Misadventures In Manhattan

Some random hands from the MBC.

West and East were a teacher and one of her students (not a beginner). My partner was one of my regular partners, but he’s not doing so well these days and this was near the end of the evening. So for multiple reasons (not least of which was I fancied our chances of making), I decided to pull his penalty double.

West was keeping a pretty good poker face and not meeting my eyes when the dummy came down. My assessment was that she thought they were in the running East-West, and she had liked the progress of the auction. Even more, she still expected to beat the contract when I ruffed the opening lead of ♠A.

The bad news is that I have no way to avoid losing the other two aces I’m missing, so I really have to pick up the trumps for just one loser. For a vulnerable jump overcall, I’m inclined to credit East with more than just ♠QJxxxx(x), so give her an ace. I’m sure that means West thinks she has two trump tricks. So, does she have four trumps, or only three? Do you feel lucky?

Like the wuss that I am, I led to the ♦10, and East showed out. If I had run the ♦6, West wasn’t going to be happy. And even worse, she had doubled 5♣ only to panic us into 5♦, and was feeling very pleased with herself that it “worked”! Small details like us preferring to play in the 9-card fit rather than the 7-card fit, and me having a chance to make the contract, seemed to pass her by. Still, the result was dead average, one way or another. 

Rats.

A few posts back I said something about big balanced responding hands being difficult to deal with. This one came up for the opponents.

With the friendly diamond lie, 7♦, 7♠ and 7NT all make. But even with average distributions, you want to be in 6♠. With standard American treatments, it’s not as easy as it looks, and only about half the field got past 4♠. The Jacoby 2NT response usually shows 4-card support, and if you can’t use that, then a sensible auction gets much harder. I think there’s a case for using Jacoby with 3-card support when your hand is so strong.

 

Here’s another slam hand that’s a little awkward, but I applied my usual solution – just punt.

 The ♠A got ruffed on the opening lead, and I wondered what to do next. I decided that the best chance was to hope for trumps 2-1, when I could play to get rid of dummy’s spade losers by ruffing two and throwing two away. So I laid down the ♣A, and the ♣K fell on my right. That made it pretty safe to ruff a diamond, and when both opponents followed suit, I was claiming thirteen tricks.

This would have been a good hand for the special negative 2NT response I’ve described before. I would still be punting the slam, but it would be a much better informed punt.