Sometimes You Live Right And Sometimes You Don’t

February 29th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Practicing on BBO a couple of days ago against Jeff Smith and Captain Paul I had two interesting lesson hands.  Here’s the first

All vulnerable

Jeff and Paul had never played together but had agreed on third and fifth and upside down count and attitude.  They had no discussion about leads against notrump.  Jeff led the H2 and when I played the HQ it held, with Paul playing the H4.  It looked to me like Jeff had led fourth highest and Paul was giving either count or more likely positive feelings about hearts.  This suggested the suit was 4-4.  How do you play the hand?

We won 11 imps on this board since only one other pair made it (when one of the defenders suicided).  Several had got a heart lead.  So I thought I had played it fairly well.  While my thinking about the hand wasn’t bad,  I didn’t get all the way there and in retrospect it seems so simple. 

Clearly the right line is to return a heart.  I considered it at the time but got myself confused about what to pitch from dummy if Jeff did had five hearts.  If Jeff cashes three hearts (as he will on the hand) then you throw 2 clubs from dummy and one from your hand.  You will then be able to make the play I did, cash the spade ace and lead towards the spade jack.  If spades are bad you can still try diamonds and there are squeeze chances too.

If hearts were 5-3 all along then on the last heart you throw a spade from dummy since you can’t duck one anyway and a club from hand.  Now you can make it if the spade queen is doubleton, the diamonds break or if Paul has both the spades and diamonds (just make sure to cash the top clubs early).  So I won eleven imps on this board by being lucky.

The next interesting board is a bidding hand.  I have noticed that both David and Jeff double a lot of games when they know things aren’t breaking and Rick Delogou got me last week when he doubled with a void in trump (reminding me that when good and silent opponents double they are often the one short in trump).  Here is a hand with that theme.  Jeff held S K763 H K10953 D Q1042 C void.  This was the auction.

Jeff and Paul vulnerable

3C was invitational with a good six card club suit.  Do you double on Jeff’s hand?  I think this is a nice aggressive bid.  Hearts aren’t working; your other cards appear to be well placed and partner may well have a club stack.  If you do it goes all pass and you can now pick a lead.  As it turns out the best lead (which Jeff found) was a diamond and Jeff eventually choked up plus 300 worth 4.9 imps.  Here is the whole hand

Some Nice Bidding

February 22nd, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

I have been having a lot of problems with the last hand of the set on BBO.  Maybe its just that I think oh good I can have a snack now and can’t wait for the hand to be over.  I don’t know.  But rather than dwell on that I was thinking about how well Isabelle has been bidding.  Here is a lovely example from yesterday night.  She held (red on white)

S 5 H KQ10532 D J76 C A95

What do you bid?

I opened 1D and David overcalled 1S.  Isabelle bid 2H and Jeff preempted 3S.  I bid 4D and Isabelle loved her hand.  I have extra values and a really good diamond suits.  She has a fit with a source of tricks and every suit controlled.  She bid 4NT.  I bid 5C which showed 4 controls.  David doubled presumably showing clubs and Isabelle continued 5H asking about the diamond Queen.  I bid 5NT showing the queen and no king to bid.  Isabelle could see that we had plenty of tricks and she bid 7D.   My hand was

S A942 H A4 D AKQ954 C 7

and we had no trouble making this fine grand slam.

Although the next hand did not have a happy ending I thought we did well to get to this good slam.  Isabelle held S AK10976542 H K72 D 8 C void

All Vulnerable

Isabelle opened 4D Namyats showing 8-9 tricks.  I bid 4S which was a mild slam try.  How do you proceed? 

Isabelle cuedbid 5C and I bue bid 5H.  This was great for her and she bid 6S.  My hand was

S J83 H AJ84 D 1096 C KQ9

Nothing worked on the hand and we didn’t make it unfortunately.

Good job Isabelle.

Finding a Jack

February 19th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

Some hands are just more interesting than others.  Isabelle and I were playing on BBO with David Sabourin and Ucan when this hand came up.  You pick up S Q6 H AQ52 D Q86 C AQ104 and partner opens the bidding with 1S.   I seem to remember that someone once said that any auction that takes 7 rounds of bidding is bound to end badly.  This one was no exception.

