Preparing For Kingston

It may not be that momentous an event but I feel like Isabelle and I are in a countdown to the Kingston sectional.  I am feeling excited and a bit nervous too.  Why?  This is the very first time we are going to be playing together face to face. 

Tonight we practice bidding for a while.  We bid some random hands and then we bid slam hands and tonight we were awesome.   Here are a few auctions I liked

 

	S KJ84
	H Q1097
	D K93
	C A8
	S A105
	H AKJ32
	D 7
	C K763

 

Me	Isabelle
1H	3C*
3D*	3NT*
4C	4D
6H

 

Isabelle’s 3C showed a balanced raise with about 12-15 dummy points.  3D asked for controls and 3NT showed 4, here either 2 aces or one ace and 2 kings.  4C was a cue bid and when Isabelle cooperated with a 4D cuebid I could bid 6H.

It got better. 

Follow this auction with me.  I held S87 HJ1073 DAKQ10943 C void.  I opened 1D and Isabelle bid 1H.  What now?  I chose 4D showing a good hand with 6D and 4H.  Isabelle bid 4NT and I bid 6C showing an ace and a useful void and we were soon in 7H.  Here is her hand

S AK4 HAKQ85 D8 CKQ75

Strong hands can be hard to bid.  We weren’t perfect but we didn’t miss much.

Meanwhile Isabelle had a good set at her local club including a very well played 3NT she shared with me.  I on the other completely blew 6H in a practice session when I found a complicated way to play the hand when the straightforward (and probably higher percentage way) would have worked.

We have spent some time talking about what Lebensohl means over a double of a weak 2 bid.  I never thought much about it before.  I just assumed that bidding at the 3 level showed some values and bidding 2NT first showed a weak hand.  But Isabelle pointed out to me that it had a lot more value than that.  We have now agreed on many sequences.  One thing that came up was that we didn’t want to bid notrump first if we were likely to wind up in 3NT and we didn’t have a stopper.  This meant that a sequence like 2H(opponents) DBL 3NT could not be I like notrump but I don’t have a stopper.  So (2H)-DBL-3H asks for a stopper and going through Lebensohl and then cuebid asks distribution and suggests an unbalanced hand.  I could tell you more about what we came up with but it would be too boring.  If anyone is interested just email for the details. 

Another area that has had much discussion is when is a new suit over a preempt a choice of suits, to play.lead directing or a choice of contract.  This started out when we had this auction against Captain Paul VUL vs not

Opp We Opp We

1D   3H  5D   5S

At this vulnerability 3H showed quite a good suit.  Nevertheless 5 was natural.  But what about this auction?

Opp We Opp We

1D   3S  4D   4H?

What does that mean?  What is the rule here?