[boboose]

Please advise on what to bid on these 2 hands playing match points:

1096
AKJ1072
KQ74
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Bidding, Both Vul:
P, P,1D,1H
1S,2H, P, ?



QJ10974
32
AQ105
A

Bidding Vul. vs Not Vul:

P, P,1S, 2D
2S,3D, ?

[LBengtsson]

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Im bidding 4♥ on board 1, and 4♠ on board 2. slam may be there but non- certain. if partner has extra strength he could have made UCB. with just 2 level raise Im playing safety.

[pescetom]

On board 1 I would bid 2♠ if that is a help suit game try, at least at MP.

[mikeh]

Methods help. A common expert treatment is that the simple raise by partner shows a minimum raise to 2H, with a cuebid of 2D showing a sound or constructive raise.
That would make the decision on board one a lot easier. I’d pass 2H and bid game over 2D.

As it is, I can guess. The problem with help suit tries is that they give away a lot of information. Another problem is defining what kind of suit we show in the help suit. Generally I like my help suit to be something like Kxxx or QJx...not xxx.

Opponents tend to lead their partner’s suit unless the have a clear lead elsewhere. Thus LHO will tend to lead diamonds unless he has, say, KQ in spades or clubs. Obviously a diamond lead is great on board one, since RHO will virtually always fly the Ace if he has it. Now all we need is to not lose 3 spades. However, on that, RHO has short spades or a terrible hand, since he did not bid 2S.

At imps I blast game without much worry. It has to be at least 40% or so, plus it’s unlikely to get doubled even when wrong, and might even make even when it has no real play.

At mps, it’s a lot closer. A minus score will be bad news.

Today, I’m bidding game. Maybe wrongly influenced by the fact that I haven’t played mps in more than 18 months😀 ask me next week, I might pass. Nah, I don’t think so.

The second one is far easier. Even if the diamond king is offside, LHO is often leading diamonds. So it would be cowardly not to bid 4S.

The point about the diamond lead is that we may not have enough trump in dummy to ruff all of our losers even if he has a stiff....if they lead or are able to switch to trump. So scoring the AQ will be good.

As a general rule, I think you’ll find that most good players rarely use game tries. Certainly they’re not used to the extent that they were used years ago. The problem is information leakage. This is especially so when the game try is rejected. It’s not unusual for that to result in going down at the 3-level on hands where game might have made had the strong hand simply bid it. Defence is difficult and the opening lead sometimes the most difficult part of defence. Reese wrote that there is no such thing as a blind lead, only a deaf opening leader. So don’t tell opening leader more than you have to. The modern game try is o bid game and try to make it.