Mother’s Day

Well today is Father’s Day but over the last few days I played with my son Colin on BBO.  We decided to try to learn a forcing club system and to start off with are playing precision, sort of.  It is half a system, for now.  We have barely discussed what to do over 1C forcing.  We are winging it.

It is always a lot of fun to play with Colin but on Friday I was fighting a thunderstorm which took our power out 3 separate times.  Still he did give me a lot of things to smile about.  Here is one hand where Colin found a way to get a number with so help from the opponents.

Colin had SJ64 HAQJ4 DK62 CQ74

I opened 2S weak white on red.  It went pass, pass to West.  West seemed to play bridge a bit differently then the rest of us and he just couldn’t sell out to 2S.  He held S AQ H 98 D QJ84 C A6532.  What do you do?  Well our West decided to bid 2NT moving an honour from another deck into his hand.  East bid bid 3S trying to find a heart fit.  Colin doubled and then doubled 3NT which went 3 down.   Good aggressive bidding, my son.

Saturday Colin, North held this hand all vulnerable: S A87643 H void D QJ876 C K2.   West opened 1H.  What would you bid now?  Colin believes in the power of 6-5 and so he bid 2H.  Only one other North made this bid.  It went 4H to me.  I held SQJ102 H432 DA932 C108.  Since Colin was vulnerable 4S seemed clear.  We were doubled and made an uptrick for a lot of imps.  Almost all the other tables where North overcalled 1S sold out to some number of hearts.

Getting into the spirit of things I held S8 HJ DAK107642 CQ1082 all vulnerable.  Colin opened 1NT 12-14.  What do you think I should do?  I had no idea.  All in favour of 3NT hold up your hands.  That is what I bid.  I know it could be very wrong.  Colin did have the perfect hand: SA32 HAQ10 DQJ95 C973. And believe it or not we were the only pair to play there.  AS it turns out 5D needs the clubs to work and it goes down while of course 3NT has 9 top tricks. 

One thing we noticed was that many of our opponents seemed to take it as a personal challenge to get into our auctions when we opened 1C.  One opponent played random overcalls and after several numbers we had to boot him when his partner couldn’t take it any more.  But he did keep us from having many constructive 1C auctions.  We just had to settle for from 5-12 imps instead.  Here is one hand where we got to the top spot after opening 1C. 

Colin

SQ HAKQ62 DQ82 CKQ106

Linda

SAKJ97 HJ7 D 7 C A7532. 

Colin    Linda

1C       1S

2H       3C

4C       4NT

5S       6C

Its true it is pretty easy to get there in any system but it still was cool.  Perhaps the greatest strength for us 1C novices is not the opening 1C bid but the freedom to be aggressive on hands where we have opened 1 of a suit