At this weekend's Swiss Teams, I had to work my way through a minefield of 3NT contracts that were a bit hard on my nervous system.
1. I dealt and held:
xx
AKJx
Kxx
AKQx
With this nice balanced 21-count, I naturally opened 2NT, which Jenn raised to 3NT. I got a low diamond lead, and looked at:
Qx
xxx
QJT9x
xxx
xx
AKJx
Kxx
AKQx
I would have been down right off the bat with a spade lead, but prospects were still pretty bleak. RHO showed out and played a low spade (encouraging). There was only one chance. I had to hope that LHO would hold up her ace of diamonds to keep me from setting up and running them, instead of grabbing the ace and playing spades. So I took the king of diamonds and shot back a diamond. When LHO played low to trick 2 and I won in dummy, there was a glimmer of hope. All I needed was for the heart finesse to work and clubs to split 3-3, so I could run home with 2 diamonds, 3 hearts and 4 clubs. Amazingly, everything worked and we were +600.
2. I picked this up in 4th seat:
KJ
xxx
xx
AKQ98x
LHO opened 1 spade, and it went pass, pass to me. I tried 2 clubs. Jenn now cue bid 2 spades. This sounded like she had a decent hand but couldn't act over 1 spade. Since I had a spade stopper and a source of tricks, I applied Hamman's rule and took a shot at 3NT. LHO led the queen of diamonds, and I looked at:
8xxx
AJxx
AJx
Tx
KJ
xxx
xx
AKQ98x
If LHO had led a spade, this would have been easy: 6 clubs, two red aces and a spade. But this lead gave me a problem. I asked about the queen lead, and was told that they play standard leads. So what was going on? Clearly LHO had something like AQTxx of spades, and red suit cards to justify an opening bid. The only chances for a ninth trick seemed to be either the jack of diamonds (if LHO made a deceptive lead from KQx) or possibly the 8 of spades might set up (if RHO had either the doubleton 9 or ten). In any event, there was nothing to lose by ducking this trick. If RHO had the king, I'd have to rely on stopping the spades, as he would surely overtake the queen and shoot a spade through me. Fortunately, the queen held, and now I had 9 tricks, as I ran the clubs (they split) and played a diamond to the jack. Another nervous +600. (The defense's best shot would have been a heart lead (RHO had the king), but LHO had Qx and didn't find it.
3. I picked up, in third seat:
x
KQJxx
Kxxx
A98
Jenn dealt and opened 1 club. RHO passed, I bid 1 heart, and LHO doubled. Jenn rebid 1 spade, which showed spades and denied 3-card heart support. So I followed Hamman's rule again and bid 3NT (what else makes sense?)
LHO led the queen of diamonds, and I looked at:
J9xx
Ax
Ax
QT7xx
x
KQJxx
Kxxx
A98
I had 8 tricks: 5 hearts, 2 diamonds and the ace of clubs. My 9th trick had to come from clubs. How should I play the club suit?
Clearly, LHO had most of the 16 points outstanding, and based on the lead, probably didn't have AKQ of spades. So he probably had the king of clubs. However, since he doubled to show spades and diamonds, he was probably short in clubs, with his most likely holding Kx. I could push a club through him toward the queen to set up the ninth trick, but I thought that this play was very dangerous, since he would see the club suit ready to run and would probably shift to a spade, which I didn't want to happen. So I decided to play the queen of clubs from dummy and pass it to him. Now, looking at a club suit in dummy headed by only the ten, he wasn't so sure it was necessary to shift to spades, and he continued diamonds. I won the king in my hand, played a heart to dummy, and played another club to the 9. Bingo! This held and was home with 9 tricks. If LHO had shifted to spades after winning the club king, I would have gone down since his partner had KTxx.
4. Here's one where the cards were friendly but I was very nervous after trick 1. I was in fourth seat and picked up:
AQJxx
T
Kx
AJTxx
LHO dealt and opened 1 club. Jenn overcalled 1 diamond. With this nice 15-count, it looked like we should be in game somewhere, so I had to create a force with a cue bid of 2 clubs (1 spade wouldn't have been forcing). Jenn now bid 2 hearts. I tried 2 spades, Jenn rebid 3 diamonds, so it was once again time for Hamman's Rule: 3NT. LHO led the king of hearts, and I looked at:
Kx
Jxxx
AQT9x
Qx.
AQJxx
T
Kx
AJTxx.
