Monday, August 04, 2008

Use of scientific bidding

Quite often you play a board where some of your bidding gadgets actually serve their purpose. You end up playing in the right contract, getting a yummy swing. One such thing happened recently on BBO. It was One of the regular BBO nights for me, with an irregular partner (as usual).

It’s good to use bidding space available to communicate with your partner and find the right spot to play in. The bidding on the table went like this.

2♣- various strong hand

2- waiting bid ( 2 would be double negative)

2- Kokish relay

2♠- Forced bid

2NT- 24-25 balanced hand

3♣- Puppet stayman

3- Denies 4 carder

3- Check for 4 carder ♠

3♠- Shows 4 carder ♠

Amazing! All the bids from 2♣ to 3♠ were utilized and N can almost write down the various hands that S could have. Time to check for Key cards! SP bids 4NT RKC (1430); 5♣ is the response. Now what? which is the playing spot? 6♠... 6NT...

Stop guessing! N bids 7♠. A 75% slam converted to a 25% Grand slam. (apologies for the crude evaluation of percentages). 17 imps down the drain.

“Partner you had a lousy 24-25 hand!” SP declared.

Postmortem revealed that even with the best hand that South could possibly have (as per the bidding), 7♠ is just about 75% (may be a little lesser).

Don’t worry about the 17 imps! With the use of a scientific approach you are bound to get back the imps lost (provided you make use the information from the bidding).


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Your first post. I do think the “24-point hand” is a bit wanting, but I think using Kokish is acceptable. The jumps after that are a bit bizarre. How about the following? 3S-4C-4D-4H-5H-6S.

Since South is known to be balanced with 4 spades exactly and 2/3 hearts, North probably needs to find South with AK in diamonds and the king of clubs. By cue-bidding, North gets to temporize with a 4H (second-round-)control-showing bid. South, having already shown his one minor-suit control, can bid 5H to show values + fragment. Now North is correct to sign off in 6S. The risk of fatally missing two keycards is too negligible.

Alternatively, North can plan a keycard auction, confidently expecting 5C in response to 4NT. 5C-5D-5S-5NT-6S will ensue on this layout. North can plan to ask about the diamond king too, should South have the CK: 5C-5D-5S-5NT-6C-6D.

Prashanth said...

Revenge post! Revenge post!