Some fireworks

I decided to have a quick check of a match played last night by my frequent and talented opponents Sondra and Isabelle.  They were playing with Francine and Pamela against Paul Thurston and Jeff Smith.  I am not sure who the other pair was. 

I never really got much past the first hand but it was a bonfire.  It was hot and exciting.  Perhaps the victors did not fully deserve the result they got.  You can decide.

At one table the opening bid by North was 3NT with nobody vulnerable.  You hold:

East

A643
AK1063
AK109
void

What do you do?  Let’s assume you double.  You may have a defense against gambling 3NT but double is probably the bid you would make in most of them.

South bids 5 which is presumably pass or correct and this is passed back to you.  What now?  I suppose the first question is what does double mean.  Is it just a good hand or does it strongly suggest takeout?  Assuming the South had support for both minors and North had a seven or eight card suit you are not likely to have a balanced big hand but I suppose it is possible.  I think double here is a reasonable choice, the other one being 6.  If as seems likely partner has a fit for one of your majors and just her share of high cards then you probably have some sort of play for slam.  But things are splitting badly and it may be best to take your plus.  Overall, double seems right to me.

Now it is up to partner who has

West

KJ95
Q952
J52
43

I can come up with a case for bidding.  Partner has to have a big hand and has zero or one clubs with support for the majors.  But is it really clear that on a hand with bad splits that you want to be at the five level?  Pass seems reasonable enough.  I call this a 50-50 choice.

Now let’s look at what happened at the other table where things timed out a little differently.  North held

North

102
87
3
AKQJ9652

Whether by choice or by system she opened 5.  I think that this is quite a reasonable bid although there is an argument for 4.  Now over 5 East might have bid double.  But here this bid is so much less likely to be taken out.  Here it really just says I have some cards.  So East decided that the potential for slam was too great and it was worth the risk of just asking partner to bid a suit.  East bid 6.  However West got a bit carried away.  I think that you need to give partner a little leeway here.  West made a bid that I would not have even considered, chicken that I am, he (or she?) bid 7.

As it turned out some how spades were 3-2 with the queen onside and there was not heart ruff (declarer chanced a stiff heart in the South hand to have a chance to pick up a 4-0 split with South holding 4 (which was likely less probable).

As I have often found assuming that east-west was allowed to play there bidding the small slam would have won most of the imps (one of the bid arguments against bidding the grand).

Here is the whole hand

	North 102 87 3 AKQJ9652
West KJ95 Q952 J52 43		East A643 AK1063 AK109 void
	South Q87 J4 Q8764 1087

The ladies did in the end have a fine set and there was lots more action too.  How else could it be after this start!

I decided to assign my pick of best, worst bid.   I am willing to take the BBE (I just found this in an acronym dictionary it means the Biggest Beating Ever and may be used to describe some of my bridge match results).

I think the worst bid was 7 at table 2.  I don’t want anybody yelling Bob Hamman at me… yes I know it makes.  I think the decision to bid 6 over 5 was a good one and at the other table I liked the choice of bidding 5 over 3NT which won the auction.  At table one I am not going to pick one or the other but I think East-West at the might have found their way to something better than 5 doubled.