Four red flags

In a recent ACBL robot tournament on BBO, I was faced with this decision on the last board:

To overcall or not to overcall? That is the question. I see four red flags here:

• the vulnerability;
• poor suit, poor shape;
• partner is a passed hand;
• three losers in opener's suit.

Let's discuss these in a bit more depth:

The first and most obvious is that we are red and they are white. If I'm wrong when I bid 2D, it could be very expensive while even being right won't likely gain very much.

The second and almost equally obvious problem is that our diamond suit isn't very good--we're supposed to have six for this bid, right? And we have the worst possible shape for an overcall: 5332. And we're missing the J, 9 and 8, any of which would be potentially useful cards in this suit.

Third, and a factor to which many players pay insufficient attention: partner is a passed hand. It's possible that we have a game, but it's against the odds. With this being a robot ("best hand"), then we know that no player has a 14 point hand. So, the remaining 26 points are probably more or less equally distributed, with a preponderance in the East hand (recall that he is a third-seat opener). And, if partner has a decent hand with a diamond fit, the opponents will probably be able to outbid us in a major suit.

Fourth is a factor which I learned long ago from Howard Piltch. Never make a questionable overcall with three losers in the opener's suit. "That's how you get dropped from a team," I recall him saying. Even Qxx isn't much better than xxx when your LHO leads the suit and it goes K, A, ruff.

I therefore eschewed the overcall. When my left-hand opponent bid 2D, I breathed a sigh of relief. Eventually, they made it to 4S which drifted off a trick so I ended up +50.

It was a small tournament (six playing this board) and four of the other five chose to overcall. Predictably, this was followed by pass, pass, double, all pass. At each of those tables, the West robot chose a very strange card (the 8) with which to ruff the second heart trick and the declarers escaped for -200 when it should have been -500. So, we two passers gained 4.8 IMPs, the overcallers lost 2.4 IMPs.

Here's the whole hand:

The four overcallers were all experienced BBOers. What is it that makes them feel that 2D was the correct call? Or were they just unlucky? I think not.

Tram tickets

I probably spend far too much time reading and re-reading British bridge books. There are certain phrases or words that I do enjoy hearing from (this) newer side of the Atlantic about the older side. "The knave" is one I've mentioned before. "Drifting off one" is another. And while we're about it, why can't we use the same table numbering in Swiss events as they do over there? Instead of having to go and look at the current standings on the wall, they always know how they're doing simply by looking at the table number that they're assigned to.

But I digress. One of the other British phrases that comes up quite often in these books, especially the older ones, is "bidding on tram tickets." There haven't been trams in England during my lifetime (well, actually there were a some for a few years in certain cities) so this is either a very old expression from the early days of bridge, or perhaps more of a European thing.

You may recall me railing about "entry fee bids" in this blog (for example To overcall or not to overcall...) as it is certainly one of my pet peeves when my partners do it. The particular situation that gets my goat is when partner makes an overcall in third (or fourth seat) after I have denied the values for an opening bid. I don't mean a jump overcall (a.k.a. "pressure bid") as that is a very effective tactic I like to use myself. I mean making a normal non-jump overcall without a good suit when our chances of buying a good contract are slim.

But fortunately, other people's partners do it more than mine. We don't always manage to catch them speeding but a hand came up in a recent club game which was very satisfying. Here's your hand: ♠KJ864 ♥T75 ♦QT2 ♣T6. It's "Love all" as the Brits like to say. Partner deals and passes, RHO opens with 1♦. Your call?

Did I hear you say 1♠? Have you been paying attention? Apart from partner having passed and your suit being moth-eaten, you have a bad holding in their suit (three losers when the third round gets ruffed) and nothing else. Tram tickets, in other words.

Did I hear you say 2♠? That's a bit more to my liking though it's a bit rich for my blood. Maybe if we were at favorable vulnerability and I really needed to create some action.

So, let's say you do overcall a spade. LHO bids 2NT (not alerted but in response to your partner's query, explained as invitational with a spade stopper). Your partner now compounds the error with a truly dreadful raise to 3♠ on a flat hand with three card support (see Interference over invitations considered harmful). RHO (that would be me) with a twelve count, a singleton spade and no interest in accepting the invitation, doubles. Down three for 500 on a nothing hand that the opponents weren't going to bid game anyway. It turns out that we (said opponents) can, with careful play, make 4♥ on a Moysian fit but we will never get there.

