Silver Points

Another STAC week has come and gone. Say what you like about masterpoints being meaningless and silly, but if you offer silver points, you meet players you haven't seen for months. The Manhattan (and the other clubs, I'm sure) was jumping this past week. The hands come from the ACBL, and their computer seems to deal even crazier stuff than our computer.

Here are a couple of judgement calls.



Do you say anything? I think I'm passing at any form of scoring. Ralph decided to risk a double. The good news was that both the ace and king of hearts stood up. The bad news was that those were the only two tricks for the defence.




How about here? Partner tries to calculate his pre-empts, but at this vulnerability he'll be aiming for 3 or 4 down. You have some good stuff for spades – nice trumps, good controls. You have potential for tricks in the round suits if partner can help, and whatever you're missing is probably on your right and finessable. But that argues for defence, also, as does the vulnerability. Actually, the only really wrong answer is pass. But if you double, there's some chance of screwing up and only beating the contract one trick (although it's down three double-dummy). If you bid 5S, North will double, expecting his partner to have a good hand (not unreasonably), and partner will wrap up eleven tricks without any difficulty.



When's the last time you had 8-card support? I was sitting waiting for Ralph to open 2H or 3C or something equally useless, and he went and opened 1D. Now what?
I gave up on science and just bid 5D. That was just right, looking at our two hands. Ralph's diamond suit was three small, of course, so the two missing were the ace and queen. We got a 2-0 break – offside, alongside another ace. Down 1.



Playing quietly in 2S making nine tricks was worth 10 out of 11 matchpoints. A number of people played in 3NT, going down, and we out-scored those in clubs. I count this one as a victory for the weak no-trump.



This slam was the opposition's way, and the hand managed to trip up most of them. Only three pairs reached a slam, two making 7S while one pair managed 6NT+1. Everybody else languished in game, with a grand slam available in three denominations. At our table (and probably at others also) the auction started P - 1S - 2NT (Unusual), which I guess makes things more difficult. But for three-quarters of the field to not even reach a small slam seems poor to me.