It looked like I had 9 tricks as soon as I got the lead, but the defense attacked my weak spot. It sure looked to me as if they were about to run 5 heart tricks, with LHO holding AKx and RHO Qxxxx. But luck was in for me, as LHO shifted to a spade! After I got over my surprise, I managed to cash out 11 tricks - 5 spades, 5 diamonds and the club ace. It turned out that LHO started with AKQx of hearts so I was always safe.
5. I picked this up in 3rd seat:
Qxxx
T98x
AJ
xxx
Jenn dealt and opened 1 club. I bid 1 heart, and Jenn bid 2D, a reverse. I didn't like this hand much, but I decided to apply Hamman's Rule again and steer it into 3NT. I couldn't bid that directly (it would have shown at least 10 points), so I did it by first bidding 2NT, which is known as a Wolff Relay (she has to bid 3 clubs, and then I can either show a weak hand by rebidding my major or bidding 3 diamonds), then 3NT, which shows a hand about this strength, maybe a little better. I got a low heart lead, and looked at:
AJx
J
Qxxx
AKQTx
Qxxx
T98x
AJ
xxx.
The jack won the first trick. So if clubs split, I have 8 tricks, and have to guess which finesse to take for a ninth. I ran the clubs, watching the opponents' discards to see if I could get a clue what to do next. LHO discarded a low diamond, encouraging if they were telling the truth, then two spades including the ten. I was sure that he didn't have the king of spades given these discards, so I planned to finesse diamonds, assuming he was lying to me rather than signalling partner. But since I was in dummy, I decided there was nothing to lose by first cashing the ace of spades. Eureka - LHO dropped the king! So I never had to take a finesse at all. I ended up winning 4 spade tricks, and, amazingly, when I then played a diamond to the ace, his king fell so I ended up making six!
On the run of the clubs, LHO really had a hard time discarding. He didn't know that his partner had ducked a high heart honor (not a good choice), so he thought he was being squeezed in 3 suits!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Double-Edged Sword
Many expert pairs play weak 1NT openings. They are a useful preemptive device that frequently earn large swings in team competitions. The problem is that the swings sometimes go against you, and for unexpected reasons. Here's an example of one that resulted in a disaster for our opponents.
With both sides vulnerable, RHO opened 1NT, described as 12-14. I held this nice collection:
Axx
Qxx
AKxx
AQx.
I doubled, LHO took out to 2 spades, natural, and it went pass, pass, back to me. With this big balanced hand, I decided to come back in with 2NT. We hadn't discussed the meaning of this action, but surely it showed something like this. Jenn rebid 3 clubs, which I interpreted as Stayman. I rebid 3 diamonds, and she put me into 3NT.
LHO led the king of spades, and when she tabled the dummy I was looking at:
x
Jxxx
JTxxx
xxx
Axx
Qxx
AKxx
AQx.
I didn't like my chances. Perhaps Jenn might have passed 2NT, but, being no shrinking violet, aggressively tried for a vulnerable game by looking for a heart fit, and retreating having not found it.
I only could see 4 sure tricks, and even if the diamonds split or the queen dropped singleton, I only would have 7 fast tricks. Even with a successful club finesse, I still would be a trick short. So a lot had to go right. First of all, LHO had to hold 6 spades, so I could isolate his suit by holding up the ace. Second, he had to have no outside entry. Finally, I was short a tempo to establish a possible ninth trick in hearts, so I needed some help from the defense.
LHO took the king and queen of spades, and slipped by continuing with the jack. Now, I took the ace and stopped to count the hand. Partner has 2 points, I have 19, so we have 21. LHO showed up with the KQJ of spades, another 6. So only 13 points are not accounted for, of which RHO has at least 12. So I knew that RHO had the AK of hearts, the club king and diamond queen. But if he had only 3 spades and the doubleton queen, I now knew that I could get home. I cashed the diamond AK, held my breath, and got the 2-2 split. Now I had 2 dummy entries with my low diamonds, so I could go over to the diamond ten and punch a heart through RHO, forcing him to win. I held my breath again, and was rewarded when RHO shifted to a club. Now I could win the queen, play another heart and set up my ninth trick in hearts. 3NT bid and made and 10 IMPs for the good guys!
This victory was made possible only because of the weak NT. Without it, we would never have gotten to 3NT on our own, and I wouldn't have likely been able to place all the cards even if we had.