When chances of buying the contract are small because partner is a passed hand, and when we don't have a good suit we really want led, and we're not taking up much bidding room, what's the point of overcalling? It's quite likely to get partner involved when they almost had an opening bid themselves and thus the chances of doubling the opponents into game or suffering a big penalty ourselves are just too great. Sometimes our "noise" simply helps them make the hand.

Silence can be golden.

To overcall or not to overcall...

... that is the question.  And it is a complex question, much more so than opening the bidding, which is, most of the time, determined by the system the partnership is playing.  My experience suggests that overcalls are, in general, almost as poorly understood as doubles.  Mike Lawrence, and probably others, has written an entire book about overcalling.

When you open the bidding with a normal one-of-something bid, especially in first or second seat, you have various reasons, depending on your system.  However, the primary reason is that you expect to win more points by bidding than by passing.  That's because you feel that there is on balance a greater-than-even probability that your partnership can make a game or at least a part score.  We note in passing that bidding systems are designed principally for bidding game contracts because they score so highly and are frequent.  In other words, you are essentially saying:

• I have better than an average hand – let's start communicating to see what we can make;
• if you also have a bit more than an average hand, we may well have game;
• if not, we hope at least to be able to compete for the part score.

Note that there is nothing said about the quality of the suit you open (if any).  Nor do you suggest that said suit is your longest, although often it will be.  There is some danger in opening the bidding, but not very much.  If you have a balanced 12 or 13 count and partner has a balanced 0-5 count, you surely won't be able to make anything at all.  But, unless you're vulnerable and the opponents are particularly well placed to diagnose your problem, you won't be doubled and go for a telephone number.  It can happen but not often.

The world of direct, non-jump overcalls is completely different. By definition, your right-hand-opponent has already announced an opening hand so the probability of our side making a game is considerably reduced.  Still, especially if partner is not a passed-hand, we might be able to compete for a part-score without giving up a large penalty, although the danger of a penalty is now much greater than when opening the bidding.  The better defined RHO's hand is, the greater the danger.  If, for example, RHO has opened with an artificial bid, the danger is quite low.  If RHO has opened 1NT showing a balanced hand with a narrowly limited range, the danger is very high.

With all this possible danger, should we ever overcall at all?  Yes, but we should be clear about what it is that we are trying to accomplish.  First of all, if we pass, the opponents will likely enjoy a very pleasant constructive auction using any and all of their gadgets.  On the other hand, our overcall will add at least two calls to LHO's options which would not otherwise be available: pass and double.  And, assuming that lefty wasn't planning on bidding the suit we choose, he can now bid that suit as a cue-bid. But we can take away some of his possible bids too.  Let's say lefty was planning to respond one heart to RHO's 1♦ opening.  If we overcall 1♠, then 1♥ will no longer be available.  If we overcall 2♣, then we eliminate two other possible bids as well.  Occasionally though, we make a suitable call available that wasn't right before.  If, for example, the opponents are playing inverted minors, the simple raise to 2♦ based on 6-9 points and a fit can't be used, unless there's an intervening overcall.

There's another reason to overcall, especially at matchpoints where the opening lead is quite likely to affect the number of tricks taken.  Suppose LHO becomes declarer and partner is therefore on lead.  If he doesn't have an obvious sequence, he may choose the wrong suit.  We can overcall to suggest a good lead in our suit.

So, an overcall should have a purpose.  The more unfavorable the vulnerability (and therefore the greater the danger), the more valid reasons or purposes an overcall should have.  And don't forget that even if our overcall escapes an immediate penalty, it may yet help the declarer to land a contract that otherwise he might not make without a roadmap.  Or, if the suit is somewhat motheaten, the overcall may induce partner to make a lead that is bad for us.  And, perhaps even more significant, is that if our suit is bad, it increases the chances of LHO holding, and recognizing, a stack.  There are some hands where even 9xxx in LHO's hand will generate a penalty of, say, 200.  But unless that player is sure his side doesn't have a game, you will not be left "holding the baby".  But if LHO is looking at AQT86 in your suit, he will be itching to penalize you, particularly if you are at the two-level and/or vulnerable.