I am going to describe my thought process in the whole mistaken auction looking for some advice. 

I bid 2C over 1S which is usually a game force.  Although I really wanted to have 5 clubs for this bid I am not sure that there is a better one.  Isabelle bid 2D which generally shows an unbalanced hand.  What do you like now?  I suppose I could bid 2H but it looked like I wanted the lead coming up to my hand and I bid 2NT which was game forcing.  Isabelle bid 3C which showed only three clubs because she didn’t raise directly and I bid 3NT which was I think a bit of an underbid.  Isabelle persisted with 4C.  What does that mean?  Can she really have four clubs and decided to bid diamonds first to show the heart void?  It just didn’t seem like her to make the auction that complex.  In any case I think I need to show some slam interest here so I bid 4H.  Isabelle now bid 4NT RKC and than powered on to 7C.  In retrospect I think that I should have bid 7S now.  My Qx of spades look great and she knows that I don’t have anything better than that.  If she wants to she can still bid 7NT.  Anyway I didn’t and this was the dummy after David made the rather curious lead of the S7,

S AKJ105 

H 10   

D AKJ2 

C K75

S Q6 

H AQ52 

D Q86   

C AQ104

Ucan plays the S5 and I win the SQ in hand. 

Rats I can see that there are 13 top tricks in notrump and here I am in a 4-3 club fit having to find the CJ.  I am going to have to play the club suit early.  I start with the A and K of clubs and another arriving at the moment of truth.  This is what I see.  At the first club trick David plays the C6 and Ucan the C2, then  David plays the C9 and Ucan the C3.  At Trick 4 Ucan plays the C8 and I have to make a decision.  Stop here.  What do you decide and why?  Before giving you my decision let me tell you that I am working on an as yet untitled book by Julian Laderman on declarer play.  You may remember Julian previously wrote an award winning book on simple squeezes called A Bridge To Simple Squeezes.  You can check it out at www.masterpointpress.com or Amazon or your favourite retailer. (Also, see a sample of that book here.) It would have been helpful to have read the new book before this hand came up because believe it or not he describes this exact situation.  Here is what Julian (who is a mathematician) says 

Let’s consider how to play this suit.  There is a choice whether to play for the jack to drop or whether to finesse the jack.  The decision will probably disappear if declarer procrastinates.  Declarer should obviously play (in my case) the CA and CK first.  If both defenders follow it is clear that our original table for six missing cards are modified.  …. arriving at the point of playing for the drop or  finessing, there are only two possibilities either (Ucan) started with JXXX or (David) started with JXX.  Prior to playing any cards in the suit the chance of the first holding was .16 and the second holding was .18 … The mathematician in my head would say that since both possibilities increase their likelihood proportionately the chance of the second holding is slightly more likely than the first, go with the second.  This is called the percentage play.  However the bridge player in my head is shouting’ ignore the mathematician, he is an idiot." The bridge player is right… 

What Julian is saying is that you have to use all the information you have to make the decision when the percentages are quite close.  Most of the time you would try to get as much of a count on the rest of the hand as you could but here that was impossible.  Okay so what information do I have?  What is this double of 4H?  David is expecting to be on lead why would he double?  Does he have the offside HK?  Even if he had that I don’t think he would double without heart length.  Perhaps he is even suggesting a save.   Even if his sole purpose is to confuse us I think David has at least five hearts for this double.  With more hearts he is more likely to be short in clubs.  Why didn’t David lead a trump?  Would he be more likely not to lead a trump with 9X or with J9X when he knows we have the AKQ.   This wasn’t clear to me but with J9X it did seem a little safer to lead trumps. 

Based primarily on the double of 4H I decided to finesse.  Here is the whole hand

Well if you bid em badly you better guess em well.

