Brian Davies
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Hi Ann, you need to have even more playing strength to make a four-level preempt, than a three-level preempt. The usual expectation is an eight-card suit at the four level whereas a seven-card suit is usually enough at the three-level. Since you are vulnerable, you really need a very good quality suit.
The spade suit is an important suit because it out-ranks all others. The 3S bid is very attractive because it makes life difficult for the opponents. West has to judge what to do at the four-level. If instead, East had opened 1S, it will be easier for West to make the judgement because they will know about a possible fit in the boss spade suit. I will preempt in spades if at all reasonable.
I think that I have worked out why we are all seeing 5 stars for compatibility when we look at our own profile! BBO thinks that we are compatible with ourselves! 🙂
In your auction, I dislike the 2C bid. A free rebid of a suit in a competitive auction should really promise a six-card suit. I think that South had two reasonable alternatives depending on what the meaning of a double is in your partnership. (1) If you play a double as take-out, then that would be a perfect bid to describe your hand and showing your 4-card heart suit.
(2) When playing a weak NT, it is common to play that this double shows the strong NT hand (without a stop). I have no idea if Bernard advocates this, but it is a good use for thus double. If playing this second type of double, you should pass – expecting partner to re-open with a double. This will be awkward on this hand because West will raise spades. If you are playing penalty doubles or Support Doubles (not recommended with a weak NT), you should also pass.
Looking at the rest of the bidding, I dislike the 4NT raise as Blackwood. I agree with Bernard that raising a NT bid to 4NT should be quantitative. I agree that a 2H bid would be more descriptive than a 2S cue bid. You should usually make a natural bid if available and the cue bid tends to send the message that you don’t have a natural bid.
Tricky hand!
No, not related.
I don’t know if Geoff is the Geoff Davies that I used to play against when I lived in Staffordshire and played at Stafford BC?
Hi Geoff, great post and I understand you analysis – I used a similar analysis here. when considering the lead quiz for week 1.
Things are a little more complicated on this quiz. We need to consider some of the biases inherent in double-dummy analysis. For example my simulation in week 1 showed a heart lead to be best, but I didn’t mention that it found the ace of hearts to be the best of the lot. Double dummy programmes favour ace leads because the computer always knows the best continuation on any given hand, which is not true in real life. Also, in real life partner is likely to mis-read an ace lead.
The week three hand is a near doppleganger for a hand in the Bird Anthias book (Chapter 3, hand 3) and their simulation found the lead of the king to be better at all forms of scoring. BUT, if you read a couple of pages forward in that book the authors themselves acknowledge a weakness in their double-dummy analysis with this holding. They gave the following example:
The player on lead holds KQ652 with J94 in dummy and 108 with partner – leaving declarer with A73. (a) You lead the king. Declarer wins the ace and plays towards the J for a second trick (b) You lead low. In real life, declarer might (probably should) play the nine and partner’s 10 ensure that declarer an’t take more than one trick. A declarer playing double dummy will always “know” to insert the Jack from dummy.
Overall, I think that it is rather close whether to lead the king or a small card. But remember that our human partner will overtake our king with the ace holding A2 and three certain tricks have collapsed to two. Imagine declarer with J10987 enjoying that! For this reason I favour the low spade. I do think that Bernard was rather quick to dismiss a heart lead, which I rate as significantly better than leading a minor and only marginally worse than a spade. Almost always lead a major against a 1NT-3NT auction.
My final response on this subject. Maybe I have been playing Roman Key-card Blackwood too long and forgotten how complicated it might feel to a newer player. But I think that it is being described as overly complicated when in reality the full set of responses to Stayman is probably more complicated. If you doubt this, consider the nuances in a simple sequence such as 1NT-2C-2H-2NT: newer players can often go wrong from here but this is no reason to abandon Stayman. There are two conventions that are ubiquitous – Stayman and Blackwood are used by 99% or more of all bridge players – and they are so fundamental that it is worth investing a little time in them.
The responses to RKCB are different from conventional Blackwood and this might make them feel complex. But the initial responses are not really any more complex once they have been learnt. Will mentions that they played RKCB without fully understanding the queen-ask bids over a 5C/5D response and I daresay that this is probably true for others. But with the basic structure in place, it would be easy to add these asking bids later. Once you start down the road of KCB, you have to re-start in order to incorporate the queen-ask bids.
Will also says there is confusion in RKCB because there are two alternative response structures (3041 and 14300). I agree that this is a problem and regrettable. But it is bizarre to think that adding a third will solve this!
Having said all of this, I fully agree with Bernard that it will make no significant difference on the vast majority of slam hands. I see the most significant benefit of RKCB to aspiring players is that it is the almost universal, standard ace-asking system and I would want a good reason to recommend not using it.
Hi Christine, yes when I learnt a 2-over-1 bid was 8+ points. This is an area where the trend has been upwards in most systems. In the US, many now play that a two-level response promises opening values and is forcing to game. Things are less extreme in Acol but most play that a 2-over-1 promises 10 points, or maybe a good 9 (a decent five-card suit, or good tolerance for partner’s suit might make it a good 9).
This has the beneficial effect that sequences such as 1H-2D-2NT; 1H-2D-2S and 1H-2D-3H are all forcing to game. Bidding slams scientifically is so much easier if you can establish a game forcing sequence. The negative is that the 1NT bid has to cover a lot of hand types and a wider range – this is why it is often called the dustbin bid. This is a small price to achieve greater clarity on strong hands.
