  If E/W finish in 2SX going one off N/S will score +100.  I am surprised that at the club none of the N/S pairs played in 1NT.  At my table West Passed and North bid 2NT.  Maybe at other tables West overcalled?  But as all N/S pairs played in either 2NT or 3NT I rather think that most Wests Passed.

My advice is that if, at pairs, partner opens with a Weak NT, with a flat 11 Hcp hand you should Pass.

Board 7 provided an interesting insight into how to (or how not to) utilise weak 2 opening bids.

The first question is, should West open the bidding?  Assuming that you play Weak 2s, the point count and the Diamond suit suggest a 2D opening bid, but some players do not like to open with a Weak 2 when they have a four-card major side-suit.  This depends on whether the partnership has a method of finding a major-suit fit after a Weak 2 opening bid.

After the Weak 2 opening bid, assuming that left-hand opponent is silent, partner might Pass, bid her own suit or bid an artificial 2NT showing 15+ Hcp and asking the opening bidder to further describe her hand. 

If the responder Passes, clearly there is no danger of missing a high-level major suit contract.

The next possibility is that partner bids a new suit.  I think it is important that such a bid should be understood as forcing for one round.  The responder does not have a very strong hand, i.e. with 15+ Hcp, but she might have a strong enough hand to allow game to be made.  In such a case it is important to exchange a bit more information in order to find the best contract.  The opening bidder will have the choice of showing support for partner’s suit, bidding a second suit or rebidding her six-card suit.  This week’s Board 7 shows how this can work in practice.  After West’s 2D opening bid, East is not strong enough to bid 2NT but she does have a decent hand and also a distinct lack of Diamonds.  She bids 2H.  West has an upper-range Weak 2 so rather than simply re-bid Diamonds she shows her second suit by bidding 2S.  Now East knows there is a 4-4 Spade fit.  East has a six-loser hand and knows that a good Weak 2 opening bid is usually based on a seven-loser hand.  The Losing Trick Count suggests that 5S will make (as 18 - 6 + 7 = 5), so East bids 4S.  4S makes comfortably, losing two Spades and a Club, it being easy to establish both the red suits.

The third possibility is that partner shows a strong hand by responding 2NT.  If you play Ogust then it is now difficult to find a 4-4 major suit fit.  The Ogust responses to partner’s 2NT only show the character and strength of the opening bidder’s six-card suit.  But if you use a features system in response to partner’s 2NT enquiry, then it is possible to show a four-card major side-suit.  With a lower-range Weak 2 hand opener simply rebids her suit.  With an upper-range hand she shows a positive feature of her hand.  A bid of an unbid major suit can then be used to show a four-card suit.

Returning to today’s hand, it is interesting to consider whether it would be possible to reach 4S if West chooses to Pass on the first round of bidding.  I think it would, but I don’t think it would be easy.  I assume that N/S would remain silent throughout.  East would open 1H and West would respond 2D.  West has 9 Hcp, which is not enough for a two-level response, but if you apply the Rule of 14 the hand is goiod enough to bid 2D.  The Rule of 14 says that your hand is strong enough for a two-level response if, when you add the number of points to the number of cards in your longest suit, the total is 14 or more.  In this case West has 8 Hcp and a six-card suit, which just satisfies the Rule of 14.  East has to rebid 2H, not being strong enough to bid 2S, which would be a reverse.  It would be tempting for West to Pass this, having stretched a little to bid 2D.  But if you have made a two-level response you should always find a second bid.  On this hand, West should bid 2S.  It might seem that West is too weak to make a responder’s reverse, but a little thought shows that this is the correct bid.  Consider what West knows about partner’s hand.  West does not have a balanced hand as she has failed to bid NT on the first two rounds of bidding.  She does not have a four-card Club suit as in that case she would have bid 2C in preference to 2H.  She does not have a four-card Diamond suit as in that case she would have raised Diamonds.  She must have either at least six Hearts or a four-card Spade suit.  If she has a six-card Heart suit then you are going to finish up playing in Hearts with an eight-card fit, which is fine.  If partner can establish the Diamonds then 4H will almost certainly make.  And if partner has a four-card Spade suit then you want to play in 4S.

My Players of the Week are the two pars who bid and made 4S on this hand, Pauline Shelley & Sue Reeve and Judy Roose & her partner.

This week there were a number of boards where one side could make game, but very few pairs were able to do so.  Board 1 was a good example.