What would you bid?

Playing pairs with a good partner, you are East, what would you bid with?

E/W vul

♠ KQJ5

♥ KQ82

♦ K42

♣ 96

RHO (North) opens an ACOL 1♦

Does it make a difference if it is teams?

BTW - how do you insert the coloured symbols?

 

Started by RICHARD LAPTHORNE on 22 May 2019 at 10:26AM

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  1. Brad Johnston22 May 2019 at 11:24AM

    Hey Richard,

    As much as I like this forum, I can also recognise that it's not very highly frequented. You'd probably get a much better response and discussion from good players by posting a bidding poll on the Bridgewinners website.

    I don't think that this is the right hand to take an off-beat action with, because:

    • I don't have much shape
    • I don't have any aces
    • I have defensive looking cards (the KD over the dealer)
    • The vul is wrong for overcompeting

    FWIW I don't think that partner's calibre should make much of a difference here - the question to me is how much is this hand worth; not how good my partner is.

    I'm also not a firm believer in large adjustments in how I bid differing between teams and matchpoints. The argument here is that at teams, bidding a game when vulnerable is worth the extra risk - so you should take the action that'll get you to game when it's making as often as possibly (in other words, describe your hand as fully and correctly as possible and let partner judge what to do), while at matchpoint you might be better off giving up on the prospects of bidding game and try and angle for the best part-score. 

    This intuits that one could lean towards overcalling 1NT at teams, and doubling at matchpoints - but I think this idea is misguided.

    • If you double and partner advances 1M; you're somewhat under strengh to raise your known 8+ card fit -- which is something you want to do at matchpoints.
    • If partner has a half-decent club suit, they might overcompete, assuming that you have a more classical hand for your takeout X - I'm not enforcing 3 card club support always and ever on you for a takeout X, but even something like 4423 with the same honours would be more attractive to play in a suit.
    • X lets the opponents bid more cheaply over it, so they can find their fit and compete accurately.
    • You can still easily have a game on power, and languishing in 1S or 2S then would be embarrassing. Especially given what hands people have started opening on (first in hand, favourable, matchpoints...).

    The two 'major upsides' of X are:

    • The opening bidder will rate to be on lead more often - partner will be a suit naturally over a X more often than they'll eschew a transfer and bid 4M to play if you overcall 1NT.
    • It's harder for the opponents to catch you when it's wrong.
      • After 1D (x), you typically need ~11 HCP minimum to XX for blood. After 1D (1NT), you typically need ~8 or 9 HCP to X for penalties.

    But I think that these aren't as significant as the downsides, and people normally have decent methods to escape to a playable fit after your NT overcall gets X'd for blood. 


    Another reason to not make an offbeat action here is that it commits you to having a different auction than the majority of other tables in your field. Playing matchpoints you want to have the same auction up until your judgement tells you not to, or even to play in all the same contracts and earn your matchpoints through making the overtrick that others leave behind. Doubling on this hand as opposed to overcalling 1NT is playing "top-and-bottom bridge", which isn't really a good tactic in any field. 

    A more clear-cut example of what I mean is that if the auction goes:
    Unfavourable:
    Pass - 1H - ?
    Spade-small KJ3
    Heart-small QJ
    Diamond-small Q92
    Club-small K9643

    You can bet that most club pairs fields will have one or two lemmings that overcall 2C. Every now and then they'll be rewarded; but normally they'll be overcompeting and going for a few hundred (even undoubled) against nothing; or they'd be ripe for being trap-passed, etc.

    Obviously overcalling 2C here is terrible, but the hand has "10+ HCP, and 5+ Clubs" - but it isn't a club overcall in any way, shape, or form. This is the sort of time when I'm happy to do something that I consider may be "anti-field"; if I consider that the field is going to be doing something terribly dumb...

    Lots of words in this response, but I was trying to explain why I think that this hand should be overcalling 1NT, despite having so much loaded in the majors. Hope you can see why I've chose to bid the way I have, and that this is more helpful than a one line response summing up my thoughts.

    I inserted the coloured symbols through the Emoticon (smiley face) button in the comment editor. I'm sure there's an easy way, but I haven't bothered learning it on this website. Commonly something like !S or [S] works, but who knows if they do here.

  2. RICHARD LAPTHORNE22 May 2019 at 11:33AM

    Thanks Brad,

    Lots of interesting points here to consider

    cool

    Richard

  3. Brad Johnston22 May 2019 at 11:53AM

    Hey Richard,

    No worries. I also don't profess to be correct on this board - so I'm more than happy to hear if other people have conflicting thoughts on the hand. 

    I just also realised that the link to Bridgewinners.com is broken; because this website assumes/enforces that links can't be made to outside websites...
    I'm sure you can find it by google search.

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