Julian Pottage
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Many of us have experienced this during the last week. Try checking back 15 minutes after you have made your post and you should be there.
If you playing strong two openings or Benjamin then for sure you should open at the two level. You can show the hearts and clubs and I doubt that you will stop short of game.
Some people play 2C as the only strong opening and might well open 2C on the hand.
If you have a 4-card holding, you cannot make a long card if partner has a doubleton, so you are unlikely to cause a communication problem by leading high. A big advantage of leading the ace is that if dummy’s holding or partner’s signal tells you that you have not found the opposing weak spot you remain on lead and can try a second time to find it.
It is very different if you have five cards in the suit; then cashing the ace risks a blockage.
If you bid two suits with jumping or reversing, you could have a minimum opening bid – but you could have extra values, just short of what you would have needed for a jump, so your partner should not strain to pass.
You would need to tell me the precise hands for me to say who if either of you should bid differently. Some responding hands are genuinely difficult. If you are responder and have 9 points with a singleton on opener’s first suit and three cards in opener’s second suit, often you cannot sensibly do anything other than pass.
Pot Boiler is not mine so I cannot explain the thinking behind that. Severance is about severing the opposing communications and the Controller is about retaining trump control. There is more of a pun with the Intertainer because the key play is an Intra-Finesse.
East has shown 23-24 points and West has shown a good enough hand to be interested in a slam facing that. Since it is unlikely that West is making a slam try with a jack-high suit and East can see the king-queen of diamonds, it is very likely that that West has the ace of diamonds. If West does lack the ace of diamonds, West is likely to hold the ace of hearts to compensate. The real question here is whether you have the playing strength for a slam. Many players focus far too much on aces – it is rather rare to have the values for a slam but two aces to be missing.
West might reasonably have DAJxxxx and CQxx. In this case a club lead will defeat the contract if the opening lead does not have the CK and even without a club lead you would need the hxA onside. So I agree 6D is not an 100% bet; since having a helpful lead could well make the difference between making and not, bidding it directly as Bernard suggests indeed has some merit.
If you play 2D was waiting, it does not deny 8 points, so West could have more than 8 points in that scenario.
(1) I am not sure there is an official definition but if responder bids a lower ranking suit fits and then bids a higher ranking suit at the two level or above, that would seem to cover it. 1C-1D-1H-1S would be the only sequence in which responder can get to bid a lower ranking suit followed by a higher ranking suit below the two level – and many would play that as fourth-suit-forcing anyway.
(2) Playing such sequences as game forcing makes it easier to explore for the best game and gives more room for looking for a slam too. If they are not game forcing, players feel they have to jump to avoid having the bidding dropped and there can be confusion as to what is and is not forcing.
It depends what is in dummy. If dummy has J-xx, obviously you do not overtake because that would set up the jack. If dummy has three low cards, you would normally overtake unless you have some reason to think might have led from a three-card suit.
If dummy has two low cards, you will need to decide whether partner has only four diamonds or more than that. If you think partner has more than four diamonds, it is safe to overtake. If, however, partner has K-Q-J-x or K-Q-10-x, overtaking will give declarer a fourth-round winner. Given that your eight is likely to look like an encouraging card to all but the most unobservant partner, I would generally play the eight rather than overtake when dummy has a doubleton. There would be more of a case for overtaking if you had A-3-2, when the two would less obviously be encouraging.
If dummy has a singleton, I would not overtake unless I though partner has shown six (but if partner has shown six, you wonder why the opponents are in 3NT!).
The action double is quite an advanced technique. Sometimes the opposing bidding makes it unlikely that you have a pure penalty double. Suppose the bidding starts (1H)-X-(4H). It is unlikely that you are going to have a heart stack. In this case your double says that your hand is too strong to let the opponents play in 4H undoubled.
1. With 3-card support and a 10-loser hand I would generally prefer a 1NT response (so a hand with a 4333 shape would often respond 1NT as such hands tend to have a lot of losers). A 1NT response is less likely to excite partner.
2. Holding a decent 5-card suit and a sure entry, I would lead it rather than the weak 4-card suit. Some of the time that a spade lead would be the winner, partner would have overcalled 1S.
please see my reply to your other post – several people had a problem yesterday of posting something and thinking the system did not have it
Playing 5-card majors, which you say you were, I would pass. If I was playing 4-card majors I would rebid 2C.
I see you had the same problem as I did – the system did not show your reply and so you thought it was not there – hopefully this issue is now resolved.
Your question 1 is a good one. If the bidding goes 2C-2D-3D-End, are you going to be putting down dummy (partner’s 2D relay means you are dummy rather than declarer) with tredipation? I think I would stretch to a 2D opening.
Yes if RHO opens 1S I think I would overcall 3NT, though of course if partner has a singleton spade you could be missing 6D. You might double with a view to jumping to 3D next time but unless LHO passes and partner bids 2C, that will not be possible – double followed by a non-jump 3D does not really do the hand justice. 3NT might not make if an opponent has DQ-x-x and partner has no help in spades – but you cannot really not bid it.
