The Downside of Getting Active In The Auction

Commenting on the Turkish Team Championship this interesting hand came up.  First take the North hand:

AJ3
A976 
AJ42 
43

Suppose you play 1NT is 15-17 but you upgrade to open 1NT.  Partner transfer to spades and then bids 2NT.  What would you do?  I assume you would bid 3 and you would play it there.  Partner has 

South

Q10852
KJ10 
85 
Q75

Or suppose as in the Closed Room you opened 1.  Responder would bid 1 and depending on your style you would rebid 1NT or 2.  Either way you are going to play in partscore.  Let’s look at what happened in the Open Room

The auction started off with 1NT and East vulnerable against not held

East

94 
Q85 
97 
KJ10982

East was going to be on lead against no trump so no lead directing bid was required.  But in any case East doubled to show a one suiter.  South redoubled and West dutifully bid 2.  Now East the spade hand could have smacked this.  It was going at least one down and more if as seemed possible West misguessed clubs.  But instead East bid 3 an invitational hand with spades.  Now with nothing wasted in clubs despite the minimum North went to the spade game.  Let’s look at what happened then.

	North AJ3 A976  AJ42  43
West K76 432  KQ1063  A6		East 94  Q85  97  KJ10982
	South Q10852 KJ10  85  Q75

Not unreasonably the opening lead was the A.  West switched to a high diamond won by the ace.  With the K onside declarer only had to locate the Q.  East had to have it on the bidding since he had no other high cards.  So the game was made for a 7 imp swing.  There are more downsides to getting too active than just going for a number.