A little bidding problem
With everyone white you are playing a team game. You are coming into the last board of a friendly match up by 7 IMPS. You want to win this one because the opponents have been making a lot of aggressive bids.
This is your hand:
| ♠ AQ874 |
| ♥ Q |
| ◊ A96 |
| ♣ K1053 |
You open 1♠ and the aggressive Swede on your left overcalls 2♥. Sylvia Caley, your partner bids 2♠. Do you make a game try or not? I passed. You may disagree, more about that in a moment.
But the aggressive Swede on my left was not done and he bid 3◊ which is passed around to you. Do you do anything now?
I think these are the choices.
a) bid 3♥. Now that you have limited your hand you might as well make a game try. Maybe partner is sand bagging a little bit
b) pass. If you only see this as a partscore hand pass probably isn’t too bad. It doesn’t sound like there are that many total tricks on this hand. In the worse case if you lose the partscore swing it will only be about 5 or 6 imps and you will still win the match
c) bid 3♠. They can’t steal from you.
d) double. I am not entirely sure what that means but it should show good defensive values. It sounds like partner might just have some hearts so maybe they won’t go down. On the downside if they do make it, you will lose the match. None of the other options put that so clearly on the line.
Am I a woman or a mouse (squeak squeak)? Anyway, I passed and as it turned out we can make game. At the other table my hand just bid 4♠ over 2♠. My ♥Q was a huge card. The opponents went four down for 200 and we still won the match by 1 imp even though our opponents had bid game. +220 was only 6 imps (just as if we had lost the part-score swing). What bid would work out best? Double. Sylvia would pass and you have a juicy +800 and they won’t feel so comfortable to bid like this if you should ever meet them again.
| Aggressive Bidding Swede | ||
| ♠ KJ | ||
| ♥ K9764 | ||
| ◊ QJ73 | ||
| Linda | ♣ A8 | Sylvia |
| ♠ AQ874 | ♠ 1063 | |
| ♥ Q | ♥ AJ102 | |
| ◊ A96 | ◊ K8 | |
| ♣ K1053 | ♣ J762 | |
| ♠ 952 | ||
| ♥ 854 | ||
| ◊ 10542 | ||
| ♣ Q94 |
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Bridge-related
What would you bid with xxx/xxxx/xxx/xxx white vs red when the auction starts 1S – pass – ?
Well, when partners 1S shows 11-14 and 5+ spades, you know the opp’s have 26-30 hcp. Who would now pass??
The match was certainly friendly and our bidding was aggressive, as always. The rest of description I’m totally oblivious to. We were high-fiving??? I see nothing of this sort in the chat-transcript. Maybe I don’t understand the term then.
We were psyching and that didn’t work, you write. In the auction above, I bid 1NT and maybe this is what you would call a ‘psyche’. No game was on despite the 26 hcp and you won 6 imps.
You played well on the deals refered to in earlier post and I’d be happy to play against you again. But it takes away some of the enjoyment when I read the rest…
I didn’t really mean anything bad by my comments. Its just that sometimes these things make me want to win more.
I enjoyed playing against you too. I just wanted to win. . I am going to change the blog a bit to make it clearer.
Thanks for the game.
I received some “email” from my Swedish opponent who did point out that 4S was a tough make and requires some good guessing. At the other table our partners made it much easier by making the tricky play of winning the SK when declarer took a deep finesse. In any case it is an aggressive contract and not getting that high is very reasonable. So perhaps my bidding wasn’t that cowardly. Still in retrospect I think I should reopen with double.
I also want to point out that I started off by saying it was a friendly game and I mean it. I had a good time and aggressive but talented opponents can play against me any time. It does sometimes bring out my competitive spirit but that’s what good bridge is all about.