Therefore, it's almost essential that our suit is a good one unless we are likely to be on lead or we have favorable vulnerability and can bid at the one-level (Hugh Kelsey observes that it's a "moral certainty" that they won't double for penalties under such circumstances).  So let's refer to this situation (including any time RHO makes an artificial bid such as a precision 1♣) as "green".  When RHO opens a weak 1NT, or when we are vulnerable versus not, we'll call it "red" (interfering over their strong 1NT is a different topic altogether).  "Amber" is everything else, but note that it's more dangerous to overcall a major suit opening than a minor suit because RHO's shape is then much better defined (and you may have to bid at the two-level).  Here are my suggestions for the overcall properties required for the three conditions.  When "red", the suit should be good (not merely lead-directing) as well as the hand.  This is especially true opposite a passed hand.  If you simply want to preempt and/or suggest a lead opposite a passed hand, you can jump.

Note also that when judging the strength of our hand, we are judging it as an offensive hand.  If it's defensive in nature we can pretty much sit back and wait to defend.  Therefore we should discount secondary honors (quacks) outside our suit and we should ignore them completely if they are in the opponents' suit.  Even kings lose their luster if they're in the enemy suit.

Table of required reasons for the three conditions:

Condition	Lead-directing/good suit	Good Hand	Preemptive
Red	yes (good suit)	yes	?
Amber		any two
Green		any

Of course, if your primary purpose is lead-direction, then you should probably have a reasonable expectation that partner will end up on lead.  And note that unless we're in the green condition, any overcall which uses no space at all, such as 1♥ over 1♦ must be based on a good hand and good suit. Notice that I haven't said anything about point count.  But it seems to me that, especially opposite a passed hand, the term "good hand" should be the kind of hand you might have opened if given the chance.  That's why I cringe when I hear people say, after giving up 500 or 800, "it was only an overcall!"

So, why is this on my mind?  A hand came up in a recent matchpoint game with a "very experienced" pickup partner.  On one of the early boards, I picked up the following hand: ♠Q6 ♥K8762 ♦J53 ♣A96.  We were not vulnerable versus vulnerable and I passed as dealer.  LHO opened 1♦ and partner overcalled with 1♠.  RHO raised to 2♦ and I felt justified in entering with 2♥.  Partner now raised to 3♥ and LHO reopened with 4♦.  I felt fully entitled now to double this given that they were vulnerable and I expected to score +140 our way (partner, opposite my passed hand, had overcalled and freely raised my suit).  Try as we might, there was no way to set 4♦ and we suffered a -710.

Afterwards I took a look at my partner's hand: ♠KJ753 ♥T953 ♦Q2 ♣J3 – and found that it had none of the three characteristics described above.  First of all, the strength of the hand, bearing in mind that I had already passed, is in my opinion woefully inadequate.  Take away the ♦Q (because it's in their suit) and discounting the ♣J, this is a four-point hand!  The chances that we can effectively compete opposite partner's passed hand are not good.  Next, let's look at the suit quality.  Given the dearth of intermediates (Ts, 9s) this suit is pretty bad.  Do we really want partner leading spades?  Maybe, but only if he has no other reasonable lead, or if he happens to have the Q or A.  Finally, was there any preemptive value in the overcall?  Hardly.  If the opponents opt for a heart contract, will we be dejected?  Not at all.  We don't mind that much if they bid hearts.  We'd prefer them not to find a good fit in clubs though, so to my mind there's a case to be made here for a 2♠ overcall, but not 1♠.

The one thing the bid did accomplish was to scare the opponents away from playing notrump for which they were destined (par for them was 130 in diamonds or clubs but only 120 in notrump).  Yet, partner would have easily been excused for this ill-conceived overcall if only she hadn't tried to push her luck by raising my hearts and thus confirming real values.  I was a passed hand, so even if we hadn't agreed "non-forcing constructive" advances, she could quite reasonably pass my 2♥ bid which looked like a pretty good thing (1♥ is in fact the only contract we could have made our way so we'd be only -50).

