Online from Sarasota

Ray and I have been pretty busy getting our new condo to the point where we could live here.  We still lack furniture.  The “great room” is notable for its great emptiness.

Meanwhile I have still been practising with Francine.  At the beginning I was so tired after a long car ride, the closing, and emergency bed buying that it is a wonder she was willing to play with me at all.  Recently we played a couple of team games with our teammates Sylvia and Rhoda.

Oddly in both games the opposition seemed to have a knack for bidding and making slams that were well lets call it what it was … horrible.  They also managed to avoid a fairly good slam that was on finding the trump king missing three.  It was doubleton offside.  This can be pretty depressing but there were some brighter spots amd interesting hands which would could learn from.

So here is one of the hands

 from the set that I messed up.   North opens 1♥   in front of you.  You are vulnerable against not.  What do you like here?  I considered double and 1S.  In retrospect I think 1S is clearly better.  I thought we might still have something in the minors but I may be able to get them in play later anyway.  Francine had ♠ Q97 and it becomes very hard to get to the spade game thereafter.  At the other table North passed and my hand opened 1♠  so there was no issue.  I suppose this is similar to hands where you are 5-4 in the majors and you overcall the long major rather than doubling. 

In an earlier match our opponents made a much worse bid than me though.  Francine opened 1♦  in third chair and South a passed hand held:

Overcalling 1NT was not a good idea.  The problem with a bid like this is you may have trouble finding a spot to play the hand and it is easy for the opponents to double.  This went for 800.  Being aggressive works some of the time but you have to pick your spots.  This bid wasn’t really aggressive it was suicidal.

We are headed home Sunday afternoon and should be back late Tuesday.  It will be good to be “back home again”.