Here's a hand from Monday - I'm not sure which way North is in the room we play in, so I'm making this one West-East.
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West opened 1♥, and East replied 2NT, a natural raise, showing 10-12 points I think. Opener, with seven good Hearts and 18 points, made a fine rebid of 4♥. This was passed out.
North lead a small Club, and declarer played the ♣9 from dummy. After a bit of a pause, and some heckling from dummy, South played the ♣Q and declarer won the ♣K. Declarer then lead a Heart from hand. The ♥Q in dummy won, as both defenders followed low.
The contract is rock solid. You're going to lose the ♥A for sure, but if you do well you might be able to avoid any other losers. At rubber bridge overtricks don't matter at all, but even so I was wondering what the best ruse is, to try and steal that extra trick. You can either: (a) draw trumps and hope the defence don't play a Spade, meaning you can discard it on dummy's Diamonds, (b) lead a low Spade to your ♠Q now, hoping South has the ♠A and ducks, (c) play four rounds of Diamonds now, hoping that when someone ruffs with the ♥A you can throw away your losing Spade. Declarer went for (a), but the defence was sharp and took their ♠A, holding declarer to 4♥+1.
Here's one from Friday. The North-South pair had already declared the week a write off, and were pushing their luck here (but I back it). I might have got the East-West cards slightly wrong, but the important features are all right below:
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South dealt and opened 1♦, which is the right bid with two five card suits. North replied 1♥, and South rebid 2♣. North then gave preference to 2♦. Textbook auction so far. South now wanted to bid 5♦ (which worked well for him the hand before), but paused and asked for advice. West pointed out that partner's 2♦ bid isn't really a Diamond bid, just preference, which could be only two cards. I suggested there's no need to go straight to 5♦, and you can involve partner by making an invitational bid. Together we talked South down, and he only bid 3♦. North has a good hand, with three card support, but the Aces are in the wrong suits so bid a modest 4♦. South topped himself up with 5♦, getting there anyway.
West lead a Spade, and when dummy comes down it looks like a pretty terrible contract. The only advantage of being in 5♦ is it keeps things simple, as you can only afford two losers, and you already know you have to lose the Ace-King of trumps. So you have to lose no other tricks. Looking at declarer's South hand, there's no losers in Spades, once you use dummy's ♥A to throw one away. There's probably no losers in Diamonds too, but you'll need to lead up from dummy at least once. So it's all about losing no Clubs. The normal way to play this Club suit for no losers is just to play off the AKQ, and hope the Jack falls.
So I think the best line of play is to start drawing trumps, planning to play Clubs from the top. If you need to lead trumps from dummy again then you can switch to ruffing a Club in dummy, hoping the hand with short Clubs has to overruff with a card which is a winner anyway (as here). On this particular layout though the Clubs don't split, and if you ruff a Club then I think when East overruffs with the ♦K West ends up winning a third trick for the defence with the &diamonds;. So I'm now claiming the contract can't be made, and indeed at the table it went off too, and East-West won the week.
OK, after one week, here's what I know about the bidding system.
- Strong NT, four card majors
- Each time you rebid a suit, that shows one extra card in the suit
- Don't bid No Trumps unless you have stoppers in every suit
- 4♣ is always Gerber
- If you're short of time, double and redouble!
Next week I'm bringing bidding boxes.
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