Playing With My Favorite Son

Last night I was playing again with Colin (he is my only son in case you are wondering) against Isabelle and Sondra and with them.

Colin with his favorite son, Marcus (picture from his facebook page)

Any time I play with Colin interesting things happen (ditto against Isabelle and Sondra).  Last night was no exception.  I am going to start with two lovely hands one that features Colin and one that features, moi.

Here is Colin’s hand.  I am going to tell it from his point of view first but I will mention some actions by the opponents later.  Colin held:

Q98632
4
AK653
5

Colin opened this 2 (white on red).  This shows about 4-9 (he is on the heavy side) with 5-5 in spades and a minor (or occasionally 6-5).  He might have opened it 1 too but I like 2 which is so descriptive.  Anyway, Isabelle bid 4 which shows clubs and a higher suit and I bid 4.  Sondra doubled ending the aution.  But for Colin this hand is about the play.  I did have a quick look at the hand and then I excused myself for a short break and I came back to see that Colin had taken the winning line.  Isabelle led the A and this was what Colin saw (hand rotated to make Colin South(

 

	Linda A75 107 Q92 Q1084
	Colin Q98632 4 AK653 5

Isabelle started with the A and continued with the Q which Colin ruffed.  So Colin knew that Isabelle was at least 5-5 in the round suits.  Sondra had to have tat least three spades with the top ones, one would think.  If Isabelle is 1-5-5-2 then the hand is easy since diamonds are splitting and Colin merely has to play spades for one loser.  So the question is how to play the hand for a worse distribution.  The two that come to mind are 1-5/6-1 and 0-5/6-2 or 0-5-5-3.

In the first case Colin has to make a diamond ruff in dummy and lead a trump towards the closed hand.  He can’t play the A and another because Sondra will win and play a third spade.  The elegant solution is to play a diamond to the Q and then a spade from dummy.  Sondra can win or duck .  Colin wins the Q and A and then can ruff a diamond if needed.  Rising on the K is no help for the defense.  That is how Colin played it and that was the winning line.  (Another alternative cashing he A and then playing on diamonds before eventually leading a trump towards his hand will work as well.)

There is no point in worrying about a 4-0 spade break, you can’t make the hand if they do.  Here is the whole hand.

	Linda A75 107 Q92 Q1084
Isabelle 10 AKQ932 8 AKJ96		Sondra KJ3 J85 J1074 732
	Colin Q98632 4 AK653

Now to my hand and this is about bidding.  See what you think: I held

Linda
AJ543
AK
AK8
A108

I counted it twice to get to 23 HCP (I really counted it about 4 times).  I opened a strong club an over Colin’s negative 1, I bid 2NT.  Colin transferred to hearts with 3 and then bid 4NT.  Now what could that mean?  Colin had at most seven high card points, I had 23.  He could not have a six card heart suit for this auction (for various reasons).  What do you think my favorite son has?  I deduced that he had a good five card suit like QJ10xx and some other points adding to seven.  He was looking for a fit slam.  Well although I only had two hearts they were going to help bring home five tricks and I had all those other aces and kinds.  He was quite likely to have a black king (the spade king would have been best).  The problem is that it may be hard to get to Colin’s hand enough in notrump and besides maybe I could set up spades with a ruff.  So I decided to play the 5-2.  Did I read too much into Colin’s bidding….  You know I didn’t or well it wouldn’t be “my hand”.  Here is his hand just as I imagined it (but without the right black king).

Colin 987 QJ765 92 KJ6

Well I was right to be in hearts.  In hearts I can get to Colin’s hand twice to play spade.  In notrump I am going to need the club finesse to create an entry (it is probably unneeded otherwise).  In hearts you can draw trump (crossing on the club) and then take two spade plays (ruffing the diamond to get there the second time.  It also means that you may be able to handle some 4-1 spade situations (when hearts are 3-3). 

So Colin had a hand that gave me a reasonable chance of making slam but this wasn’t as good as 50-50 and pehaps I shouldn’t have bid the slam.  There really was no way to find out his spade holding which was the key (assuming I was right about hearts).  Still this is not a terrible slam.  After hearts broke evenly I could pick up a lot of spade positions.  Of course I planned to play for K10x(x) or Q10x(x) pr KQ10(x)_ onside but I did have the quite reasonable possibility that righty would split from the KQx or KQxx and that is in fact what happened.

So I give myself full marks for figuring out what Colin had and half marks for getting to the slam. 

I am not done with interesting events from last night… more later.