Brian Davies
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The difference is that playing Benji you have two strong bids 2D (game forcing) and 2C (strong but not game forcing).
Key card Blackwood has nothing to do with it.
Hi Reg,
Personally I prefer MUD against both NT and suit contracts, but I think that Top of Nothing is also a standard lead style and maybe it is more effective than MUD against NT contracts. There are pros and cons and ToN will suit some hands and MUD will suit others. But I do think that you need to have a clear agreement with your partner and properly disclose to your opponents.
I am not keen on agreeing to play MUD, but changing to ToN on some hands depending on the specific spot and/or whether you want to encourage a switch. I am not sure if Bernard was advocating this approach, but I feel that you gain partnership trust if the approach is consistent.
Charles,
The hand was made up as an illustration, but I agree that the choice of play at trick 1 is interesting!
Very difficult. I would expect to get to 6NT but getting to 7C or 7NT is tough. A better auction might be:
1C – 1H
1S – 2D (Fourth Suit Forcing – ideally forcing to game)
2NT – 3C
3H – 3S
4D – 6NT
North should start with a double, then over South’s 1H response, should cue-bid 2C. This gets the message across that North is very strong. South might bid 2D next and then maybe North simply bids 3NT (or 2NT and South raise to three).
The 1S and 2D bids do not convey the strength of the hand. A one-level overcall is usually based on a maximum of about 16 or 17 points.
I think that declared always has 10 tricks, if he guesses right. But the point of the hand is to play passively and not give declared any easy tricks.
I would always prefer to play spades as related rather than diamonds. k108 is an attractive holding, but ace and ten are too far apart to combine well together.
Interesting hand.
The best introduction to Landy is the Friday Live presentations that Bernard gave on this site – Defending against 1NT was covered over a number of weeks.
I also found an article in Issue 194.
I use Michaels and the Unusual No Trump and these are both standard conventions that most tournament players use. I play something rather different with my main partner – a convention called Ghestem, but I would not recommend that unless you are in a very regular partnership.
I have played Landy occasionally. I have played a number of alternatives including: Multi-Landy, Cappelletti, Astro, Asptro, Pin-point Astro. But I think that Landy is a good starting place.
I think that it will make a difference to East. If East can read his partner for a doubleton, East will know that their is no prospects for and look elsewhere – possibly switching to diamonds. Now we have set up nine tricks for declarer without establishing the heart suit.
Michaels is included on Bernard’s Benji Acol convention card.
There is an article in one of the Bridge magazines (P27): Issue 153
The 4S in the top left is the optimum contract calculated by Bridge Solver (double dummy of course), because 3NT should fail! The auction is as shown in the first diagram.
Ducking won’t work if partner started with 9x doubleton. Ducking will work if partner started with 9xx, but there is a risk that partner might not continue the suit and I think that rising with the ace and clearing the suit is clearer. Smith Peters would help if you do choose to duck.
Irene, it means whatever your opponents have agreed it to mean. They do of course need to tell you what their agreements are and I suggest that you ask David Stevenson about how they alert (it varies by country I believe, but in England it would be a penalty double in the absence of an alert).
Julian can comment on best practice, but putting the alerting regulations to one side, most experts play that the double is a take-out double, showing a shortage in the suit opened and at least tolerance for each of the three other suits.
Hi Colin, your book sounds about 50 years old!
Using more modern methods, you would transfer with a fuve-card suit and the jump response shows at least a six-card suit.
Hi Julian, Can you see any merit in varying the range depending upon the suit? In Mike Lawrence’s very large book on balancing, he gives the following ranges:
- Over 1♣: 12-14
- Over 1♦: 12-14½
- Over 1♥: 12-15½
- Over 1♠: 12-16½
Having a different range over every suit seems like an unnecessary strain on the memory! But I can see the point that he is making – you are happier doubling with 15-16 over a minor, than over a major. Is there any merit in having a wider range over a major? (Say 11-14 over a minor, 12-16 over a major?).
We need to make 12 tricks as well as having stops in every suit to make a slam. This is not certain if partner holds a minimum 12-count and only a doubleton spade. But we have enough to suggest that a slam is possible.
A natural Acol auction probably starts 1NT-3S. The jump to 3S sets spades as trumps, is forcing to game and suggests that a slam is possible. Partner is expected to cue-bid and we will usually identify whether we have a diamond control without going past 4S.
This is an interesting hand.
North has likely shown a seven-card spade suit in the auction. South hasn’t supported spades, so it isn’t silly for North to hope that South might be able to ruff the second round. Leading the ace of spades would not be my choice – it seems to be putting all of your eggs in one basket. But I can see that it might have succeeded and it has some merit at teams.
For us, South’s card would only be suit preference if count and attitude can’ t be useful. This is usually assumed to be the case when dummy holds a singleton, but I can understand Bernard’s argument that count is important here. Once dummy goes down with a singleton, it is probably against the odds for South to also hold a singleton (giving declared four spades). So I think that North should probably switch to clubs as his best hope.
