Sunday, February 28, 2010

Tough bidding sequence hand (bridge)

So here was the hand in question.

KQ9xx
Kx
-
AKQTxx

you open 1C, lho 1H, partner neg X, rho 3H

What would you do now?

I asked a few people. A world medalist decided to just bid 6S. The player at the other table just bid 4S. A grand life master wanted to bid 4NT blackwood (is it blackwood?), then bid 6S opposite a 1 ace response.

One other possibility was the convoluted auction mentioned in the previous posts. I was pretty sure my partner would read 5D as exclusion keycard for spades, but I also knew that a 1 ace response (5S) would wrong-side the eventual slam. It was just as likely that partner had the ♠A and I should just blast 6S.

After long long thought, I decided to bid exclusion. I figured I could win by staying out of slam when I need to, or if partner had 3+ clubs and we could back into a making 6C, or if partner had a stiff heart which is still not unreasonable given this auction. Partner corrected to 6S, had Axxx xx KJT9x xx, and went down on the heart lead.

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

This is a meaty hand to discuss. Partner has 4 spades out of outstanding 8, and an average of 8 points out of missing 23. Seems to me, even if he is a favorite to have sa, it's not by a lot. So a leap to 6S is not cat's meow.

Don't see how 4s is right. If you are not willing to go beyond 4s, you might as well bid 4H on the way.

There are a lot of ways how wrongsiding might not matter. Pd has HQ, HA, singleton, heart ace could be onside, pd can have hj with queen onside. They might try for a club ruff.

So the exclusion plan seems as good as anything if you are sure partner won't pass 5D.

Ever since one of my partners imposed Robinson-like requirement that we open higher ranking 5 card major (obviously, not mainstream), I have been watching the effects.
So far I have not seen bad stuff happening as a result of major opening however wrong in theory it might be. This hand is also an example where it would be of help.