Giving Up Too Soon
|  10 8 4 |
|
|
 8 6 5 3 |
|
|
 A K Q 8 5 4 |
|
|
 ------ |
|
| K J 6 5 |
|
Q 9 7 3 |
| K Q 9 |
|
A 4 2 |
| J 9 |
|
10 6 3 |
| 9 6 5 2 |
|
Q J 3 |
|
A 2 |
South | West | North | East |
|
J 10 7 |
1 | Pass | 1 |
pass |
| 7 2 |
2 |
All |
pass |
|
|
A K 10 8 7 4 |
No one can adjudicate on borderline cases for the future. By definition, they're very iffy and can go either way. But I think it useful to take a gander at obvious cases to get some feel for the type of things you'll have to weigh in borderline cases. Here with the bidding as shown, N-S got a very bad board when in fact they can make three no trump. I'm not suggesting they should have found that no trump game. But they certainly shouldn't have wound up in 2 clubs.
North is the goat here. He simply shouldn't have passed two clubs, and he's got an array of reasons for not doing so. Not least is the void in his partner's suit. Oh, yes, sometimes we've got to pass our partner's bid with a void. But that's mostly when they come in at the 3 or 4 level and we have nowhere to go. We've just got to pass and hunker down. If your partner hasn't gone off his rocker, it shouldn't be too bad, and he might even make his contract. And it's not impossible that if you say two diamonds, you'll hear three clubs and wish you'd passed two clubs. But you can't skew your bidding to a fear of the worst.
A second factor is that North really hasn't bid his strength yet. He could have made the same bid on six scattered hcp's and 4-4-4-1 distribution. I always think of 10 points as the dividing line for a second bid when I've bid a one-over-one reponse already. True, North has only 9 hcp's, but come on. That's awfully close to 10 and the hcp's are solid, and the suit is six pieces long. You can't live too rigidly by a self-imposed rule.
Another factor is that North can make his second bid on a possible misfit without raising the level of bidding. And one more positive factor is that South is the opening bidder and figures to have points and a possible entry outside his best suit, while this hand has no outside entries, and a diamond lead, say on a singleton, might render this lovely suit virtually powerless in a club contract, whereas in a diamond contract, North may not have to use up South's club goodies immediately.
So with a void in clubs, a potentially powerful diamond suit and the opportunity to rebid the suit without raising the level, North could certainly reason that if he doesn't improve the situation, it's not too likely he'll make it worse. 'Nuff said?