What should I bid? - Best enquiry for June 2011
The best submission for June came from Alan Boyce.
Hand: Dealer North, Both Vulnerable at
Teams. Playing with a partner for the first time and expecting it to be the
last after what I was about to do, I am dealt this hand in the West seat:
| Bidding:
|
West
|
North
|
East |
South |
| |
|
1 |
2 |
All pass
|
Comments: We had agreed
to play immediate cues as normal Michaels so partner promised both majors.
After South passed I checked the card to make sure that 1 alerted was "could be short" and not something more dramatic
and went into a thought process. Eventually I decided to follow Marty Bergins
advice which says, when you sense a misfit, stop bidding immediately. Prepared
the "sorry partner, but I do have a nice 6 card trump suit for you" speech,
passed, and after all passed, took the obvious glare from across the able.
Interesting result from the other table that saw our partners
get a plus 500 result because our direct opponents played a 2NT bid to show a
major and one other, leading to west bidding 3 , followed by some no doubt rapid fire corrections before and
after the penalty doubles arrived, ending up in 4X for off 2.
For the record, partner had 6 spades and 5 hearts and 8 HCP's
(no ACE), south 4 HCP's and north 19 HCP's (4-3-3-3).
Back to the question, would you pass 2 or make the bid of 2 (giving humungous preference because it's a 10 not a 2)? At
the time the other decider for me was the real danger that, East, with a strong
two-suiter could take my preference as an indication of a possible 3-card suit,
and make a dangerous move towards game! One other contact was played in 2 East, and given that North held 3 clubs probably the room all
opened 1 irrespective of their system, but I'm thinking overcalling
spades with 6 is better than the Michaels cuebid anyway?
Kieran's Reply:
Alan,
I'm passing 2. I'm well aware that partner might have a big hand, but this
hand is liable to make fewer tricks than partner expects - he won't be
expecting your chosen trump suit to have a length of one. If it works poorly
I'll apologise as graciously as I can muster, employing what I call the
Streaker's Defense - "It seemed like a good idea at the time".
I haven't passed Michaels before, but quite a few times I've put down dummy in a
"both majors" call over the opponents' notrump. I haven't been badly wrong yet
(often spectacularly right).
Quite a lot of years ago, in the august journal The Bridge World, a bidding
problem was put to a panel of experts - LHO opens 1, partner overcalls 2 (in those days, showing a game-forcing hand without reference
to shape) and you hold x,x,Txx,Jxxxxxxx. Many passed. I think they figured that
if partner can make 4-major opposite this hand, they'll probably bid to 6-major
and fail.
I don't mind 2 or 1 with the hand that you describe opposite, although with extra
strength I'd tend to start with the six card suit - especially when it's
spades, since partner will be apt to prefer hearts with equal length. Suit
quality might tip the balance - AKJxxx,xxxxx,x,x looks like 1, Qxxxxx,KQJxx,x,x looks like Michaels...hands in between will
have to choose one or the other.
Kieran
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