Too Trusting?
|
|  A 2 |
|
|
 J 7 5 3 2 |
|
|
 9 7 4 |
|
|
 Q 5 3 |
|
| 9 8 6 |
|
10 7 4 3 |
| 9 |
|
K 4 |
| A J 10 |
|
Q 8 6 5 3 |
| A K J 9 8 6 |
|
7 2 |
|
K Q J 5 |
|
|
A Q 10 8 6 |
|
|
K 2 | |
|
10 4 | | Vul: Both |
| East | South |
West | North |
|
Pass |
Pass |
1 |
| 2 |
2 |
Pass |
Pass |
| 3 |
3 |
Pass | 4 |
| All |
pass |
Make no mistake about it: on a balancing bid, you depend on the competence of your opponents. I have said in my tidbits on bidding and I have said to my novices, we should be able to decide how strong we are together, and not depend on the opponents' competence to help guide us. Here a defender paid a little too much respect to the talents of her opponents and not enough to her partner's pass. The upshot was that her opponents found a game they had previously missed.
A lot of things could have gone wrong with the game bid here. The king of hearts could have been offsides, or East just might have had a high club honor in order to lead a diamond through the king. But they didn't, and the game came home to West's embarrassment.
But there is something else a little wrong with the 3 club bid. You might note the vulnerability and then the potential for a two-trick set if N-S could just keep away from a diamond lead. The club declarer would have no entry to dummy for the diamond hook, and would seem doomed to lose 3 spades and a trick in each of the other suits, for down two. Even undoubled, that would be a bad score in matchpoints over 2 hearts -- making four!
True, West has a powerful 6-card club suit, and it wouldn't take much to solidify it. After all, people make two bids on considerably less, and that's just one measly trick higher. True, true. Still, West had bid the club suit once without eliciting a response from her partner, and sometimes you've just gotta say, I'm going with my partner indication of absolutely no help.