[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Julian,

Thanks again for responding to my follow up post.  That was really helpful as i hadn’t considered the notion of East being the one to take responsibility for bidding Blackwood due to his hand having many winners but fewer KCs.  It all makes sense when you know how!

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Thank you so much to all who replied.  Your responses were interesting and informative.  However, if it’s not too impertinent of me, could I press you, Julian (and others?) to complete the story.

There are 2 areas where I still don’t feel I’ve fully got it. One is how the bidding should have gone to Slam level and the second is how it would be completed in the scenario when we get to East bidding 4D.

In the latter part of my original post, I tried to apply Bernard’s teaching i.r.o. slams and suggested:-1H, 2D, 2S, 3H as the initial bids but worried that 3H might seem simple preference and doesn’t communicate East’s strength.  Would West, with his strength, decide to explore further? If so, he might cue bid Spades (hoping to hear about a control in Clubs from partner) and with a 4C response I suggest it would go (if I remember my RKCB continuations properly):

4NT (RKCB 1430),

5C  (1 KC),

5D (asking about trump Queen as now know we have all 5 KCs)

6D (trump Queen and K Diamonds, but not K Clubs)

Is that a reasonable progression and if so, after that do  I presume West just goes for 7 even although there’s a possible Club loser and the 2 small Spades?

The second uncertainty is if East ignores the Heart fit (because, to paraphrase Michael, she is mesmerised by the glittering Diamonds), and bids 4D either because West has wrongly jumped to 3S or , even with 2S, she felt she needed to communicate her strength by jumping, what does West do now?  This is the position we got to so far in your response, Julian.

West is at the 4 level without a fit but knows there’s lots of points between them so how does he find a NT contract, having passed by 3NT, with 2 small Clubs and he doesn’t know that partner has them stopped ?  Does he just go for Blackwood (which I presume would imply Diamonds as the Trump suit) and when he hears that East has the Ace Clubs does he go for 6D, 6NT or is there any way to know about the Diamond length such that he can be fairly sure he can discard his losers on them and go for 7?

Thank you in advance for bearing with me in my quest to understand how such a solid holding as this could  be bid to arrive at the appropriate contract when it doesn’t fit in with the textbook examples.

Stephen

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Thanks, both, for your responses. I was hoping for a “magic bullet” that would give me a guaranteed route to NT in all circumstances but at least now I know that’s not always possible.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Ian,

If you’re referring to the last hand in the seminar where west is in 6 Spades, Declarer has 4 Clubs (to the A, K, Q) and dummy has 3 small.  In order to be able to ruff the 4th Club in Dummy, declarer would have to play off 3 rounds first (i.e. before drawing more than 1 round of Trumps) to exhaust dummy’s Club holding before being able to Ruff.  That would require neither opponent to hold less than 3 otherwise they could get a ruff.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Ian,

My understanding is that if Opener bids a suit at the 1 level then rebids NT she is showing 15-19 HCPs.  if responder has bid at the 2 level, he is showing 10+.  Hence there is known to be a 25+ combined holding and so 2NT is game forcing.  Opener could go straight to 3NT but by only bidding 2 she allows room for further bidding if Responder turns out to be very strong and/or is very distributional  (but trusting partner to recognise 2NT in this sequence here as GF).

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Thank you Reg. That makes a lot of sense.

Much appreciated.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Just a gentle reminder to Stewart, and possibly others, that Bernard has already done some seminars on defence in his free sessions during lockdown.
Now I’m sure there is more that could be done but at least these are a good start. One additional area of defence that I believe is certainly worth consideration is signalling, a topic I think has been mentioned before.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

I would like to echo Julie’s comments that the site overall is excellent and has already exceeded my expectations too. Many of the suggestions seem fair enough (e.g. the too large red buttons) but none of the points are especially substantial – they are well-intentioned fine tunings.
One suggestion I want to make is to have consideration given to exploring whether there is scope to offer mentoring of less experienced players among the community establishing here. I’m doing that myself to a beginner in another online ‘club’ I’m involved with, (even though I’m not terribly experienced myself) so I recognise there is an element of commitment that is greater than simply offering to partner someone. To be of most value it requires the mentor to be prepared to give (hopefully considered) feedback to the partner, within the limits of the mentor’s ability, perhaps by email (or even a Zoom session?) and therefore require some notes to be taken at the time or spending a bit of time going over the history in BBO to remind oneself of the less good bidding/playing choices made, unless the mentor has unusually good recall of events.
My suggestion is not unselfish – I myself would be very pleased to have a more experienced player mentor me.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Julie,
My understanding is that it refers to a hand that is 5,4,2,2 which doesn’t meet the strict definition of balanced as it has 2 doubletons but is not very distributional either.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Thanks to all for the replies. I promise I’ll become a ‘glass half-full’ player rather than half-empty and be positive if the evidence that Bernard has set out is being met.
It’s also struck me that I’m quite relaxed about going for game when I’ve got 25-26 points and I don’t over-focus on what might go wrong there, so why not take the same attitude to slams. I will try to do so in future.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Doreen,
Like you I’m far from being an expert, but in hand 2 I think you’ll find that the bid of the opponent’s suit, in these circumstances, shows good support for partner’s overcalled suit (i.e. Spades). In a competitive auction, like this, simply raising your partner’s suit because you have support, is usually to show relative weakness but a fit with the overcall, (“bidding to the fit”) so if you want to show a stronger hand that also has support for the suit, you can’t bid the suit, the way you would if there hadn’t been bidding from the opponents. Hence this bid of their suit is used to show that combination of a reasonably good hand and support for partner.
As to the original question, I think leading the singleton heart in hand 2 is quite sensible choice (though here I’m really not on sure ground). To my naive level of understanding, it’s unlikely your partner is especially long in his opening suit (otherwise s/he would have rebid to compete) and as you only have 1, the opposition are likely to have at least 2 each. So, assuming your partner has the ace, (although as Brian Davies astutely pointed out, your partner was opening with 1 Heart so wasn’t particularly thinking about it being lead directing), then partner has a good chance of winning it and returning a heart for you to ruff. But as you say, I too would be interested in hearing the views of the more experienced members of our community.

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Hi all,
Thanks so much for all the replies, which all agreed with each other so that’s reassuring. Many also gave other little extras (e.g. the point about partner’s suit being one where I was singleton, hence shading down the valuation of my hand, or the explanation of a ‘high level’ reverse, to name but a few). Great to be part of such a supporting community.
Cheers to all.
Stephen

[STEPHEN HUGHES]

Patricia,
Thanks for the reply. My original post should have been more clear that the more general point I was trying to get clarity on was regarding the 3 level bid. Bernard, in his seminars, often talks about it being forcing to game (often when its a third bid having already made a 1 and 2 level bid). What I wasn’t clear about in general was if you had a hand on which it would be reasonable to bid 2 of a new suit after bidding 1 of your first suit (showing 5+ and 4+), say, with 12 to a poor 15, is it still right to bid the second suit at the 3 level because partner’s bid prevents you from showing it at the 2 level as here. Or, will it be rightly taken as forcing to game and so you’d only do it if you were strong enough to go to game with the information you have about partner’s strength (i.e. she’s 10+) and so you’d need to be a decent 15+.
Thanks again.
Stephen

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