Simple Concepts

A J 7 5
Q 10 5
Q 4
K J 10 8
9 6 4 K Q 3 2
9 6 3 2 A 8 4
9 3 2 10 8 6 5
9 7 2 5 4
10 8
K J 7
A K J 7
A Q 6 3 Contract: 3 no, 6 no, 6 clubs dbl

I believe this hand, which I ran across in three incarnations, epitomizes -- but by no means proves -- several points I've been beating my drum about elsewhere. I first saw it as a declarer in a completely hopeless contract of six no trump. I opened with a diamond, a spade by my partner, two no by me, six no by my partner. When dummy came down with a spade opening lead, I could see at a glance I had no chance, not even with the luckiest of distributions of the opponents' cards.
Goren tells us that 33 points is the basic criterion for the advisability of a little slam. Now, no one's walking around saying he's a better player than Goren ever was (though there may be a few people who think that). But I can guarantee that there are a lot of people walking around ready to tell you that Goren is old hat. We've moved on, you know. There are new developments. A novice even wrote of her recent bridge teacher that "He still played Goren," with evident distaste. They should be so lucky as to play half as well as the Master did.
Of course there have been "advances" in bidding since Goren's heyday, if "advance" is indeed the right word. I have adjusted to the innovations (which I regard as the more appropriate word). I like weak two's and I like dropping one no to 15-17 and two no to 20-21 largely because it allows one to open one or two no a lot more often. But I think you'd have to examine thousands and thousands, well, call it a hundred thousand hands before you could confidently say people bid better today than they did in Goren's heyday. You can call 'em advances if that's your thing, but I'm not so sure that they are.
Nevertheless, whatever innovations or advances there have been in bidding styles, the mathematics of the cards, of the tricks that can be picked up on a given holding, have in no way changed since Goren was king. This is not to say he was infallible, but to remind the reader that he probably spent more time examining the potential of various holdings than anyone now living and that there have been no innovations whatsoever in what cards beat what cards on a given trick. So I think anyone would do well to pay heed to Goren here.
Now, if we're playing 15-17 one no and 20-21 two no, then my jump rebid of two shows 18 or 19 points. My partner has 13. There are people that just can't bear to be just a smidgin short of slam. They appear to think it more sophisticated to bid a doomed slam than to bid a simple 3 no and make two overtricks. But my partner should have known that we were holding either 31 or 32 hcp's and that slam was unlikely, though to be sure, not impossible. And bid accordingly.
Having written the above paragraph, I got to wondering how much the bid had harmed us. My partner and I finished 66th that day in OKbridge. Had that bid alone been on the money, it would have raised our score by 0.45, which would have given us a tie for 44-45th place. That's nothing to shout about in itself, granted, but it's quite a difference for one hand, no? Just one more jump like that, in fact, would have given us a respectable finish. I didn't say a word to my partner -- to what purpose? -- so I don't know whether he never heard of Goren's figure, or heard of it but felt too sophisticated to follow a man whose heyday was 30 to 40 years ago, or didn't know what my bid signified.
In any event, these are simple concepts. Thirty-three. Thirteen in this hand. No long suit. Bid too strong for one no, too weak for two no. Must be 18 or 19 hcp's. Where is there anything complex there?
In returning to the declarer who made 6 clubs on the hand, I chanced on another bidding scheme, which was four no after the two no bid. Now in the OKbridge scheme of things, that's quantitative and should mean to go on with a max, hold still with a minimum for the bid you made. I wish my partner would have said it, for we would have rested in 4 no. But this player treated it as though it were Blackwood and they too wound up in an unmakable 6 no. Simple concepts. Four no over a no trump bid is quantitative. Go on with max, stop with minimum.
And 6 clubs? Making? Now how did declarer do that? Well, it's certainly not something you could guess just looking at the cards. Indeed, East had two chances to defeat the contract, being, well, too easy for a beginner to miss, but sometimes it's a tough thing being a sophisticated player, it would seem. The opening lead was the 9 of spades, ducked to East who now cashed her ace of hearts to beat the slam, right? Not on your life. Back came a trump which declarer ran with for three rounds, ending in dummy from which he led a low heart. East now went up with the ace of hearts, right? Not on your life, again. Low heart here.
Of course, declarer still wouldn't seem to be home free. He can sluff two hearts from dummy on the long diamonds, but he has only one trump for ruffing while holding two hearts. But East, who can afford a diamond on the third round of clubs, would be squeezed on the fourth round of diamonds, giving up either a guard to her king of spades, or her last remaining guard to the ace of hearts. The end-position would look like this:
A J 7
Q
------
8
6 4 K 3 2
9 6 3 A 8
------ ------
------ ------
10
J 7
J
3

This is before declarer leads the last diamond, sluffing the Q of hearts. What does East do? She's squeezed. If she discards a spade, declarer goes to the ace and ruffs a spade, establishing the jack, and enters dummy by way of ruffing a heart. If on the other hand, East discards a heart, declarer ruffs a heart, establishing that jack, cashes the ace of spades and ruffs a spade to cash his heart winner. Squeezed out of an ace.
East, not so incidentally, doubled the 6 club contract. A Lightner double for a lead through dummy's first bid suit? Who can say, right now. But the simple fact is that after making a valid double, she had two chances to cash her ace of hearts and set a slam contract and declined on each occasion. N-S took 11 bids to get into an inferior contract that turned out to be an absolute top board. No one else was near their score, of course.
Now, these are simple concepts. No, not the squeeze, a tough one to foresee, I would say. That's not a simple concept, but the rest is. Thirty-three points. Not a difficult figure to remember and not a difficult figure on this hand to determine not to be there. There will be hands where it's not so certain, not so easily determined. But we shouldn't miss the easy ones. I went back to see how many had missed it and found that out of 67 pairs, 26 had overbid to 6 no, one was in 3 clubs, 39 in 3 or 4 no and one in 6 clubs doubled. Is it encouraging that 50% more stayed away from slam than bid it? Or discouraging that close to 40% of the field either had no knowledge of 33 or felt they were above it?
While looking up this hand, I came across another where a declarer went down a horrendous 1100 when his opponents don't even have game. How did he do that? I wondered. Well, it seems that he opened a legitimate no trump and then the opponents stepped in while his partner, with nothing higher than a pair of 10's kept quiet. At his next opportunity, the no trumper chanced three clubs on a 5-card suit headed by the Q 10, where he could have been slaughtered, given that his partner had a singleton. But the opponents came to the rescue with a 3 spade bid, and now our declarer, no doubt embolded by a K Q low in spades tried three no, and this time the opponents weren't so generous.
One could offer about 5 aphorisms or principles that would have warned him off that path, from Goren's wise advice to look on the partner of a no trump bidder as the captain for that hand (by virtue of having heard the most descriptive bid), to "Don't bid the same values twice," to my own jottings on the value of regarding 20 points as a key figure to bear in mind (i.e., the three level is dangerous without a fit when there's no evidence that you have a clear preponderance of the hcp's).
Simple principles that would have saved the offenders a lot of points, and of course, deprived the beneficiaries of just as many. But, that's bridge.