A Fun Sunday Afternoon

February 10th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Isabelle and I have changed our start time on Sundays to about 2PM. We were lucky enough to have David and Jeff as opponents today and David was even on time. If you think that playing against them isn’t fun look what happened on the very first hand. Isabelle opens the bidding with 1C and David overcalls 2S with none vulnerable. Your hand is surprisingly strong 22HCP:

S K7 H QJ D AKQJ52 C AJ2

You bid 3D expecting a pass on your left. But the bidding in this strange deal continues 3H by Jeff and 4D by Isabelle. David passes and you can’t believe that Isabelle doesn’t have a heart card so you Blackwood and arrive in 6D which is of course cold. Isabelle has her bids sort of:

S Q H A108 D1087 CKQ10987

I leave you to guess at the two opposing hands and no Jeff did not have his bid.

The whole table has been working on me to improve my two level overcalls (which are rather notorious) especially vulnerable. I was in fourth chair when David opened 1S and I held S K108 H A D AKJ82 C Q1095. I thought this one was good enough even though I didn’t have the "usual" sixth diamond. We ended up in 3D which was a fine spot.  Will see how all this discipline works out over time.

Board 10 was a really neat play hand.

* either diamonds or hearts and a minor

I led the C3 and Isabelle won the CA and returned the C5. Do you think you have reached the critical moment on the hand? You have. You have to win the club in hand with an honour, leaving your C10 as a late entry. David made the tiny error of ducking the club to dummy’s C10.

Lets say you win the club in hand and you run the SQ (ducked). You can then run the DJ (say it is won be the defence). Now you still have two entries to dummy and the defence can’t prevent you from setting up more spades tricks or ruffing a heart. It doesn’t matter whether you play diamonds or spades first you can’t make it without winning the first club in hand. Try it. I do say that Isabelle did defend rather splendidly when she ducked the DJ when David finessed it.

Board 13 was one of those high level decisions we all look forward to. You are all vulnerable and your hand is S AQJ832 H2 D Q104 C A72

Do you bid 5S, pass or double? 2H shows 11-14 with six hearts.

If you bid 5S you are a winner. Partner has S K1074 H 1075 D 6 C QJ1083. Maybe I should have let the sixth spade push me over but isn’t this just the kind of hand I am supposed to have to make a vulnerable two level overcall? What do you think? 5S is down 1 and 5H makes.

Can you think of something better to do on Sunday afternoon?

Playing against Fred and Larry – Are they really that good?

February 7th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

The last few times that we have played against Fred Lerner and Larry Lande they have outscored us by a fair bit. On Tuesday night Isabelle swore revenge but it was not to be. So I thought about why they have been winning. Was it luck? It did seem that the hands had mostly been their way and you generally have more control of your fate when you are on the declaring side. Sometimes the BBO scores seemed very strange to add to the luck factor and then there was that great slam that we got to that went down on a bad trump break a while back.

The very first hand illustrated the point about getting the cards but perhaps something else as well. Fred held S A53 H Q62 D KJ63 C AJ10. He heard Larry open 1H and bid 2D. Larry splintered with 4C and Fred showed his heart support with 4H suggesting this strain. Larry bid 5D. Do you bid or pass? With a hand rich in controls and a partner who obviously held great diamonds Fred bid 6D and when Larry put down S J2 H AKJ108 D A10842 C 3 there wasn’t much to the play. Well bid by Larry and Fred and here we were again down 6.6 imps before we started.

Board 3 brought another big swing against us. Perhaps our active system helped them. See what you think.

Larry held S K6432 H Q D AKQ853 C 5

I opened a 10-12 notrump, Fred passed and Isabelle bid 2H to play. Larry made a quiet 3D bid. I competed with 3H and Fred raised to 4D. Your bid now? Larry bid 4S and Fred corrected to 5D. Fred put down

S AJ5 H 2 D J1062 C Q10873

4S would have been easier but 5D made when the spade finesse worked. When I looked at other auctions (and of course my hand passed) people with Larry’s hand seemed never to bid spades. Suppose Isabelle had opened 2H and with Larry’s hand you chose to overcall 3D. My hand often bid 3H (I would bid 4H) and Fred’s hand bid 4D. This really puts the auction in a similar place. The key bid here is Larry’s decision to go on over 4D with 4S.

