Reasonable shot or shot in the dark?
This entry was posted on 6/16/2007 11:27 PM and is filed under The Bad.
Playing with Jeff on BBO you pick up in 2nd unfavorable:
AKQJ52 / 653 / Q92 / A
You open 1 Spade, he bids 1NT, what's your poison?
I got carried away on this hand and bid 3NT. Anytime you see a long solid suit, you're going to think about 3NT, especially red at IMPs, but really, how many hands can he have where he's passing 3 Spades and 3NT is any good? About the only time you'll miss game when you'd probably want to be there is if he has something like 4 rags in hearts and AJ of Diamonds as his whole hand and then it's about 50% (in theory, a little less, in practice, probably a little more.) One of the big minuses of the hand that I failed to appreciate fully during the auction was the stiff Ace of Clubs. If Jeff has a red Ace and the King of Clubs, we're probably toast, because either the opps will cash 4 Hearts and arrange to attack his Ace of Diamonds from the appropriate side or they'll knock out his Ace of Hearts on the go and he'll never get back to his hand.
3NT went all pass and just before my RHO led the Heart Jack I got to see Jeff's hand:
AKQJ52 / 653 / Q92 / A
8 / Q9 / KT8 / KT98542
Yuck. About the only silver lining on this cloud is that Jeff almost surely would have bid game over 3 Spades anyway. But this hand illustrates very well what an overbid 3NT was.
Jeff played low from dummy and his RHO played low! I felt relief for a split second until I realized that we're still a LONG way from making this.
Jeff ran all his Spades, pitching Clubs (I'd have pitched a Heart first, but that's more a question of psychology than technique,) cashed the Club Ace and played a Diamond off to his King. His LHO, still refusing to believe that his partner had a Heart card (from his duck at trick 1) returned his last Diamond, the JACK, and Jeff scored up 6 Spades, 1 Heart, 2 Diamonds and 2 Clubs. Easy game. One thing's for sure, playing against mediocre opps makes it hard to improve your bidding.
+660 was worth a little over 10 IMPs. Not surprisingly, nobody duplicated that result. Surprisingly, we were the only pair in 3NT (I thought that was a pretty normal spot.)
Opening Leader
T974 / AJT8 / AJ / J63
Opening Ducker
63 / K742 / 76543 / Q7
