Monday, August 4, 2008

Some Hands from the Sectional: Matchpoints

We had a very successful local Sectional this weekend. Here are some of the more fun hands of the three days. I'll post "what happened"s in the Comments section. All problems are from the pair games.

(A)
J875 T63 98764 A, unfavorable.
You pass, partner opens 2C (strong, artificial, and forcing), you respond an artificial 2H (one ace or two kings), and partner "raises" to 3H. Your bid.

(B)
A642 A9 A95 A852, favorable.
Three passes to you. Do you bid the "automatic" strong notrump?

(C)
KJ4 A64 A743 843, all red.
This is your first hand with an unfamiliar, but expert, partner. He opens 1S. You bid 2D, game-forcing [or do you? I'm happy to hear suggestions-- your choices are a semi-forcing notrump, 2N Jacoby style, 3S limit raise, or some other creative call], and he rebids 2H. Your call.

(D)
J A532 AJ53 T654, all red.
Partner opens 1S, you bid a semi-forcing notrump, and he rebids 2C. Your call.

(E)
KQT962 -- 6 AK9542, favorable.
You open 1S, lefty passes, partner raises to 2S, and righty comes in with an insufficient 2H. Your bid. (Do you accept the insufficient bid?)

(F)
AKQ86 AQ7 K84 KT, favorable.
RHO opens 3D. You're up.

(G)
4 9876432 Q 9873, unfavorable.
RHO opens 1C. Do you have a call?

(H)
AKJ82 QT63 3 AK9
You open 1S and partner bids a semi-forcing NT. Your rebid is?

4 comments:

McKenzie said...

(A) I bid 4C, hoping partner could read this as a cuebid, and passed her 4H. Looking back, I think a 5C splinter is the right call.

(B) I bid the unthinking notrump. Partner held K5 QJT87 T82 Q73. We had a transfer and invitation auction, ending up in 3N, making with a little help from our friends. I think, though, that AAAA should be dummy... so a better auction would be 1C - 1H - 1S - 1N - 2N - 3N.

(C) I rebid 2S, thinking that 3S would be a slam-positive hand, and 2S would be a hand with a semi-fit but not sure where the final contract should end up. He pushed to a slam, thinking that 2S is the slam-positive hand, 3S the "normal" minimum game-forcing spade raise. Down one.

(D)I rebid 2N, and went down 3. Pard had a bad 5044. 3C would have made in comfort.

(E)I decided in a fairly weak field, I didn't think finding a 22-point slam would be worth much more than playing the hand well for +480. Also, I didn't want to help the opponents find the save that must be there... wrong again. 6S was laydown opposite pard's pointy sticks and was bid at a few tables. Meg and Tammy got this one right.

(F) I overcalled 3N. Sure, it's a little heavy, but at matchpoints frequency of gain is more important than size of gain, and blasting 3N will work more often than not. This hand was a mixed bag for 3N... we were on for 6C, but we still got 6.5 of 8 matchpoints for 3N making 7.

(G) I made the awful, awful bid of 2H. Maybe I shouldn't have posted this. I'm a little embarrassed.

(H) Meg bid 2H, and I think that's the right call. I had some quite strong players ask me after the event, "what would you do over a 3H rebid?" with my hand, 5 J82 AJT975 J53. I think I convinced them that opener's hand isn't worth a game-force until a fit is found. There was some discussion of a 3C rebid by opener, but I think that's a little left-field for me. By the way, Meg overplayed 2H and made 4 for a good board.

Noble said...

(A) 4h (obvious?)
A 4c bid here is not a cuebid, or at least should not be one -- you need to bid your suit at some point! Anyway even if 4c was a cuebid I would still bid 4h.

(B) YES. Each time I've tried to be cute in the past, partner delcared it and guess what, it was better from my side.

(C) 2m then Ns, where N is either 2 or 4 is fine.

(D) 2n, oink. I hope this doesn't get passed.

(E) I accept the insufficient bid and then bid 4h.

(F) 3N.

(G) I'd bid a weak 2h if that is available. I am 7-4, and it is a 1c bid. Switch my H and S and I would not jump to 2s over a 1h opening -- and I think that is obvious.

(H) Normally I am quite conservative with the 2h rebids since that is pretty much the most aggressively-invited-over bid in bridge, but if I wasn't sure of that mindset from pard I would bid 3h, sure.

Noble said...

(C)
In nearly 10 years of bridge playing I have never heard of anyone thinking that responding 2m then jumping to 3 of partners major shows a minimum hand.

McKenzie said...

I felt the same way. Amazing how different "standard" agreements come to be in different areas of the country.