In our system we would have bid 4D over 2H showing at least 5-5 in spades and diamonds.

At this point we were down 15 imps and nothing much had happened.

Now least you think that we never get good results playing weak notrump Board 5 did bring us a tiny bit of revenge. I held S J10874 H A62 D AK3 C 96. In first chair vulnerable I opened a 12-14 notrump. Isabelle bid 2H and it went pass, pass to Fred who balanced double. Isabelle redoubled which in this sequence suggested a good pass. Larry took out to his 5 card diamond suit and I doubled this for 2 down and 300 points.

The whole hand was

South Dealer

Board 21 is very interesting. I did make a defensive error but there were some opportunities in each direction as the game swung in the balance.

Larry held the East hand, not vulnerable against vulnerable. He opened 1NT in second chair and Fred raised to 3NT. I lead an attitude H3. Larry won in hand and played a club to the CJ and CA. Isabelle returned the H6 Larry played the HQ and I ducked it. I know Isabelle can’t have a third heart because the missing heart is the 7 and with 76 remaining she would have returned the 7 and I shouldn’t duck the heart. Watch what happened after I ducked the heart.  Larry played a diamond to the jack and Isabelle’s queen. Isabelle made a small mistake of leading back the SQ. Isabelle needs to return a club while she still has entries. I can’t hold a spade honour if Larry is to have a his bid. (I have to have the heart ace; I lead an attitude H3 and played a positive Smith echo showing I liked the lead.) Now it was Larry’s turn to make a mistake. If Larry ducks the spade return the hand is cold. If neither spades nor diamond split he has a squeeze on whichever hand holds the long spades. Larry played two rounds of diamonds to arrive at this position

Now Larry ducked Isabelle’s SJ. At this point the spotlight is on Isabelle but this is quite a hard play to make She has to not cash the D9. Perhaps if she is deep into the hand she can work it out. She actually can deduce from the play of the hand to this point pretty well every card. In any case she cashed her D9 and now the squeeze was operative again.

When Larry cashed the top clubs I was squeezed in the majors.

I admit that the only one who did anything egregious was me. But I still find the hand very interesting.

So what is my conclusion about our losses to Larry and Fred. I think to some extent we have had the worst of the luck and more of the opportunities have been their way but the bigger problem is that they simply haven’t made very many mistakes at all. So I can quote a sports figure who when asked why he lost a game said “ We were very unlucky; they played better than we did."

You Vote … Should I Join Overbidder’s Anonymous

February 3rd, 2008  ~  linda  ~  3 Comments 

Playing on Superbowl Sunday, the kid had disappeared into some placed known only to those under 25 and Isabelle and I were scrambling for a partner for Jeff so that we could practice in front of Mark The Coach. I was determined to have a good showing tonight. But the only words I heard from the coach were ‘overbid” and later Jeff would say that I ought to join overbidder’s anonymous.

So I present exhibit A for the defense and you judge. Oh and please keep in mind that Isabelle and I believe in bidding any game that has a reasonable chance especially vulnerable.

Board 1 I held S 6 H AK976 D J4 C QJ1085

Partner opened 1S and I bid 1NT. Partner bid 2S which shows 6 spades and can be a decent hand. Do you bid again?

No – I didn’t and unlike the rest of the field we were a contract with changes. Does that sound like and overbidder?

How about Board 3. You try it?

Your hand is S AQ643 H A D J74 C A863

You open 1S and partner bids 2D which is usually game forcing. If you bid 3D you must be prepared if partner passes with a good six card diamond suit and an invitational hand so I bid 3C since I want to be in game. Partner now bid 3S showing a true game force with three spades and four or more diamonds. Is your hand a real minimum or should you cooperate with partner who is unlimited by cue bidding?

Of course you bid 4C and over 4D do you take over and bid the slam.

No, I bid a quiet 4H letting partner go forward with extras. You soon find yourself in 6S which makes. Partner has S J975 H KJ76 D AQ52 C J, not bad and worth a lot of imps.