I still play 1C-2C as 5-7 and 1C-1NT as 8-10 unless playing more complicated systems (Inverted Minors).
I think I’m missing something on hand 1 – or rather you are missing somthing: the thirteenth card! I’m guessing it is a spade honour to make sense of the bidding? 🙂
On the second hand, I would lead my singleton in partner’s suit. There is no second choice.
This is a big subject. General advice is that you need a good reason not to lead partner’s suit, but don’t be nervous about choosing a different suit if you have a good reason. Here are some thought starters:
– Has partner bid or over-called the suit. Over-calls are often made to attract a lead so tend to lead the over-call suit, but players don’t think about opening leads when planning their opening bid.
– Listen to the auction and try to understand what declarer is likely to have. Does this suggest an active or passive lead?
– Do you have a good alternative? Be honest when looking at your own long suit. Maybe a singleton will work better? Or maybe you can see where partner might have a singleton or void.
– Don’t treat the opponents as idiots. But also don’t give them too much respect.
– Think about the level of the auction. If the opposition has bid confidently to a slam, knowing that partner has a good suit, then maybe an alternative will work better?Expect to get the opening lead wrong quite often. Even the very best players make leads that don’t work out on a particular hand (maybe not as often as us, but they will still guess wrong sometimes).
Hi Margret, in Standard Acol this is a strong bid showing 16+ HCPs and either:
– A very strong 6+ card suit.
– A good suit and support for partner’s suit. (Bid the suit, then support partner).
– Some also play a good suit in a balanced hand (Bid the suit, then bid NTs).It is possible to use this bid for other purposes. I can think of a number of alternatives, one of which is a weak bid. Other systems use e.g. Bergen raises, but if you are playing Acol, I strongly recommend that this is a strong bid, unless you agree otherwise with partner and understand how to show a strong hand in the absence of this strong jump shift response.
Mark, I suggest that if you walk into your local club (in more normal times of course) and sit down to play with an experienced, but unfamiliar partner you will struggle to agree Key-card Blackwood without some considerable discussion. The first problem will be nomenclature: this new partner will assume that you are being lazy and missing off the “Roman” when you say that you want to play Key-card Blackwood. Then, when you make it clear that this is a whole different convention, they will ask why you don’t play RKCB “like the rest of the club”. But you persist, that you want to play KCB and describe the system: “Its easy” you say, “its just like ordinary Blackwood, but with the trump king included as a key card”. Hopefully, this will prove helpful, but be careful because many newer players are learning RKCB as their first system and have no experience of the original Blackwood. Of course, if they are an old dinosaur like me, who started playing 40ish years ago they will be very experienced with Blackwood … but they still haven’t played it in the last 25 years and the responses require thought rather coming automatically.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there is much wrong with the method. But maybe Bernard is a little out on his own on this one.
No I haven’t seen any data. I am prepared to accept Berbard’s 1% estimate and the question seems to be whether we are prepared to accept an additional level of complexity for a small incremental advantage.
In my experience, there is no single magic trick why good players get to be good players. They become good because they take advantage of all of the little 1%s that are available through auction, the play and the defence of the hand. But for newer players, Roman Key-card Blackwood doesn’t need to be an early priority.
I don’t have strong feelings, but my main concern with Key-card Blackwood, is that it isn’t widely played and isn’t easily transferable to other partnerships.
Yes, I think that this hand is very difficult to play. I sat dummy and watched partner face an even more difficult problem on a club lead!
The club lead wouldn’t be most people’s choice: when you are dealt AK in a suit you don’t usually look any further and wouldn’t usually choose to lead declarer’s first suit. It seemed that the lead must be a singleton, which seemed ominous. Whether you try to ruff spades or diamonds, the lead has taken away a vital entry and it didn’t surprise me that partner went down – I think that most lines will lead to failure.
Hi Ian, a 2NT rebid in an auction such as 1D-1H-2NT should be based on 18-19 points. This leaves room to investigate a possible 5-3 heart fit whereas bidding 1D-1H-3NT on a 19 count might lose the major suit fit altogether. The hand in Play Quiz 2 makes a 2NT raise in the auction 1D-1NT-2NT. In this case the 1NT response promised 6-9 and we are happier bidding 3NT with a 19-count because we know that we have a combined 25 and we do not need to look for a major-suit game.
The 2NT raise is a difficult area in Acol. The best advice is that it should promise 17-18 points and usually pass 1NT with 15-16 points; but a quick bit of arithmetic will tell you that if you pass on 16 and partner has the maximum 9 you might play in 1NT on a combined 25! All that can be said is that we expect to make 3NT with a combined 25 about 60% of the time and go off 40% of the time, so it still isn’t a disaster to stay out of game – particularly at pairs. The alternative is to raise to 2NT on 16-18, but this is a wide range for an invitation and hands a problem back to responder holding (say) a 7-count – I am more likely to make the pushy bid at teams.
Hi sue, your hand looks as if it came straight out of a textbook on redoubles in this situation. You have an excellent 12-count with strong intermediates and great suit quality in each of the other three suits. You are weak in partner’s suit and your hand strongly suggests defending. If partner passes, you should be making a penalty double at your next turn, whatever they bid.
In my experience, once players learn that they can double when holding the balance of points, they start doubling too often! So my advice is not to double if you have support for partner and to make your natural bid if you have a good suit of your own. But with this perfect hand, redoubling can be great fun. You know that the unfortunate player on your left will squirming because they hold few if any points and possibly their only suit is spades!
