VOX POPULI VOX DEI
by Aleksander Wagner
Has it ever happened to you that while playing with someone you don't play with very often, you used a convention agreed upon with someone else, like for instance your regular partner? Don't be ashamed to admit it, it's only human. Needless to say, more often than not it ends in a disaster, and only sometimes, if your lucky star happens to be shining at this precise moment or your opponents decide to help you out of the mess you caused, you land squarely on your feet. But how often do you actually GAIN in such a deal?
It happened to me last Friday, I was playing in a tournament with a friend of mine, and since we don't play together on regular basis, we always try to bid as naturally as possible in order to avoid exactly this kind of misunderstanding. But how natural can you get? There are always exceptions like Blackwood, cue-bids, transfers, negative double and some similar stuff that all people use without even mentioning the fact. The point is that everyone plays this stuff differently, and we just never happened to discuss it...
Q3 K4 W N E S
AK76 N 10853 ------------------------
542 W E AKQ106 1C 1S x 2S
KQ84 S 62 p p ?
I was East and all I could think of was that West just couldn't, I mean simply couldn't have four hearts! Why? Because I played this way with my last partner. Why did we play it like this? Because in our system negative double after 1C-1S had one of the following two meanings: either a basic 9+ points with 44 in the red suits or game forcing with various distributions, so the partner, bidding to the weaker option, had to bid on 2 or 3 level with four hearts and a basic opening!
So I started to think: West probably had two small spades which accounted for one spade loser, and some 13 points in hearts and clubs. He must have at least four clubs (1C opening was the better minor, with 44 in minors we agreed to open 1C) and at most three hearts, and he can't have six clubs - or five good clubs for that matter - because he would have bid 3C. So let's assume 4 or 5 clubs, 2 spades and 2 or 3 hearts, which leaves us with 3 or even 4 diamonds. The worst scenario would be if he had KQJ in both clubs and hearts, but in hearts it looks extremely improbable, so he must have at least one Ace. Since we probably had enough points for a game I logically assumed that everybody would play a game, and bidding 4H never entered my mind. My options were 3NT and 5D, and 5D was the obvious choice.
South led a club, Queen from dummy and Ace from North, who promptly drew the Ace of spades and followed with another spade. Of course I was furious, but not at myself - yet. Can you believe that at this point I still blamed my partner for my own stupidity? But of course you can, everybody likes to blame the partner. Wouldn't you?
Out of fury and self-respect I decided to go for it, even though 5D just made looked like an absolute bottom anyway. I drew three rounds of trumps which were nicely divided, and played the heart 10. Why? Because my only chance of taking all the heart tricks was that North had the singleton 9 of hearts, and his partner all the rest! As it happened this was the case in this deal and our disgusted opponents had to write 600 for EW. But it wasn't all, our 600 was very close to the top! Why? Because on most tables EW played 4H down one, some of them simply forgot the safe play in hearts and others were scared of a diamond ruff.
After the deal was over I was boldly reminded that everybody around played a different negative double, one that promised 9 points but didn't promise neither four hearts nor four diamods. What could I say? Of course I should have known it and I should have doubled again, and only then my poor partner could have bid 3H with his 12-14 points. Everybody was obviously right, I was obviously wrong, as they say - if everybody tells you that you're drunk you'd better go to take a nap, or in other words - Vox Populi, Vox Dei. But I liked my score anyway...
