TWILIGHT ZONE
Deal no. 1:
It's no secret that my bidding is and has always been extremely agressive. Maybe that's why my partners tend to bid quite conservatively and God bless them for it. The problem is that during the last months my bidding has been gradually getting even more agressive (welcome, dr. Freud!) and some of my bids might have seemed irrational and even mad to my partner, even though I've always based them on logic, well, my kind of logic at least...
I guess I might have scared him. All in all, one day I realized that he has been underbidding so many hands that even I couldn't push him into many good slams that we used to reach in the past. I tried to show him the results but to no avail. I begged him to be more active in bidding but it didn't work either. Time and time again I proved to him that most of my bids brought serious gains and that he had no reason to be scared, he had to agree with the facts but nothing's changed. How could I know that I had nearly convinced him? How could I know if and when he'd return to his old self? But when it did finally happen, it happened with a bang!
I had one of these average hands: AJ742, 5, 83, 87532, barely enough for 1S after my partner's 1D opening. But then he bid 4C (splinter bid, four spades, exactly singleton club)! My passive and underbidding partner finds enough strength for game with poor little me having promised mere 6 points and four small spades? Great! How bad his 18 points with 5 diamonds (more points with 4441) could be? Was it possible at all not to reach the spade slam? I asked for aces (4NT), he said he had three out of five (5C), the spade King included. Then I asked for Kings in other suits (5D), he said he had one of them (5S), hopefully the diamond one. If his additional 4 or more points included both the trump and the diamond Queens, the slam was cold. The worst scenario seemed to be Kxxx, AQJ, AKJxx, x and even then the spade slam looked very sensible. Obviously enough I bid 6S.
The lead, Ace of clubs. Then I saw the dummy, went completely numb and only the countless years of experience prevented me from displaying the shock and horror I felt:
W E
K986 AJ742 ----------------
AK74 N 5 1D 1S
A765 W E 83 4C 4NT
4 S 87532 5C 5D
5S 6S
Trust me, even I wouldn't have bid the 4C with his hand! But this was history already, now was now, and I had to make the best of it.
South saw the dummy too, discontinued clubs and played a small spade, small from the dummy, Queen from North. My chance was simple: trumps 2-2, clubs 4-3, hearts and diamonds divided decently too. I took the spade Ace, ruffed my second club, drew the two high hearts discarding a diamond, ruffed the third heart in my hand, ruffed the third club in the dummy, Ace of diamonds, diamond ruffed in my hand, the fourth club ruffed with the trump King, diamond ruff in my hand, Jack of spades and the last club was high. As improbable as it seems, six made, but I'd hate to count the percentages. Anyway, another lead could have defeated the contract despite the best distributions in the world.
After the deal was over I decided to praise his courage and our luck and didn't say a word of criticism. It was he who pointed out that he should have had more, something like the spade Queen and better diamonds, and I reluctantly agreed...
Tomorrow we are going to play together again and I wonder which partner I'll play with, the old underbidding one or the newly re-born fighter. I promise to be very cautious until I find out. And hope for the best.
Deal no. 2:
As you may know by now, I don't automatically open 1NT with 15-17 balanced high card points, there are many such hands that favour a suit contract and not a NT one and with such hands I open 1-in-a suit. I try to tell it to each and every person I play with so that he/she can take it under account, warning them though not to do it themselves without at least few years of trying it out. My 1NT rules seem natural and logical to me, during the years have brought me countless tops and very rare bottoms, but with occasional partners they sometimes cause quite surreal and bizarre auctions and contracts.
One such hand happened only last week: I had A8, J86, A863, AKJ10 and opened 1C.
S W N E
------------------------------
1C p 1D p
1H(1) p 2H p
2S(2) p 4H(3) all pass
(1) I refused to bid 1NT (12-14) or 2NT (18-19), and having a diamond fit saw no danger in bidding 1H...
