Better Bridge in Barry County October 4 2012

Better Bridge in Barry County

By Gerald Stein

	North ♠  543 ♥  AKJ6 ♦  AK ♣  8763
West ♠  K62 ♥  9874 ♦  J94 ♣ J95		East ♠  J ♥  Q532 ♦  Q108532 ♣  102
	South ♠  AQ10987 ♥  10 ♦  76 ♣  AKQ4

Dealer: Vulnerable: Lead:

East North/South A♣

North 4♠ Pass	East 2♦ 5♦ Pass	South 2♠ Dbl	West 3♦ Pass

Which is a better score? 1100 points made from defending and setting the opponents five tricks? Or bidding and making a small slam in the spade suit for 1430? What happened here? Let’s look at the play of the hands in this week’s column.

East, as opener, took advantage of her very weak hand and used a weak two-bid to interfere with the opponents’ bidding. With six diamonds, and not even good diamonds at all, East fearlessly bid the two-diamond bid and created some trouble for the North/South team. They were unable to communicate to each other the strong hand and the potential for a slam that each one had. East had done her job very well.

South with a strong hand and strong spades must start at the two or the three level to convey her strong hand to her partner North. It seemed that a bid of two spades left the door open for West to support the pre-emptive bid of her partner East. With three support diamonds, West was determined to make the bidding as difficult for North/South as East had done with her opening bid of two diamonds. West continued with the diamond raise to three diamonds even with only a few points.  

North entered the bidding with good support in the red suits and three spades to help partner South. North bid four spades, enough for game, but was there a better bid? Perhaps, but at any rate, East was now emboldened to continue the sacrifice. Not vulnerable, with plenty of diamonds between them, nine altogether, East jumped to a game bid in diamonds, bidding five diamonds.

South looked at their own vulnerability, and she saw that they, North/South, were vulnerable. Five spades or double? The choice was easy to make for South who knew that East had opened with a weak point count of no more than 10 or 11 high card points, and six diamonds. West’s single raise was also indicative of a weak response promising three diamonds and a few points perhaps. Take the sure thing of setting East/West or go for more? This time South chose to take the road most would have traveled, and she plunked down the red double card. Three passes ended the auction.

North/South had an easy time of taking two club tricks, A♣ and K♣; two heart tricks, A♥ and K♥; one spade trick, A♠; and two diamond tricks, A♦ and K♦, for down five tricks and a score of 1100 points on their side of the ledger. East/West could be seen smiling once the play of the hand had finished when all could see that North/South were solid for six spades worth 1430 or 6NT worth 1440. East/West rightly sacrificed and suffered “only” a 1100 point loss. Other teams playing the same hand might have bid the hand differently.

The interesting thing about playing bridge is that there are these many choices and decisions that one must make all the time. Bid or double? Sacrifice or defend? On today’s hand, it looks like the plus score went to the East/West team for losing 1100 points. They could have just as easily been down 1430 or 1440 points instead. Using the cards in their hands, East/West used the weak-two convention to disturb the bidding and did it effectively. They were competitive even with very weak hands, and it paid off for them. Good bidding, East/West.

Bridge question for this week: Did you see where North/South can get another trick if they had defended better? Then the score would not have been 1100 but 1400. Where is the extra setting trick going to come from? Answer next week.

Gerald Stein

September 24, 2012 Number of words: 683