Sunday, November 1, 2009

Six-five, Come Alive! (4)

When it rains, it pours!  I seem to have been dealt a lot of these lately.  Here is yet another 6-5 beauty from a recent pairs game.  Unlike the others, we got this one wrong.  There are some interesting bidding issues involved. 

I picked up, in third seat with neither side vulnerable:

♠  Axxxxx
♥  AKQTx
♦   xx
♣  void

 Jenn,  my partner, dealt and opened 2 Diamonds, a weak-two bid.  RHO doubled.  How would you handle this? 

This problem exposed an area where we did not have a firm agreement.  We do have an agreement that a new suit is forcing after a weak-two, but did not have an agreement whether or not this applied after a takeout double.  Game was possible in any of three suits.  I wanted to get both my suits in.  I could have shown a good hand with a redouble, then bidding later.  However, the opponents had to have a big club fit, so if I redoubled, by the time it came back to me again it could have been at any level.  So I bid 2 Spades even though Jenn might not think it was forcing.  I didn't think this would end the auction, since I expected someone to bid clubs.  LHO duly bid 3 Clubs, which was passed back to me.  Now what?
   
The obvious choices were 3 Hearts and 4 Hearts.  While I had a really good hand, I knew 2 things:  RHO probably was 4-4 in the majors, so those suits were unlikely to split well for us.  Also, Jenn couldn't act over 3 Clubs.  So I took the low road and bid only 3 Hearts.  Jenn corrected to 3 Spades.  I expected her to be 2-2 in the majors, and I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to get to her hand.  For example, she might have held xx/xx/QJTxxx/KJx.  So I passed. 

LHO led a heart, and I looked at 

♠ Jx
xx
♦ AKTxxx
♣ xxx

♠ Axxxxx
♥ AKQTx
♦ 
xx
♣ void

 As soon as I saw her hand, I was sorry I didn't bid 4 Hearts, or raise her 3 Spades to 4 Spades, since not only did her AK of diamonds cover both my losers there, but the heart lead resolved any problems in that suit and I had entries to dummy to lead spades through RHO.  We ended up making 5, since RHO's spades were KQT2, so he scored only 2 spade tricks.  (I went to dummy's ace of diamonds and pushed the Jack through him.  He had to cover, I won the ace, and kept leading spades so he didn't score his deuce.)

Our lack of agreement as to the nature of my 2 Spade bid was partly responsible for this poor result.  Jenn didn't expect me to have a really good hand, so she didn't think she could bid 3 Diamonds freely over 3 Clubs to show a good suit.  If she had, I would have bid 4 Hearts and we would have reached 4 Spades.

I welcome any comments on what agreements any of you have to cover situations like this. 

Good luck!


 

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