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The winning team at Te Aroha: Jan Cormack, Kathy and Ken Yule and Grant Jarvis. 

Silence is….

When it comes to decisions at the bridge table, Ken Yule is usually right. Like this past weekend, his team won. Most of Ken’s decisions would have been good ones. What then this one:

 

No-one was vulnerable. We were playing Teams. I asked Ken whether he opened the bidding. I got a quick reply: “5 controls: 1”. The hand looked a bit bland to me. I passed. Very soon, I had a second decision to make:

 

I found this decision a little easier than the first one. I passed again. There was no reason to bid. Partner did not overcall 2 or take any action. Why bid now? Bidding could only benefit one side. Maybe we could defeat 1? Maybe not!

 

Partner led the only suit to give declarer a 4^th overtrick, a heart but we could have only done 1 trick better..and of course, we scored much better than had I opened the bidding or even competed, as 10 of the 16 tables bid and made game, usually in hearts, with West being pushed there by a partner who would not be silenced.

After North’s pass, should East have opened 2? With 2 such strong major suits there is a good case for doing so. Maybe East got their just desserts for opening 1. Could West have called 1NT? Great this time if they did.

This occurred in a later match:

 

It’s me again in the balancing position. Should I bid? Well, I had 4 hearts. So, there was no danger in pushing them to game, was there! I called 2 (hardly the right hand to double and hear partner compete in diamonds) with East promptly bidding 3! Oops! It sounded I was in danger of pushing them to game from my reopening bid.

However, West converted back to 3 and after more than a few seconds thought, East passed in part-score. A relief!

 

Patient declarer play could see this contract make. 9 lead from South won by East to be followed by Q. South is almost end-played at trick 2! If they exit a trump to J Q, a second diamond won by South's K would soon enable East to reach dummy where a successful heart finesse can be taken and 8 can be established if North covers or a heart ruff gives declarer effectively 4 heart tricks if they do not. A make, certainly a lucky one with the winning line not found by East. (East loses K, AK and at trick 13, a club. That is the first time North wins a trick!)

So, pushing the opponents to 3 (East did push themselves!) was worthwhile but this time the player balancing had 4 cards in the other major, reducing the risk in competing.

Ken Yule and his team had success in most of the boards on this day though the combination of not opening our first North hand and East’s failure to open a game-forcing 2 contributed to a game pick-up for our team. Ken’s point about opening that North hand may be valid but was not the best action on this day. “Silence is…golden.”

Richard Solomon

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