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More Balancing!

Yesterday, we discussed the question of when and how you should balance..and the dangers involved. We gave you three hands from a recent Pairs session and in neither case discussed was it a great idea to balance. What about the third problem, where we left you dangling overnight for the answer?

 

1NT is 12-14 and 2 a transfer to hearts?

Would you take action? What are the dangers involved?

One danger in taking action, especially as in all three examples, is that our side is vulnerable and if you do not find a reasonable fit, you do not even have to be doubled to incur a bad result. It will be an even worse result if you are!

In today’s problem, you are in a slightly different situation from yesterday’s two problems. Here, you are not in the “pass out” seat. In other words, if you pass and South passes, your partner, West, can still bid.

The problem is that you do have just about the right shape to make a take-out double (a 4^th diamond would be ideal but you cannot always have absolute perfection) and you have enough high cards to suggest your side could make or come close to making a part-score contract. It is likely your partner is quite weak and may not have the right hand shape to take action.

With South already a passed hand, chances are that if you pass now, the auction will end at 2 (remember South is a passed hand) and that might not be the best for your side. So, even though you are entering an auction that might still be alive, odds favour you taking some action…and that action would be a take-out double.

That is indeed what East did and here are the four hands and the rest of the auction:

South Deals Both Vul	K 3 2 A 10 9 3 K J 10 J 7 4
10 9 7 4 7 6 9 8 3 K Q 9 6	N W   E S	A Q 8 5 J 4 A Q 2 10 5 3 2
	J 6 K Q 8 5 2 7 6 5 4 A 8

 

West bid 2 and that left North or South to decide whether to bid on. With 4-card heart support, North chose to compete. It is likely South would have continued bidding if North had passed. South might have been much weaker than they were.

The cards lay quite well for West in 2. With care, they should just lose a spade, two hearts and one trick in each minor. 2 making, + 110. Even 1 down would be a good result for East-West if 2 was making.

In a heart contract, played by North, it looks like the declarer has to lose two spades, two diamonds and a club. So, potentially, East-West could get a good score for defeating 3, or a better score than letting North make 2. However, East must be careful.

As you can see, just because West bid 2 did not mean they held the K. A spade lead would be disastrous for the defence. East can afford to be cautious as the defenders will probably gain the lead fairly early in the play in order to switch to a spade.  Although a club lead would be perfect, a heart lead here seems safe.

Declarer soon draws trumps. Looking for a defensive slip, North may play a club to the ace and a second club. West wins to play a spade and East can take their two spade tricks and exit in either black suit. North will eventually have to lead a diamond from the South hand and East will have two tricks in that suit as well to record +100, one down.

The ”balancing double” was certainly worthwhile. Notice that West would need an exceptional hand to compete to 3.. and they certainly did not have that! The job was done successfully in forcing North-South to bid to a contract they should not make. If North made 9 tricks, no damage had been done. At least North had been pushed to play at perhaps a dangerously high level. The balancing double had been rewarded. 

What about a super-accept?

With 4-card heart support, North might consider jumping to 3 over 2 though their hand is minimum in hcps and also has poor shape. As we can see, 8 tricks is the limit and North would only want to bid 3 if they were forced to do so. However, an immediate jump would give East the problem of whether they would want to compete. It is unlikely they would.

 for the double

So, success for the balancing double this time, that is as long as East-West defend accurately against 3.

Richard Solomon

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