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Jan’s Day: One for the road?

When your pre-emptive bid does not shut the opponents up, do you keep on bidding or hope you have pre-empted enough? If you have a good partner at the helm, there can be various good reasons for bidding on. Let’s see.

 

1 is 4+ spades. You bid 3 pre-emptively to shut the opponents up…but that did not work! What now?

Jan Cormack

“It is common practice for a number of countries participating internationally to be represented by professional bridge players. One such player is the rather glamorous and exciting Pakistani, Zia Mahmood.

Zia lives (at least when this was written) in London for most of the year playing Rubber Bridge for stakes of between $1.00 and $200-00 a point.

Because of his massive rubber bridge success (measured by the huge amount of money owing to him at the end of each rubber), this very charming gentleman is quite proud of the fact that he has been banned from all bar one such club in London.

On this occasion, he was in Tokyo representing Pakistan in the Far East Bridge Championships. He was a main reason why Pakistan finished second to Indonesia in the event. I watched the following hand between Pakistan and Indonesia with our hero sitting West.

 

With Zia in charge, East felt it was right to bid to 4. He was not to be disappointed.

North started with A and continued the suit, won with the 9 in dummy. 6 was played and was taken by South’s ace. South exited with a second heart ruffed in dummy by Zia. At trick 5, Zia played a club to his queen and North’s ace.

North exited with his last trump which was won in the West hand. Zia ruffed his remaining heart in dummy returning to hand with a diamond to the ace. Needing the rest of the tricks, these cards remained:

 

Zia read the end position correctly. With North having shown a strong no trump and only having shown up with both black aces and the KQ, he realised that the diamond finesse was not going to work. So, he cashed the K which left North is rather a quandary. A diamond discard would expose the queen while a club allows Zia to score three more club tricks.

East breathed a sigh of relief as he recorded the result of 4x making on his score-sheet. This resulted in a double game swing for Pakistan as in the other room, their team-mates had played 4 which was cold for 10 tricks (just AK and a club to lose), a total pick-up of +1210.”

There are many good reasons for bidding on, the above being just one of them. 

 

Three aces to lose: but no more! For less experienced players and others.

There is a similarity between today’s and tomorrow’s deals. In both, the declarer is in 4 of a major missing three cashing aces. If you want to make your contract, you cannot afford any more losers.

 

2NT promised 4+ spades and was forcing to game. 4 showed a minimum opener with no singleton or void.

West leads 4. Any ideas?

Richard Solomon

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