Not so Swift a Bid
|
|  10 7 5 4 2 |
|
|
 5 |
|
|
 9 6 4 3 |
|
|
 Q 3 2 |
|
| A 9 6 |
|
Q 8 3 |
| A Q 10 6 3 |
|
J 9 8 |
| 10 |
|
K Q J |
| J 8 7 4 |
|
A 10 9 6 |
|
K J |
|
|
K 7 4 2 |
|
|
A 8 7 5 2 | |
|
K 5 | |
| South |
West | North |
East |
|
|
|
1 |
| Pass |
1 |
Pass |
1 NT |
| Pass |
2 |
Pass |
Pass |
| 2 |
Pass |
Pass |
2 |
| Pass |
Pass |
3 |
Dbl |
| Passed |
out |
|
|
This hand touches base with just about everything wrong with balancing bids. I guess the only thing it lacked for being an absolute horror was that the balancers weren't vulnerable, though it hardly mattered since they got a zero. West started with a low club, East playing his 9 to declarer's king. Declarer now led low heart, ducked to East who led a trump, taken by declarer who now ruffed a heart and led a spade, the king going to the ace.
That cost one trick, but was hardly the deciding factor. West now hit her partner with another club. East won with the 9, drew dummy's trump in two more rounds, and two hearts were cashed, a club lead was ruffed, a spade was lost to East and the last lead was ruffed. Down four. Could the declaring side have foreseen this? Or was it just bad luck, as they alleged afterwards and which I'll get to in a minute?
Well, I'm not saying they should have predicted the exact number of down tricks, but they had ample warning on some matters. First, I would cite four passes by that pair before they decided to enter the bidding. That's a lot of passes before deciding to go for 9 tricks to their 4! No one felt proud enough of his hand or adventuresome enough to enter the bidding on his own steam?
More telling, I would say, is the sheer lack of firepower on North's part. Yes, I see the singleton and "good fit". But two hcp's opposite a partner who has passed twice?
You just can't live without hcp firepower. Oh, yes, you can devise a wildly distributional hand where this isn't quite true, and if you play a lot of bridge, you'll run across such hands from time to time -- maybe once a year -- but in the general run of hands (here there's no suit longer than 5 cards and N-S have but one singleton between them), you just can't live at the 3 level without hcp's. And you're just kidding yourself if you think this shows sophistication to overbid with such indications that this is unwise. In addition to four passes by N-S before entering the bidding, each partner passed one more time before going to 3 diamonds. How much indication do you need to recognize that this just isn't your hand?
There is one other thing to note here, namely that E-W (as on the last hand) have game which they're not bidding! Sometimes -- and a lot more often than a balancing bid that works -- all you can do on a hand is hope the opponents have underbid or overbid and keep your defense snappy.
To blame this on bad luck is, I think, to say you don't want to look at how unwise your decisions were.