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Opposition help.

There are times when pre-emptive bidding can tell the opposition too much. While it is possible that they would reach their top spot had the opposition not been so active, opponents’ actions can make it much easier for their opposition.

You are North and hear the following auction:

 

 

 

Your partner has unearthed a nice fit and they should have a reasonable hand to bid a new suit freely at the 3-level. You will certainly be raising to game with your ace and massive trump support. You would expect to make game but that is all you can justify.

However, before you had time to make any decisions on what initially had seemed like a misfitting hand (your singleton spade), say this sequence had occurred with only North-South vulnerable:

 

It is one thing bidding a second suit at the 3-level but entering the auction with a second suit at game level seems that much stronger or certainly that much more distributional. Your partner has not got a game-forcing opener but they have enough to bid to game on their own.

What’s more, the opposition seem to be bidding like they have all the diamond suit and a few values as well, except probably not in hearts!

This brings us back to our ace and six-card heart suit. Courtesy of the opposition, we know that our partner is extremely short in diamonds and with an absolute minimum 5-5 shape in the majors, probably even greater shape, and that they have very few clubs, too. Bidding 5 now is absolutely mandatory but really, you should be thinking about bidding even more hearts. It would be very disappointing if they did not hold a major suit ace and a void…and you have a singleton spade.

Well, naturally, all is not quite as it seems but even if they produced one more diamond than you imagined, they more than made up for that in the majors:

 

West might well feel it pointless to lead a high diamond and would try K. That puts declarer where they want to be for a possible trump finesse though East’s pre-emptive jump to 4 does seem to make it less likely that they held both missing hearts.

The play of the board would prove very easy for South when firstly the K appeared quickly to save any worries there but then so did Q meaning that unless A had been led at trick 1, South would be rewarded with an overtrick.

The 6 bid was not without risk…with a mere working one ace opposite a 1-level opening bid. However, North’s singleton spade along with East's jump to 4 and further diamond bidding from West made bidding slam a risk worth taking. Too much pre-emption should enable North to take a calculated risk and bid the slam.  

It was not that East-West had a cheap sacrifice at the 7-level, with 7x costing 1400 (a 1 imp gain?) or 7x a mere 1100 ( a gain of 6 imps for the sacrificers). East-West simply bid too much.

North-South may have raced off to slam if North had bid 2 over West’s 2 overcall, though for most that bid shows a stronger hand than the one held. Also, an inspired North might have bid 5 over partner’s 3 (asking South to bid slam with a diamond control). Yet, that would be a really risky action. It would be so much easier to bid the slam over the aggressive pre-emptive action East-West produced.

Maybe that is the price one pays sometimes for the successive sacrifice bidding on other deals.

Richard Solomon  

 

 

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