Board 4 I give you another exhibit, members of the jury. You have S5 H AK102 D Q10864 C Q98. All vulnerable Bob McPhee opens 1H and lovely Isabelle overcalls 1S. Jeff Smith competes with 2H do you bid?

Well, I didn’t. My points seem to be misplaces and if partner can’t balance we are unlikely to make much, I thought. Perhaps you think an “underbid” (Notice that Jeff Smith!). Partner balances with 2S and now you feel that you really have to show some values show you bid 2NT which I think would show a bad fitting 10to12. Partner now jumps to 4S which Bob doubles, making. While it is true that on best defence this hand goes down  on a ruff, it is an excellent contract and you really want to be there vulnerable. Isabelle held S KQ1087532 H6 D9 C K76. (She definitely had her bids).

Okay you get the idea. Here is the hand that got me my nickname. You hold S Q5 H K5 D AJ109643 C 54. You are not vulnerable against vulnerable and partner opens a 10-12 notrump in first chair. What do you do? You can invite in notrump, invite in diamonds or just play diamonds. Which one do you do?

Well I didn’t do any of them. I bid 3NT. With 7 diamonds and some side cards I didn’t think I needed much of a fit. If partner could get the lead before they took 5 tricks I thought we had a decent chance. Besides some times this can be their hand. As it turned out East West can make 4 hearts and we are 4 down for -200 in notrump. I admit that noone actually bid 4H (although there were some in 3 making 4). Izzie held S KJ94 H 972 D KQ C J1096. But very small changes to her hand will make 3NT cold. Inviting 3D will get 3NT anyway (since I am asking about diamonds not general strength). Was this really worth the title?

So how do you vote?

Macho Bridge Match

January 31st, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

Isabelle and I played against Jeff Smith and Nick L’Ecuyer on BBO the other night.  The match was very exciting with lots of bidding and I confess that I did my share. The match started off relatively quietly with this hand:  You Isabelle hold Q7 KQ965 K102 KJ4.  Here is the bidding:

Isabelle opened 1H and bid 2C over the forcing notrump.  Jeff bid doubled showing the other two suits and values and I showed a big club raise with 2S.  Nick (Macho 1) bid 3S with S J9852 H J10 D 86 C Q1053 and I balanced double (Macho 2) with S A10 H 74 D QJ97 C A9876 .  3S would have gone down 1 or 2 but Isabelle who had not yet moved to macho mode pulled to 4C  which makes despite the bad spade break

By Board 4 we were ready for more action.  Here is my hand sitting South all vulnerable S A1076 H 8 DJ102 C AKJ102.  You hear this auction

1S promised only four spades and presumably 2S showed a good hand for hearts.  What do you bid?  Remember is this is macho night.

Yes of course I bid 4S and Isabelle was able to make it by guessing spades and clubs.  (Jeff had the spade Queen).  Here is her hand

S KJ54 H K4 D Q86 C 7643

But the night was still young.  Nick and Jeff won big on the next board by bidding the hand sensibly and getting to the right game.  But the competitive action started again on Board 6.  Nick held a good minor 2 suiter

S 109 H void D AKQJ2 C K105432

Nick had to bid 5C I think.  Isabelle doubled and then doubled 5D.  I had been having another macho moment when I bid 3H with S 8 H J976432 D 843 C Q8 (hey I was NV vs V).  The play and defence was not perfect, especially mine and we could have had 800 at one stage but settled for 200 still a good result.

The guys had their revenge on Board 10 where their aggressive tactics paid off when we opened 1NT 12-14 all red and had no good place to land safely.

All was quiet until Board 14.  In first chair with noone VUL Jeff held S 8 H K D 1087 C KQJ97532.  What do you open?  What do you think Jeff opened? 

Jeff made the macho bid of 5C and heard partner bid 6C.  But no worries partner had a 22 count in aces and kings and being off the diamond ace with no way to check for it made the good bid of 6C.  This was a very economical auction although most of the field did get to slam,  You may not believe this but this did actually continue like this for 19 boards. 

