Maine bridge

Occasionally, Kim and I are able to attend one of the Maine sectionals. For those of you who never play bridge far from a metropolitan area, you should give this kind of thing a try. The players are invariably friendly and over the years we have come to know many of them. The food is good and people are just, well, nice. And there's always a big welcome from Horace and Sonya who put on the tournaments. This weekend's tournament was in Bangor, about an hour's drive from Kim's mother's house.

This occasion was saddened by last week's death at 88 of Kim's aunt Helen, formerly a regular bridge player who sometimes played in the sectionals but mostly played in the non-sanctioned club game in Fairfield. Helen was more of a poker player than bridge player, though. She loved to go to Las Vegas whenever she got the chance, which was quite often. Invariably at these Maine tournaments, several people would ask after Aunt Helen when she wasn't there. She was a lot of fun to be around and we'll miss her a lot.

On Saturday, the cards were very much with us. It helps to be in control of the auction on a lot of hands. And, in particular, there were many opportunities for slam bidding in our direction and, because we are fairly regular partners and play quite a lot of gadgets, we usually do well in such circumstances. Of the 53 boards we played, we bid six slams and one was bid against us. We also missed a lay-down 6♠ on 23 hcp, but so did everyone else. It's true that one of our slams (6♦) didn't fare so well (down 2 for -100) but, as it turned out, 5♥ was always making the other way so we ended up with almost a top board. I will return to this board later.

Kim was also a demon, nay ruthless, defender, with the result that in the afternoon we went plus on 19 of 27 boards ending up with a personal best score of 74%.

Here's a slam from the evening session where our agreements were severely put to the test and, fortunately, were up to snuff.

Kim opened 1♦ as dealer (board one – none vulnerable) and RHO bid 1♠. My hand: ♠94 ♥J5 ♦AJT52 ♣KJ85. Although I dislike making a cue bid with two losers in the enemy suit, I chose to bid 2♠. LHO now bid 3♠. Kim bid 4♣ which, since she was going past 3♦ (our guaranteed contract in this auction) showed extras and, since it also bypassed 3NT (which I might have been able to call from my side if she had doubled), suggested at least a healthy interest in a slam. With nothing obvious to cue-bid, I had to mark time with a 4♦ call. Admittedly, I was minimum for my bidding so far, but my hand had improved significantly with the double fit and I had little wastage (the ♥J). 4♦ was forcing of course, because Kim would not suggest playing in slam and then pass in a part-score bid. I considered 5♣ but I try to make it a rule never to cue-bid a king if I'm not going to be the declarer – it's much too easy for LHO to double for a club lead, holding AQ or something else good in clubs.

Kim now made the key call of the auction: 4NT. I admit that it took me quite a little while to interpret this, although we've discussed it many times in the past. Since 4♥ would have been asking for key-cards (we play "Kickback"), 4NT now does duty as showing a heart control. Knowing Kim as well as I do, she couldn't possibly be still thinking about slam if she didn't have both clubs and spades controlled. But she still didn't have quite enough to be sure twelve tricks would be there (indeed, slam can't make in our other nine-card fit, clubs). So, with my surfeit of working cards, I was able to confidently bid 6♦. Twelve tricks were easy on any lead, but we were the only pair of 13 to bid the slam. Kim's hand: ♠7 ♥A92 ♦KQ43 ♣AQ732. Note that our opponents could have bid a quasi-profitable sacrifice in 6♠ for a loss of 500 instead of 920. But in that field, they'd have scored the same zero.

Here's an amusing auction from the evening session: 4♣¹ p 4♦² p 4♠³ p 4NT⁴ p 5♦⁵ p 6NT all pass. (1) "Namyats" showing a good hand with eight or more hearts (could be seven if solid) with typically an ace or a couple of kings on the side; (2) I think we probably have a slam; (3) I have the ace of spades; (4) how many key cards (for hearts) do you have altogether? (5) three. 6NT made exactly (on any lead) for a top shared with one other pair. Why do I think it amusing? Despite us having 11 hearts between us, neither of us ever put a heart bid on the table.

I think our only mix-up of the day was the slam that went down but which turned out to be an excellent sacrifice (mentioned above). With nobody vulnerable, I dealt myself ♠AT7 ♥4 ♦KJ873 ♣QJ63, and opened 1♦. LHO overcalled 2♥. Partner bid 3♥ and RHO bid 4♥. Since 3♥ took us past 3♦, this was clearly game forcing. Whether or not it was forcing all the way to five of a minor is not entirely clear. First, let's think about the calls that partner did not make: double which, if followed by a new suit, would be game-forcing; 2♠ which would be non-forcing (as would 3♣); 3♦ (simply competitive); 3♠ or 4♣ which would be fit-showing jumps showing a good fit with a good suit; 4♥ which would be a splinter raise of diamonds.

