Our latest county match on Sunday 24th May against Hertfordshire was a tough match for all three teams, with the C team doing the best. A special mention to Andre Gray and Carol Smith who were on the C team but came second overall on the X-imps, only just behind first place. The top A team pair were Tony Philpott and Nigel Bardsley, and the top B team pair were Tim Evans and Chris Park.
In a set of 32 boards, one would expect about an average of four slam hands. In this match, all four of them came in the last set, totally throwing everyone's scores haywire.
One of these four boards (board 29) found North with the highly unusual holding of ten solid spades, not something you see every day!
Naturally, game can be made. No question about it, North holds 10 tricks in their hand. So what should they open? Hands with such erratic distribution tend to polarise players on their approach and this hand was no different. Bids ranged from a 1
opening, 4 opening, 2
game force and 4NT openings (asking for aces).
Partnership understanding is key in these situations: despite only having a 10 count, it doesn't seem presumptuous to open 2
here, given that North is certain game can be made, and whatever partner responds they can jump to 4
, showing a hand with game forcing values and setting spades as trumps.
This turn of events might be somewhat bewildering to South who holds almost half the points in their own hand. Could partner REALLY have a hand with enough points to go to game?! If you trust your partner, then realistically the only feasible consideration now is which grand slam is best. In actual fact, South's AKJ of clubs are waste paper: they could just have the other 11 points in their hand and grand slam is just as cold.
However, there is a problem. A 2 opening with just 10 points is in fact illegal! There is an article in the EBU's Blue book (the law book) that states the minimum number of points that a 2 can have is 13 points. Therefore, all the pairs who did decide to open 2 on this hand, bizarrely, have made an illegal bid!
On that basis, a 4 opening bid has to be right. A 1 opening is too risky in case partner passes and it'll never be clear just how powerful the spade suit is. Of course, on this hand South will never pass and if partner does open 4, with such a huge amount of points that South holds themselves, they should now investigate slam, despite the fact that North has technically made a pre-emptive opening. Very unusual!
Josh
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