Another point of interest: LHO could have defeated the contract had he not played a third round of spades and instead shifted to clubs. It is often not a good strategy to set up a suit for which you have no entries, particularly when the declarer can figure this out from the bidding. Here, LHO had a difficult decision to make. If he shifted to a heart or club, he might finesse his partner when dummy had no entries. If, for example, his partner held Kx instead of Qx of diamonds, I would not have been able to get to dummy to take a finesse in any suit. So shifting was risky. Here, tempo was more critical than entries, but he didn't know that. So his decision to continue spades, while wrong this time, is not a clear error. Perhaps his partner could have helped him by carding in spades to give him a suit preference signal. Given that his partner held AK of hearts and KJ of clubs, it wasn't clear to him that clubs was actually the suit that had to be played. So this was a very difficult defense, maybe worthy of Kantar for the Defense!
With both sides vulnerable, RHO opened 1NT, described as 12-14. I held this nice collection:
Axx
Qxx
AKxx
AQx.
I doubled, LHO took out to 2 spades, natural, and it went pass, pass, back to me. With this big balanced hand, I decided to come back in with 2NT. We hadn't discussed the meaning of this action, but surely it showed something like this. Jenn rebid 3 clubs, which I interpreted as Stayman. I rebid 3 diamonds, and she put me into 3NT.
LHO led the king of spades, and when she tabled the dummy I was looking at:
x
Jxxx
JTxxx
xxx
Axx
Qxx
AKxx
AQx.
I didn't like my chances. Perhaps Jenn might have passed 2NT, but, being no shrinking violet, aggressively tried for a vulnerable game by looking for a heart fit, and retreating having not found it.
I only could see 4 sure tricks, and even if the diamonds split or the queen dropped singleton, I only would have 7 fast tricks. Even with a successful club finesse, I still would be a trick short. So a lot had to go right. First of all, LHO had to hold 6 spades, so I could isolate his suit by holding up the ace. Second, he had to have no outside entry. Finally, I was short a tempo to establish a possible ninth trick in hearts, so I needed some help from the defense.
LHO took the king and queen of spades, and slipped by continuing with the jack. Now, I took the ace and stopped to count the hand. Partner has 2 points, I have 19, so we have 21. LHO showed up with the KQJ of spades, another 6. So only 13 points are not accounted for, of which RHO has at least 12. So I knew that RHO had the AK of hearts, the club king and diamond queen. But if he had only 3 spades and the doubleton queen, I now knew that I could get home. I cashed the diamond AK, held my breath, and got the 2-2 split. Now I had 2 dummy entries with my low diamonds, so I could go over to the diamond ten and punch a heart through RHO, forcing him to win. I held my breath again, and was rewarded when RHO shifted to a club. Now I could win the queen, play another heart and set up my ninth trick in hearts. 3NT bid and made and 10 IMPs for the good guys!
This victory was made possible only because of the weak NT. Without it, we would never have gotten to 3NT on our own, and I wouldn't have likely been able to place all the cards even if we had.
Another point of interest: LHO could have defeated the contract had he not played a third round of spades and instead shifted to clubs. It is often not a good strategy to set up a suit for which you have no entries, particularly when the declarer can figure this out from the bidding. Here, LHO had a difficult decision to make. If he shifted to a heart or club, he might finesse his partner when dummy had no entries. If, for example, his partner held Kx instead of Qx of diamonds, I would not have been able to get to dummy to take a finesse in any suit. So shifting was risky. Here, tempo was more critical than entries, but he didn't know that. So his decision to continue spades, while wrong this time, is not a clear error. Perhaps his partner could have helped him by carding in spades to give him a suit preference signal. Given that his partner held AK of hearts and KJ of clubs, it wasn't clear to him that clubs was actually the suit that had to be played. So this was a very difficult defense, maybe worthy of Kantar for the Defense!
A Minor Problem
Last week at the club's Wednesday night team game, Jenn held, in third seat:
KJTx
JTxx
Qxx
Kx.
I dealt and opened one diamond. She responded 1 heart, then I bid 3 clubs, a strong jump shift. Jenn naturally followed Hamman's Rule and bid 3 no-trump. Now I surprised her with another jump to 5 clubs! This got her annoyed (she doesn't like to be taken out of 3NT) and started her thinking. What is going on here? There were contradictory indicators. Normally a jump to game in a forcing auction is fast arrival, signifiying lack of interest in slam. On the other hand, I had jump shifted so I must have a really strong hand. Why had I not rebid 4 clubs, when it would have been forcing, or bid 4NT. One problem was that 4NT here was undiscussed. It could have been interpreted as either straight Blackwood (no suit had been agreed), or a general slam invite asking partner to go to either six of a minor or 6NT with extra values. So, reader, why do you think I bid 5 clubs, and what call do you make? Decide before reading on.