As with most cue-bids, there are several possible meanings for 3♥:

• Partner, please bid 3NT if you have the hearts well stopped;
• I have a diamond fit and am willing to play 4♦ opposite a flat minimum;
• I have a very strong hand and right now, I'm not quite sure where we should end up so please tell me more about your hand.

After the 4♥ bid on my right, I reasoned that we were now forced to play at least at the five-level. Therefore, I felt that an immediate bid of 5♣ would show the weakest possible hand, offering clubs as a second place to play and fulfilling the third interpretation of the 3♥ call. That is therefore what I bid. 

Kim assumed that this meant I had extras (I could have passed) and so bid 6♦. No double was forthcoming (we had confidently bid this with no suggestion of sacrificing). The ♥K was led and dummy turned out to be ♠QJ3 ♥J ♦A6542 ♣KT74. After winning the first trick, LHO switched to a spade. But diamonds were 3-0 offside and I still had to lose a club for -100. As mentioned above, the opponents could make 5♥ (six if a club isn't led) and our blunder actually earned us 7 matchpoints out of 8. 

So, what's the proper treatment? I'm not sure. But I'm coming around to Kim's way of thinking for the following reasons:

• she might have wanted to play 4♠ all along but didn't want to jump straight to 4♠ because that would tend to shut out the possibility of a spade slam – still, I'm not sure about this because double followed by a spade bid would have had a similar meaning albeit perhaps with fewer spades;
• she might have wanted to bid 4NT which, I think, would be a slam try with a heart stopper all along (5NT would be pick-a-slam).

I therefore invite your comments on this subject of bids by the partner of a cue-bidder. 

However, on a day when the bridge gods are with you and you can do no wrong, even a mixup like this one can turn out to be rosy!

Every bid tells a story

This is a topic I've been thinking about writing on for some time now.  EBTAS is essentially a group of sub-principles of bridge bidding:

• the principle of no undos;
• the principle of telling your story once only;
• the principle of substantive discretionary bids;
• the principle of fast arrival;
• the curious principle of the dog in the night-time.

Each call you make, be it a suit you bid, notrump, pass, double or redouble tells partner something about your hand that he didn't already know.  Unless you're deliberately psyching, every bid you make should continue to refine the description of your hand.  This is especially true of non-forced bids, for a forced bid may have to be made on non-ideal cards.

Let's examine the sub-principles one by one.  That there are no undos is self-evident.  It's incontrovertible.  To take an extreme example, partner open 1♣ and you hold ♠KQJ5 ♥5432 ♦Q86 ♣54.  You decide you like spades better than hearts so you bid 1♠.  Partner now rebids 1NT.  If you now bid 2♥, your partner will now "know" that you are 5-4 or 5-5 (or more extreme still) in the major suits.  No matter how you bid from here on, partner will never believe you are 4-4.

"Don't tell your story twice" is what every novice bridge player is told again and again.  Let's say you hold ♠KQJ8752 ♥5 ♦Q6 ♣542, non-vulnerable versus not.  You deal and open 3♠ and LHO bids 4♥, partner passes and RHO passes too.  You now bid 4♠.  You've told the same story twice.  You had a reasonable 3♠ call that pretty much described your hand.  Partner decided not to act over 4♥.  You have no reason at all to bid again.  Partner might have ♠4 ♥QT85 ♦A875 ♣K976.  Between you, you have a likely one spade, two or even three hearts, one or two diamonds and possibly a club on defense.  On offense, you have 6 spades and 1 diamond.  Enough said.

The principle of substantive discretionary bids ("the principle of stuff", for short) is my own rule and I admit that I'm still looking for a pithy name for it.  I've never seen it espoused per se by any expert, but nevertheless, I think it probably is considered to be plain common sense.  It basically says that if you make a non-forced (discretionary) bid in a suit, then you show some values in that suit.  The kind of values you'd like to be led to if partner gets on lead.  So, any time you make a discretionary bid (where pass is a logical alternative) you show "stuff".  Let's say that your hand is ♠Q8752 ♥5 ♦A6 ♣AQJ42, not-vulnerable vs. vulnerable.  Partner deals and passes, your RHO opens 1♦ and you bid 1♠.  LHO makes a negative double and partner passes.  RHO now bids 2♥.  Do you bid 3♣?  It's reasonable, maybe not automatic but generally OK.  If partner does happen to get on lead, you'll welcome a club lead.  But suppose your hand is instead ♠AQJ42 ♥5 ♦A6 ♣Q8752.  The auction goes the same way.  Should you bid 3♣ now?  Some might but I wouldn't.  You barely have any "stuff" in your club suit.  Instead, with this hand, I might bid 2♠ at my first opportunity (although admittedly it's heavy for a jump even opposite a pass).

