The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
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Assigning blame since April 20, 2007

To switch or not to switch

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This entry was posted on 8/7/2007 11:41 PM and is filed under The Good.

Here's a defensive hand from that I Declare team match.

All red 4th

J9753 / QT94 / 65 / A7

LHO bids 1NT, pard bids 2 Clubs.

Our agreement is to play my profile plus odd/even discards (I usually just play upside down carding and discards.)  My profile says DONT vs strong.  Hopefully this shows Clubs and another.

Righty bids 3 Diamonds. 

It'd be nice to bid 3 Hearts pass/correct but that could easily be misinterpreted, and besides, I doubt 3 Diamonds will end the auction and a Club lead may well be best.  (Not to mention the fact that partner's 2nd suit just MIGHT be Diamonds.)

LHO bids 3NT, swish, and partner leads the 6 of Clubs.

You see this:

A84 / 85 / KQT742 / T4 Dummy (RHO)

J9753 / QT94 / 65 / A7

You win the Ace of Clubs and ?

It seems almost 100% to switch to a Heart here.  Partner needs KJxxxx of Clubs (he wouldn't lead low from KQJxx, would he?) for the Club continuation to be right.  But which Heart do you switch to?

It'd be nice to be able to switch to one of the intermediate Hearts, just in case Declarer has KJ tight.  But a lot of players (myself included) tend to play a lot of attitude leads on defense in the middle of the hand, and the Ten could mislead partner into thinking that Declarer has KQ9, or something like that.  I returned the Queen of Hearts.

Declarer had one of these two hands:

A84 / 85 / KQT742 / T4

KQT2 / A72 / AJ83 / Q3
 
or
 
A84 / 85 / KQT742 / T4

KQT2 / K72 / AJ83 / Q3

...

Lucky for me, he had the 2nd hand and we quickly cashed our 11 tricks.  It could have just as easily been 11 tricks the other way, though (if it were the first hand.)

Pard didn't self-alert his 2 Club bid, so now I'm not even sure if he intended it as DONT.  Don't you love pick-up games?

6 / AJ63 / 9 / KJ98652

J9753 / QT94 / 65 / A7

+700 is usually a pretty good result.  Not this time.  You can make 5 of either round suit (I guess I should have bid 3 Hearts after all.)  Our teammates were kind enough to double their opps in 4 Clubs.  Lose 5
 
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