(2) The lowest forcing bid, wanted my partner to say more about his hand
(3) Surprise, surprise!!! Do I have to tell you that my partner thought I asked for a spade control for 3NT, decided that without one and a with "nice" hand 4H was THE contract?
After the Jack of spades lead I took a gloom look at the weak and ugly dummy, silently cursed my partner for the 4H bid while the obvious one was 3D (5 diamonds and 4 hearts), saw 9 tricks in NT if diamonds behaved and very little chances of making 4H even if diamonds split, may have muttered few angry words about my partner having decideded for us both, even toyed for a split second with a thought of suddenly remembering something very urgent and having to leave, but no miracle saved me from having to play it.
xx
A975
K109xx
xx
N
W E
S
Ax
J86
Axxx
AKJ10
The rest was quite simple: Ace of spades, Ace of clubs, small diamond to the King in dummy, club finesse, club Ace discarding the second spade from dummy, spade ruffed in dummy, small diamond from dummy which East didn't ruff :-) . I took my Ace and played my last club, West ruffed with the trump 10, I discarded a diamond from dummy and West had to play something and take 3 more tricks:
--
A97
xx
--
N
W E
S
--
J86
xx
--
A small trump, East took with the Queen and played a spade. I ruffed it with the Jack, finessed trumps, drew the Ace and took 11 tricks. Fat little bonus for nothing...
Did I play well? I don't care! And the score? Well, take a guess!!!
Deal no. 3:
I was South again (dealer East, both vulnerable) and held quite an average hand: AJxxx, xx, AJxx, xx. The dealer opened 1H, I bid 1S, West 2C and all of the sudden my very responsible and conservative partner put 4S on the table! I had no time to decide whether to be glad or not because East promptly bid 5C. Mind you, all this lasted no more than 10 seconds, as if everyone here was completely sure of his bid! What would you do now?
My gut feeling was not to double, on the other hand my hand was plain ugly and it contained too many losers to bid any further. I felt my partner thought that he sold his hand completely so pass was not a viable option here. The decision was mine and I hated this feeling. So I forced myself to think.
My partner's bidding is usually very conservative, well, he is simply an uderbidder 90% of the time. So what motivated him to jump to a vulnerable game with us holding just half of combined high card points? Was a club singleton enough? If so, he's got to have the very best 10-11 points in the universe, something like K10987, Axx, K1098, x or KQ10xx, Axx, Q1098, x or maybe KQ109, Axx, Q10987, x. Otherwise it just has to be the club void!
On the other hand, 5C should have meant spade void in the East hand, so I simply needed his 5 spades, 4 may be not enough. But if they had no spade losers and 0-1 heart losers, they simply make 5C... So in the end there was only one possible choice, and 5S it was.
E S W N
------------------------------
1H 1S 2C 4S
5C 5S x all pass
The rest was relatively simple: after a heart lead from a dubleton, East cashed his Ace and King and played a third heart.
K109xx
QJ10x
K10xx
-
N
W E
S
AJxxx
xx
AJxx
xx
I trumped it with the Ace of spades and immediately played the Jack and finessed the Queen. After the obligatory three rounds of trumps (East did have a void) I finessed East for his diamond Queen and claimed 11 tricks. Simple? Well, not exactly but simple enough: what kind af a club suit, probably without AK, must have East had for his 2C bid (with AK he might have tried a club lead)? Something like AQJ10xx or AQJxxxx plus the spade Queen might have done the trick. And what was the chance of West having opened with 0535 or 0544 and 10 high card points first hand vulnerable, and then having happily bid 5C? Less than 50% I'd say... Anyway, I knew East had more diamonds than West, so the probability the diamond Queen in the East hand was much, much higher.
K109xx E S W N
QJ10x --------------------------------
K10xx 1H 1S 2C 4S
- 5C 5S x all pass
Qxx -
xx N AKxxx
xx W E Qxx
AQJxxx S Kxxxx
AJxxx
xx
AJxx
xx
The biggest joke was that our opponents didn't bid 6C in defence (one down) because they were positive we were defending a very doubtful 5C and going down a few :)
