Had a rocky half-set with Jeff tonight. First a couple of bidding problems:
4th seat unfavorable:
K8742 / 7 / 982 / J865
LHO passes, pard bids 1 Heart, RHO bids 2 Diamonds. Your call.
Doubling here isn't bridge, is it?
You pass, LHO bids 3 Diamonds. Pard doubles. Pass to you.
Now do you leap to 4 Spades to show your maximum pass? Do you pass and bang down your singleton Heart, eager to collect those lucrative white doubled undertricks? I dunno, still seems like you need an awful lot for game. I bid 3 only Spades.
AJ96 / AKQJT2 / QT / 4
K8742 / 7 / 982 / J865
Jeff probably would have gone if his minors were reversed (not that it made any difference on the actual hand) but wisely deduced that his QT of diamonds might as well have been xx. It's still not like game is laydown, but you definitely want to be there red at IMPs. +170 was lose almost 6 IMPs (most of the folks in game are in 4 Hearts, so a lot of singleton Spade leads made the play of the hand rather mundane.)
NEXT
2nd all white
T96 / QT3 / KQ32 / AK6
RHO bids 1 Diamond. Just shy of a 1NT bid (if we were playing standard NT overcalls, which we weren't.) You pass. LHO passes. Pard bids 4 Hearts. Pass to you ...
I probably should have bid 5 Clubs and then 5 Hearts over 5 Diamonds. The problem is if partner has a cheesy (in context) hand such as AQ AKxxxxx xx Qx is he really going to cooperate over 5 Clubs? Or maybe I'm supposed to bid the slam if Jeff doesn't cooperate (because if he doesn't have a Diamond control, he surely has a Spade control) and not bid the slam if he does cooperate. Anyway, I just bid Blackwood.
Jeff shows 3 Keycards and I bid 6 Hearts. Passed around to Righty, who applies the lash. Jeff, who doesn't redouble as much as he used to, sends it back, giving me cause for hope.
Are you ready to put down dummy?
Maybe you should be getting ready to declare.
You know that LHO has at most 1 point on this auction (probably not that much.) He has no idea what to lead (he probably isn't leading Hearts, but he might even do that.) You suspect RHO is doubling on the AK of Spades. If you put all that together, pulling to 6NT is a spectacular 'save' that probably would have won the day in this case. Of course, if partner has a singleton Spade, you've made the silliest-looking pull in the history of bridge.
We had 12 top tricks. Unfortunately they had 2 top tricks and got to play first.
T96 / QT3 / KQ32 / AK6
QJ3 / AKJ9764 / AT / 9
-200 was 9 IMPs and change away. 5 other pairs in 6 Hearts, nobody in 6NT. (Imagine that!)
And now, the main event. I've heard of 'practice finesses' before. In fact, I witnessed my friend Joanie try 2 of them on the same hand last night (strangely, they both lost, practice finesses usually win.) But I've never heard of 'practice loser on loser endplays'. Until now.
All red, 2nd
653 / K9852 / AJ82 / 3
RHO bid 1 Diamond and I held my nose and overcalled 1 Heart.
LHO bid 1 Spade and Jeff splintered: 4 Diamonds. Righty doubled.
If I had another A or K or even the Q of Hearts, I'd have sent it back (presumably showing the Ace, in case partner has slam aspirations) but with this sub-minimum (albeit a perfect sub-minimum) I bid 4 Hearts. Float. LHO leads the 3 of Diamonds. RHO plays the Queen.
Dummy was adequate:
K42 / AQJT643 / 5 / K6
653 / K9852 / AJ82 / 3
'hope you can bring home the trump suit for no losers' says the comedian across the table.
Oh, that was no problem. It was bringing the Diamond suit home for no losers that I found a little more challenging.
My thought process went something like this: LHO bid Spades, he probably has the Ace. I'd go after Clubs first, of course, just in case that's onside. Maybe there's a safer line, though: If RHO has the KQ of Diamonds, he could be endplayed if only I could duck something to him.
Then I thought ... Maybe he's endplayed now! If I duck this trick I can always pitch a Spade on the Ace of Diamonds later, so that wouldn't cost anything. Ultimately I decided that was too risky. I won the Diamond lead and played a Heart up. East showed out. Now I played a Heart back to my hand and figured if I could sneak the 8 of Diamonds by West my brilliant plan would work. Boy was I happy when West showed out on the 8 of Diamonds. I'll just pitch a Spade loser on my Diamond loser and let East stew in the frustration of being endplayed as the kibitzers bask in the aura of my brilliance.
East didn't stew for long. He played a Club to his partner's Ace and his partner, rather than putting me out of my misery, returned a Club, giving me that ever so (NOT) useful pitch I'd worked so hard for. Eventually I had to play Spades on my own and my hoped-for miracle of stiff Ace offside did not materialize. (Essentially what I'd done was turn a 75% game into a 50% game.)
-100 was almost 6 IMPs away. +620 would have been a little over 5 IMPs in.
'sorry'
'it's all good'
LHO
QT987 / 7 / 3 / AJ9874
RHO
AJ / - / KQT9764 / QT52