I give you one more hand and you can tell me if you think I was TOO MACHO: something that was mentioned at the table (along the lines of "you are crazy").  White on red you hold in fourth chair S 106 H K97532 D AJ96 C 6.  Jeff opens 2NT in third chair and I bid 3H.  This was doubled and went down 2 when Isabelle had a few useful cards.  This did not compensate the boys for their game in either notrump or spades.  Okay you get to chose…. is it DEAL or NO DEAL.

All is all it was a lot of fun with each side holding their own.  I will not let my macho run away with me next time, promise guys.

David is a star at the Kingston Sectional

January 29th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

David Sabourin, Jeff and Isabelle Smith and I headed off to Kingston to play in the sectional this weekend.  We had a great time, the tournament was well run and the other 2 proved to be really great teammates We had a lot of laughs.

We did pretty well.  I was too late for the Friday game but David and Jeff were second.  We won our flight A knockout.  We placed somewhere in the Swiss but we blamed Jeff for not doing better.  He read the website incorrectly and we arrived too late for the first round, starting the event with a zero.  However we asked to be paired up so we still had some good opponents to play and didn’t mind much.  Curse you Red Baron.

David had the very best hand.  I love squeezes and David was able to make a slam with a nice squeeze.  

West Dealer

After West opened 1C, David and Jeff quickly arrived in 6H.  At our table the opponents were in 4H so this was going to be a swing for one team or the other.  With an opening bid in front of dummy most cards are likely to be well placed. 

The opening lead was a small diamond and the diamond Jack won the trick.  David tried the Heart Jack which went low low and surprise show out with a club.  6H had suddenly got very interesting. David continued with a club to the ace and played a diamond to the King and the Ace and cashed the Diamond Jack discarding a club from hand.  Another heart was ducked to the heart 9 allowing David to take the spade finesse and East won the heart K with the heart A arriving at this position.

If West leads a club back David can trump, trump a diamond, draw the last trump and take the spade finesse.  West returned a trump.  David won, East throwing a club.  Now the play of the last heart squeezed East in the black suits.  This was the first board at their table and as you can imagine it took a long time to play.  To throw us off the scent they sent the last two (unplayed) boards when we exchanged boards.  We couldn’t figure out why it took them so long to play those hands.

Isabelle and I had a very good tournament.  We only had one system problem and that one was in an area that we had just changed and hadn’t really worked through.  We had some really sweet defences and were eagle eyed at getting to all slams and reasonable games.

Bridge Base Fun

January 24th, 2008  ~  linda  ~  1 Comment 

I have been reading the notes, fixing a few small errors and generally getting ready to go to the Kingston Sectional.  So it was fun to break this up with a pleasant game of bridge with Fred Lerner and Larry Lande.  Tonight we had the best of it but this changes match to match.

We had two interesting swings, one each way.  In both cases one player doubled in a competitive auction to show cards and the bidder was left to play there and went for a number.  Here is the first one

All Vulnerable East Dealer

The auction seems normal enough.  Perhaps Fred’s 3H bid is a bit frisky vulnerable without a singleton.  In any case 3H doubled when we made no mistake on the defence.  Isabelle lead the CJ overtaken by the CK.  I lead a spade to her SA and ruffed the high spade return.  We then took 2 diamonds, another ruff and eventually the Heart King.

Here was another one where I went for a number.

East-West Vulnerable; dealer south

I opened 1C and Larry overcalled 2H.  Isabelle made a negative double and with nothing sensible to do I bid 2C.  Larry doubled to show his excellent hand.  Fred passed this on the basis that it wasn’t game and he really didn’t have anywhere to go.  The defence started off with 4 rounds of hearts, ruffed and overruffed.  They then played 3 rounds of diamonds and there was no way that they could be prevented from taking another club trick.

On the lie of the cards East-West can make 3NT with the 3-3 heart break and the spades blocking.  But that is a ridiculous contract.  So are number was into nothing.

Interesting how often a simple call like double can get a good result.

Well off to Kingston tomorrow!  Isabelle and I are even on beer now but somehow I suspect that by next week when I post again the situation will have changed.

Preparing For Kingston

January 22nd, 2008  ~  linda  ~  No Comments 

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

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?