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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