Occasionally, you will be dealt a very good hand except that your long suit is rather weak.  You simply have too many points to pass.  So an overcall is not truly discretionary because you feel you have to do something.  Partner will expect a better suit, but the overall strength of the hand should help to ameliorate any issue arising.

Let's not get confused with normal constructive bidding here.  Suppose the auction went 1♠ pass 1NT pass.  Everyone on this planet would rebid 2♣, regardless of which of the two hands they hold.  They would simply be "patterning out". Their rebid is not discretionary, especially so if the 1NT was forcing (regardless, it's incumbent upon opener to rebid a suit with such an unbalanced hand). No inference could be made by partner that you have better cards in one black suit versus the other.

The principle of fast arrival is too well known to require any long-winded elaboration from me, but let's just put it in this way: if you have two ways of getting to a particular contract all on your own, the indirect route shows the stronger hand.  Let's take a simple example.  You are dealt ♠AQJ742 ♥5 ♦K6 ♣Q852 and partner opens 1♦.  You bid 1♠.  Partner now bids 1NT showing 12-14 hcp.  You know you want to be in 4♠, but you have two ways to get there: bid 4♠ immediately or go through new minor forcing.  The principle of fast arrival says that if you jump straight to 4♠, you don't expect partner to bid again – he's limited his hand quite narrowly.  But if you bid 2♣ and then over the likely 2♦, 2♥, 2NT or 3♣ rebid you now bid 4♠, you are saying that you would be interested in slam if partner has good working cards and/or a spade fit.   Perhaps you would need to have at least ♠AQJ742 ♥5 ♦K6 ♣A852 to use this route.

Finally, we have the curiously named "curious principle of the dog in the night-time" (dog principle for short).  I admit to naming this one too.  The allusion of course is to Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's short story "Silver Blaze".  Inspector Gregory asks "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"  Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."  Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."  Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Let's say that your partner opens 1♥ and your right-hand opponent bids 1♠.  You cue-bid 2♠, which is of course forcing to 3♥.  LHO doubles.  Partner passes.  That's to say he does nothing.  But nothing is something in this context.  Partner had the choice of calling 4♥, 3♥, 2NT, 3NT, redouble, or three or four of some minor suit.  But he did none of these things.  His pass is forcing on you to do something (you've already told him that we want to play at least 3♥), but he is leaving the door open for you to do something below the level of 3♥ if you wish, such as to make a game try.  Most probably, partner has no extra distribution but most probably he has extra high-card points.  With neither of these, he would simply bid 3♥ (fast arrival) effectively closing the door to any game tries you might otherwise have made.  Of course, different partnerships might have different agreements, but I think this would be the standard agreement without any discussion.

Now, for an example of the principle in action: Every bid tells a story.  Let's say that you pick up the following hand: ♠AQJ9 ♥754 ♦KJ6 ♣K92.  What you have is a nice balanced 14 count.  You open 1♣ and partner bids 1♦.  RHO now bids 1♥.  You have a bit of a problem.  Should you bid 1♠ (and perhaps suggest at least four clubs), or should you make a support double?  Or fib a bit and bid 1NT?  Or should you pass?  I think the latter is too wimpy.  And I think 1NT is too dishonest.  Let's say that you bid 1♠, and later you show support for diamonds.  You are showing better than a minimum hand (fast arrival).  With, say, ♠KQJ9 ♥754 ♦KJ6 ♣Q92 (in my opinion, not really an opening hand at all playing standard American or 2/1), you would reluctantly perhaps have to make the support double and potentially miss your spade fit (although if partner's hand is good he will check back somehow).

Now, suppose that over our 1♠, partner bids 1NT and RHO bids 2♦.  Do you double now?  If you have the 14 point hand above, you have already described your hand reasonably accurately (partner may expect a fourth club but will realize that you might not have had a perfect 1NT rebid after the heart overcall).  If you double here, you're telling partner that you have a balanced hand with defense in both red suits (you won't be surprised if LHO takes a preference to hearts so you'll want to have some defense there too).  And considerable extra values, given that you would have opened with 1NT if you had a balanced 15-17.  Perhaps this hand: ♠AQJ9 ♥KJ4 ♦KJ6 ♣K92.

Thus, if the auction goes as described, partner will really expect you to have a rather good defensive hand.  If he should chance to double 2♥ with ♠T2 ♥AT2 ♦QT84 ♣T765 (maybe he shouldn't!), he's going to be awfully disappointed if you show up with ♠KQJ9 ♥754 ♦KJ6 ♣Q92.

Another example comes from a common situation:  ♠KQT92 ♥74 ♦KJ6 ♣K92.  You open 1♠, LHO bids 2♥, partner passes, RHO comes in with 2♠.  Do you double?  Of course not!  Partner already knows you have five spades (assuming you're playing 5-card majors) and is planning to lead them whatever you do.  On this occasion, it's true that you have nice ones.  But double here shows extras.  Possibly just a sixth spade, but generally speaking you show more than a minimum opening.

