Friday, October 18, 2013

Jennbridge: Big Club and Losing Trick Count Success

By Bob Klein

Dave Neuman and I recently played in the Santa Rosa Sectional.  Board 7 from the morning session was a solid victory for a big club system combined with losing trick count.  

Dave and I play Precision.  An opening bid of 1 Club shows a hand with at least 16 points if unbalanced or 17 if balanced.  Dave opened 1 Club with 

♠ J3
♥ AK3
K95 
♣KQJ95

The next hand came in with 2 Diamonds.  I held

♠ AQ95
QT964
void
♣ A764

I bid 2 Hearts, game forcing with 5 or more hearts.  Dave jumped to 4 Hearts, showing a minimum big club bid with heart support.  Now I saw a 5-loser hand opposite a big club opening, which is usually a 6-loser or less hand.  Eureka!  No more than 11 combined losers, good fit, void in opponent's suit.  This added up to a likely slam, so I just bid 6 Hearts.   As you can see, it made easily.  All I needed was to draw trumps and not lose a trick to the jack.  12 easy tricks, just lose a spade.  For this result we got 16 matchpoints with 17 top.  

Good luck!

3 comments:

Len said...

If the hearts are 4-1 you'll need the spade finesse, even if you pick up the suit. If you played a natural 1C opening, maybe you'd find the club grand that makes more often than 6H, especially with the marked diamond lead.

rhm said...

The problem is not the strong club, but playing fast arrival when an unlimited responder forces to game.
This only preempts responder.
Opener should simply bid 3C and support hearts later.

Bob Klein said...

Since hardly anyone reached any slam, getting to 6 Hearts instead of 7 Clubs isn't really a problem.

The idea behind a fast arrival jump in responder's suit is to give responder a good picture of the strength of opener's hand - about 16-17 HCP, about 6 losers, decent trump support. I think it is a useful tool in the context of the big club system. Opener will not often attempt to find another strain once he knows he has support for responder's suit. If opener is stronger he will take control with a series of asking bids.