So, I ask, what was the point of overcalling 1♠ here?  In my opinion there was none at all.  The immediate danger might have been small, given the "green" condition, but that required getting in and out quickly, something that was not achieved.  Even if my RHO had ended up in 1NT (or 2NT) and I had led spades, declarer could hold up once and our defense would now be completely dead.

Good/bad overcalls

So, you've probably been wondering why there haven't been any hands in this blog lately.  Good question.  Sometimes, I'm constrained by not being able to show you what terrible things my partners did because of common decency.  Sometimes, I do something so awful myself that I can't bring myself to show you.  But the opponents, I figure, are fair game, provided of course that I don't actually name names.

Yesterday evening at the club, Len and I were having a good game but we got two bottoms after opponents made what I would call really bad overcalls.  But do you see the irony of this?  Maybe the kind of overcalls they make are actually good overcalls.  After all, they're not getting punished and they're getting tops, thus giving them positive reinforcement.

I admit to being keen on making "pressure bids".  These are jump overcalls when my partner has already passed (but not when he's passed over an opening bid because he might have a good defensive hand then).  Especially, white on red, these can work well.  A pressure bid is a wide-ranging jump overcall (or preempt) that can be significantly flawed by any (or all) of the following: 1) a card "short"; 2) missing honors in the suit; 3) stray quacks (even Kings sometimes) in outside suits.  The purpose of this unilateral attack on the enemy is to take away bidding room while you can rest safely in the knowledge that partner won't raise without a very suitable hand.  Here's a perfect situation:  partner deals and passes (we are not-vul vs. vul) and RHO bids 1♣.  You hold: ♠84 ♥KT8654 ♦932 ♣Q4.  It looks quite likely that LHO's natural bid is going to be 1♠ (although 1D, 1NT or 2♣ are possible too).  So you bid 2♥, taking away the entire one-level and lower two-level including all of the likely responses.  This is a sound tactic at matchpoints.  You might even make the same bid with ♠84 ♥KT865 ♦J932 ♣Q4.  Every so often you will go -1100 but most of the time you will pressure the opponents into over, or sometimes under, bidding.  If your partner does end up on lead and happens to have ♥Qxx or even ♥Jxx, a heart lead will probably not go amiss.  At matchpoints, these minor improvements (or averages) will outweigh the occasional zero.  That's the theory, anyway.

But what is the point of the following overcall?  You deal yourself ♠8 ♥J75432 ♦KQT6 ♣AT all red.  You pass and then when RHO opens 1♦, you now jump to 2♥.  Not only is your LHO already a passed hand, and you have a really bad suit, but you have tons of defense!  Two tricks at least in opener's suit and the ♣A!  LHO doubles, RHO (that would be me), after some thought, passes it out and you go down 2 for -500 when partner puts down a worthless dummy.  LHO has to lead his singleton ♥Q in order to get the full 800 penalty (my hand ended up getting strip-squeezed because I ran out of safe exit cards).  So the bad overcall has gained a top.  But is it bridge?

What about the following specimen?  Again you are the dealer and give yourself ♠543 ♥KJ3 ♦KJT65 ♣J6 at favorable vulnerability.  Again it goes all pass and this time your RHO (that would be me again) opens 1♣.  Now, I can see bidding 2♦ here.  You have a fine suit and your bid would take away the one level.  I probably wouldn't do it though because the shape is awful and your major suits give you no real reason to want to push the opponents around.  But I would never in a million years bid 1♦!  First of all, that bid should show a much better hand.  And if you had such a hand wouldn't you have opened 1♦?  The shape is still awful and although you would like a diamond lead, it's not a good enough suit to force partner to lead a diamond when he has some other natural lead.  So, what happened?  The opponents (Len and I) had a mixup (more my fault than Len's) and stopped in 4♣, making an "overtrick" for 170 while all the time 6♠ is cold.  On this occasion, the diamond overcaller could actually have taken a successful sacrifice over 6♠ in 7♦ and gained an all-important 30 points.  But does that make this horrible overcall right?

I'm reluctant to change my overcalling style based on these (and other) lucky results.  But it really depresses me that people can play so badly and end up smelling like roses!