So, take care with those frivolous bids or doubles that "can't possibly come to any harm".  You might get away with it when the next player bids something, but partner may take some later action in the fond illusion that you actually had something for your earlier action.

Coping with delayed competition

One of the interesting aspects of club bridge, even local tournament bridge, is that people do unexpected things late in the auction.  There are well-thought-out systems for coping with direct overcalls, including the negative double, forcing (and also non-forcing) new suits, fit-showing jumps, cue-bids, etc.  You're not likely to do well in tournament play without having a good understanding of these methods.

Then there's the somewhat less frequent interference after opener and responder have both bid.  Intervention here needs to be more circumspect, but it happens frequently enough that we have methods to cope with it: support doubles, etc.

Once we've got through the first round of bidding and the opponents have passed, we might reasonably expect a clear field to ourselves, apart from  the occasional lead-directing double, etc.  But there are some players who, either didn't sort their hand properly the first time, or they have a death wish, or some other obscure reason to decide that now, after the opponents have exchanged copious information, would be a great time to introduce that suit that they didn't think could be bid in an earlier round.

Occasionally, this will be a good player who has decided to "await developments" with a hand that is hard to bid initially, maybe a two-suited hand with around 9 high-card points, or perhaps something like: ♠65 ♥5 ♦AQ62 ♣AT9754, as described by George Rosenkranz in his wonderful book Tips for Tops.  In this case, holding these cards fourth-in-hand at favorable vulnerability, he sat back and listened to the following auction: 2♦¹ – 2NT² – 3♦³ – 3♥⁴ – 4♥⁵ passed around to George.  ¹Flannery, ²game Forcing shape enquiry, ³4513, ⁴any extras? ⁵no.  George now bid his clubs, was doubled and played the hand for down two, thus saving 320 points.

George knew what he was doing, but most of the people who come into the auction late do not have the right hand for it at all. Here's a case in point: my hand (vulnerable vs. not): ♠AJ84 ♥T ♦A8742 ♣J52.  My partner dealt and opened 1♥, which didn't thrill me.  RHO passed and I bid 1♠, obviously.  LHO passed and partner rebid 1NT.  At this point, RHO decides to come into the auction.  Let's see, her partner obviously has nothing much, the opponents have no fit and we don't even know if my hand is going to try for game.  But she bid 2♣, notwithstanding all the good reasons not to.  So what am I to do?

What would I have done over a pass?   Most probably, I would have passed.  I don't have five spades and 2♦ would be game-forcing check-back the way we play.  I could make a uni-lateral decision and bid 2♣, forcing 2♦ and then pass it, but that's pushing the envelope a little for a normal match-point situation.  Aha, thought I, this interference has allowed me to bid a perfectly natural 2♦ which presumably won't be considered forcing, since it is in competition.  My partner thought it was forcing, however, and bid 2NT, despite having KJx of diamonds, which went an inglorious one down (3♦ would also have been down 1 while 2NT should have been down 2).

This led me to start thinking: should it be forcing? and if so why?  I posed the question to a good player friend and he said that he thought it would not be forcing without discussion.

Let's think it through.  If I want to force, presumably because I have five spades and invitational or better values, I could cuebid 3♣.  If partner has a minimum, and three spades, he will bid 3♠, otherwise he will bid 3NT or 4♠ with a maximum.  What if he doesn't have three spades or a maximum, though?  He could bid 3♦ with tolerance for diamonds.  But that's a bit risky.  So, 3♣ is just a too pushy for a forcing bid.  Therefore, I there's a good case that 2♦ should be forcing (not to game, but for one round).  It fits with the general principle that responder's new suits are always forcing.

Far more flexible however (see the previous blogs on doubles), is the simple double.  Since we have an unbid fourth suit available, we could consider it to be an "action", "BOP" or two-way double.  But, according to my doubles rules, double must be penalty since 1NT was "to play".  Also, a BOP double tends to be made by the player sitting under the bidder.

I didn't really feel that J52 was good enough to make a penalty double.  But given that we couldn't play in 2♦, for reasons described above, it was going to give us our best possible result of +100.  As it was, we were -100 for 2NT down 1 (actually we should have been down 2).

So, what's the moral of this story?  Dealing with crazy people at the bridge table can be tricky.  But here's a suggestion:  the only forcing bid in this sequence is 3♣ and it is forcing to game.  2♦ should not be forcing.  The sequence simply doesn't admit an invitational hand, though if partner does have three spades and takes a preference to spades (he might do it with two though), and we could then invite with 3♠.

What sort of hand do you think my RHO held for her late entry into the auction? ♠T95 ♥AK752 ♦Q ♣KQ76!