Never Say Never
I wasn’t expecting to play in the Canadian Team Trials this year. With Isabelle unable to play for work reasons I had considered other options but just decided that there was a lot of other good things to do instead. Ray and I plan to go to Brazil in any case. I am going to be chief blogger (unofficial). However, it turns out that I will be going to the trials in Penticton anyway. I will be playing with Sylvia Summers Cayley. We have only had a few game together on BBO so like the current saying goes:”we have hope”; hope that we will be able to play well together. In our case there are some good reasons for this hope at least from my point of view. Sylvia is a fine player. I will post some examples in a later blog.
I am also playing a bit with Colin as we get ready for some play at the Toronto Regional. It is always a wild experience playing with him. Here is one deal that we played Saturday. I raise this partly because it illustrated the point that people will bid anything, any time. You are East red on white and you have:
| ♠ AQ975 |
| ♥ Q964 |
| ◊ A83 |
| ♣ 9 |
South (me) opens 1◊ (playing 10-12 notrump in this position) and North (Colin) bids 1NT. What do you do? Well I can see why you might want to bid and double is a bit of trouble with a singleton club. But do you really bid 2♠? If partner can’t balance can you really be missing much? Does the 10-12 notrump figure in? I think it makes it somewhat more unattractive to balance since if I am balanced I have at least 13 HCP and I could have a strong notrump.
Our opponent did overcall 2♠ and the other trouble with this bid showed up. My double here is for penalty. Some bids are hard to penalize but in this auction knowing my partner is likely pretty balanced this one is not. I had
| ♠ K862 |
| ♥ AJ8 |
| ◊ KQ106 |
| ♣ A5 |
so my double was really easy. This went 4 down for a yummy 1100. Since Colin had 7 HCP most players played 1NT our way. (We were headed for 2NT).
Okay, this isn’t a great lesson. Don’t make bad overcalls when you are at unfavorable after both opponents have bid. But I have noticed that more and more people just ignore the auction and bid. Is this a trend? Is it Colin who attracts the action? Or have I just not been paying attention.
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Bridge-related
Double seems a normal call, especially as 1NT essentially shows clubs or the minors.
I suppose that 1NT suggests clubs or minors but it could also be a flat hand with four diamonds. Even if Colin has 4 clubs I am not sure that double should show majors. But I can see an argument for it. Still I would play double as a three suit takeout with an unknown partner. I don’t always have clubs for the double but I like to have a tolerance for clubs so if partner is 2-3-3-5 or something like that they don’t have to bid a three card major.