Boot to the head
Every so often partners make a bid that makes you sit up and think, “What!!!” Some times with a few expletives in your head as well. Here was one from yesterday. I was playing with Sylvia and I held
| S 43 |
| H AJ103 |
| D A108742 |
| C Q |
I was red on white in second chair. Perhaps you would have passed. Well influenced by my 10’s I opened 1D. Partner bid 2C game forcing and righty doubled. Perhaps you would have passed. I bid 2D. And now came the boot to the head. Sylvia bid 5H.
We don’t play Exclusion Blackwood ever. I have played it with some partners but I have never felt that Sylvia and I spend enough time working on system to deal with the complexities this introduces. So I have refused. Having eliminated that, what could it be. 3H would be heart shortness with a diamond fit in this auction since we were already in a game force. Was this really “I have this huge club-heart two suiter”? Whatever did righty have for his takeout double then. I suppose he could still have four hearts and maybe five spades?
Maybe this was a kind of Exclusion Blackwood for those who don’t play Exclusion Blackwood. “I have a heart void and I really wanted to make a slam try or even bid Exclusion Blackwood but I didn’t have that bid available.”? But she was willing to play in 6D no matter what.
Was she only looking for the DA? We do play step responses to 5NT. Here 6C would show the DA and 6D deny the two of the top three honors and specifically the DA. Maybe she forgot that?
Could this shows diamonds with me, maybe only 3, a heart void, a big club suit and the SA? Say:
S Axx H – D KQx C AKJxxx
So she needed the DA and a dub card for the grand but was willing to play the small slam no matter what?
What do you think it was?
I decided for better or worse that if she was asking me to pick a slam I was picking hearts and if she was asking me to pick between 6D and 7D I was picking 7. So I bid 6H. the next bid I heard was 7D. Here is what she actually held
| S AK9 |
| H – |
| D KQJ5 |
| C A108752 |
7D was a fine spot and easily made by setting up clubs. So she was looking for some help in clubs and the DA I suppose.
I told her after that I didn’t mind if she wanted to challenge me with bids like this. For I have learned at the school of Colin Lee.
Subscribe to our feed
Bridge-related
Hi Linda,
Enjoyed your blog about trying to interpret your partner’s triple jump in another suit.
From strictly a bridge viewpoint, perhaps Sylvia could credit you with the Ace of Diamonds, leaving only a possible partnership club loser to prevent the grand slam in diamonds. Breaking it down (which is my principle reason for writing) it might suggest for Sylvia to embark on a rather slow auction allowing you to bid out your pattern. Any singleton club (or of course the King, not to mention you holding short spades especially including the queen, allowing you to make the key discard of a possible club loser). Your free two diamond bid over the opponent’s TO dbl intervention tends to show some distributional feature which well could be, in addition to long diamonds (especially missing the KQJ) what it turned out to be, a singleton club.
Summing up, and first, at least from my perch, bridge is and always has been, more of an art form than one of science, thus as soon as you rebid 2 diamonds it could have suggested to Sylvia at that moment that the grand slam was there. Curiously without the intervention by the unsuspecting opponent, the hand is much harder to judge since your 2 diamond rebid could have many distributions which will not pinpoint what your partner needs to know.
In some of the older bridge books, like Design for Bidding by SJ Simon, which was written at least 60 years ago the accent was in showing distributions and a little while later the Roman Club, the Italian system which began by concentrating on distributions from the first bid, became probably the most popular bidding system in the world, together with the British Acol.
The more bridge changes, with all the new complicated conventions, the more it stays the same with what any partnership usually requires, to be proficient game and slam bidders. Perhaps some industrious and qualified bridge writer could trace the development of intelligent bidding through the years to see where we are now. My only suggestion would be that in order for it to be effective and to penetrate what is important, is that both the writer and the reader must realize that bridge is unique and chance, not aces and cinches, will always enter in, since there is usually not enough language present in most auctions in order to insure anything.
I’ll also caution all of us bridge lovers to continue to realize that bridge itself, not the players, no matter how brilliant, is in control and will refuse to respond positively to anyone who mistakenly thinks that the game can be completely conquered by mere mortals.
Mr. Wolff beat me to it.
Thanks Bobby for that wonderful comment. The game is always fascinating whether it is a complex playing hand or a grand slam to bid. I guess I have to agree with Sabine “I Love This Game”.