Jenn decided that I had to have a hand with very few losers. Since she was looking at the club king and diamond queen, she knew that these were huge cards and covered two losers. She decided that I likely had a void and only one major suit loser, say 6-5 in the minors and Ax in one major and a void in the other, or 6-6 in the minors with a singleton in one of the majors. So she bid 6 diamonds.
This turned out to be the winner, since I held:
x
void
AKJxxx
AQJxxx.
I had some tough decisions to make here. The hand has only 2.5 losers, so it is very powerful. You can't really describe it by opening 2 clubs, so I decided to start with 1 diamond and rebid a large number of clubs, depending on who did what. With this much shape, usually there is a lot of bidding around the table. I was pleased and surprised to hear it go pass, 1 heart, pass. This made it easy for me to make a game-forcing jump shift to 3 clubs. Now, when Jenn bid 3NT, I had to decide what to do next. My choices seemed to be 4 clubs, 5 clubs or 6 clubs. Because of my void, it would have been pointless to make any bid that Jenn could interpret as ace-asking such as 4NT. I thought that she might be put in an awkward position if I rebid 4 clubs and she preferred clubs to diamonds. I suspect that if so, she would cue bid a major suit ace or go to 5 clubs if she didn't have one, information that wasn't that useful to me. I decided to go for 5 clubs because I thought that Jenn would look at this in the way I described above - a big hand with few losers and a void someplace. I didn't think I could commit to 6 clubs, since she surely would bid 3NT on many hands that held no aces nor the missing minor suit honors, e.g., QJxx/KQxx/xx/xxx, where even 5 of a minor isn't safe.
Fortunately, we were on similar wavelengths and landed in the right place.
KJTx
JTxx
Qxx
Kx.
I dealt and opened one diamond. She responded 1 heart, then I bid 3 clubs, a strong jump shift. Jenn naturally followed Hamman's Rule and bid 3 no-trump. Now I surprised her with another jump to 5 clubs! This got her annoyed (she doesn't like to be taken out of 3NT) and started her thinking. What is going on here? There were contradictory indicators. Normally a jump to game in a forcing auction is fast arrival, signifiying lack of interest in slam. On the other hand, I had jump shifted so I must have a really strong hand. Why had I not rebid 4 clubs, when it would have been forcing, or bid 4NT. One problem was that 4NT here was undiscussed. It could have been interpreted as either straight Blackwood (no suit had been agreed), or a general slam invite asking partner to go to either six of a minor or 6NT with extra values. So, reader, why do you think I bid 5 clubs, and what call do you make? Decide before reading on.
Jenn decided that I had to have a hand with very few losers. Since she was looking at the club king and diamond queen, she knew that these were huge cards and covered two losers. She decided that I likely had a void and only one major suit loser, say 6-5 in the minors and Ax in one major and a void in the other, or 6-6 in the minors with a singleton in one of the majors. So she bid 6 diamonds.
This turned out to be the winner, since I held:
x
void
AKJxxx
AQJxxx.
I had some tough decisions to make here. The hand has only 2.5 losers, so it is very powerful. You can't really describe it by opening 2 clubs, so I decided to start with 1 diamond and rebid a large number of clubs, depending on who did what. With this much shape, usually there is a lot of bidding around the table. I was pleased and surprised to hear it go pass, 1 heart, pass. This made it easy for me to make a game-forcing jump shift to 3 clubs. Now, when Jenn bid 3NT, I had to decide what to do next. My choices seemed to be 4 clubs, 5 clubs or 6 clubs. Because of my void, it would have been pointless to make any bid that Jenn could interpret as ace-asking such as 4NT. I thought that she might be put in an awkward position if I rebid 4 clubs and she preferred clubs to diamonds. I suspect that if so, she would cue bid a major suit ace or go to 5 clubs if she didn't have one, information that wasn't that useful to me. I decided to go for 5 clubs because I thought that Jenn would look at this in the way I described above - a big hand with few losers and a void someplace. I didn't think I could commit to 6 clubs, since she surely would bid 3NT on many hands that held no aces nor the missing minor suit honors, e.g., QJxx/KQxx/xx/xxx, where even 5 of a minor isn't safe.
Fortunately, we were on similar wavelengths and landed in the right place.
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