[1eyedjack]

Scoring: IMP

You are South
N....E....S....W
P....P....1C...1S
P....2S...??
Thoughts, please, and if scoring/vul makes a difference, comments on that also?

---

[the hog]

Pass, you have a fit, but your partner couldn't scrape up a bid. Anyway she is still there and will compete with 2NT for the minors if that is right. Don't always mastermind but rather let your partner have some say in the auction.

[Walddk]

PASS. Partner couldn't act over 1♠ although he is short, so he doesn't have as much as 6 hcp and 4+ hearts and not 4+ clubs. It's time to get out of this. 3♦ is what I get if I double, and I don't want to hear that.

1363 is his most likely shape. I am glad a weak 2 in diamonds wasn't on our cc.

Roland

[cherdano]

You have a minimum opening and no shortness in their suit. There is exactly one bid to show this opposite a passed and passing partner...

[P_Marlowe]

Pass?

I dont really see any alternative,
double is for take out, and you wont
be pleased if you hear diamons on the
tree level, 3C should show a 6 card suit
for starters
... just ask yourself, how you will feel,
if either of your oponents begins to double you
on the 3 level.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[TheoKole]

Pass and lead a trump, your partner has lots of diamonds.

Cheers

Theo

[Gerben42]

Pass.

So what's the "once in a blue moon" part?
The next "blue moon" is in May 2007 btw.

[1eyedjack]

Thanks for the comments, all. The voting is pretty much as I expected, but I don’t think that the solution is as clear cut as the voting suggests.

TheoKole, on Sep 11 2005, 05:46 PM, said:

Pass and lead a trump, your partner has lots of diamonds.

I am not on lead.
If I pass and partner has lots of diamonds, he may yet bid them. Not good news from my perspective.

The_Hog, on Sep 11 2005, 11:24 AM, said:

Pass, you have a fit, but your partner couldn't scrape up a bid. Anyway she is still there and will compete with 2NT for the minors if that is right. Don't always mastermind but rather let your partner have some say in the auction.

This is I think a key comment. Leaving the decision to partner is in my view not the best route if there are aspects to your hand that partner has no right to expect. Taken to extremes this line argues that you should never take any action except in protective seat. After all, in direct seat you can always pass because partner is always there to rescue you. On this hand, if you leave it to partner there are several likely actions that she might take, among which are Pass, 3D and Double. You mention 2NT, which I agree is certainly another possibility, and one that leaves you without a problem (other than whether 5C is making ... a problem I can live with), but it is by no means the only option available to him. The last thing you want to hear is Pass, and yet that has a reasonable likelihood. Double is also reasonably likely, which of course you would not be passing, but then the question arises how do you distinguish between a hand that pulls the balancing double and one that takes immediate action? 3D from partner is also reasonably likely and not welcome. The evaluation of this hand changes dramatically if you swap the majors. Perhaps a bit unlikely that the hand would hold KQJ9 in a suit bid and supported by the opponents (although I have held such a hand before), but that is just an extreme case, and there are plenty of similar but less extreme examples of a hand with the same distribution as this hand and same total high card values but with dramatically different offensive to defensive ratios. If you pass in direct seat with either extreme, I would not expect partner to protect accurately in the pass-out seat.

Sure, don't always mastermind. But by contrast, do mastermind when you can take the pressure off partner. Is this such a hand? We shall see.

P_Marlowe, on Sep 11 2005, 05:35 PM, said:

Pass?

I dont really see any alternative,
double is for take out, and you wont
be pleased if you hear diamons on the
tree level,

Passing does not guarantee that partner will keep quiet about her diamonds.

P_Marlowe, on Sep 11 2005, 05:35 PM, said:

... just ask yourself, how you will feel,
if either of your oponents begins to double you
on the 3 level.

I would feel quite happy, actually. Oppo have a lot fewer cashing Spade and Diamond tricks than they may be expecting as the basis of their double. On the face of it I have only 3 top losers, if partner has his expected Spade Singleton. Another loser may develop from lack of trump control to ruff long losers, but then, even if I lose yet another on top of that, I do not expect to lose against par.

Walddk, on Sep 11 2005, 11:26 AM, said:

PASS. Partner couldn't act over 1♠ although he is short, so he doesn't have as much as 6 hcp and 4+ hearts and not 4+ clubs. It's time to get out of this. 3♦ is what I get if I double, and I don't want to hear that.

And yet you might yet hear that, even if you Pass. Something of a theme developing here. But double is perhaps not the only option open to you. We have one vote so far for 3C, which at least discourages a D bid from partner. One poster commented that this should show 6 Clubs. Generally I would agree, but there are exceptions to rules. If partner has singleton Spade and has failed to double 1S perhaps for lack of Hearts, then the odds of a Club fit are high.

cherdano, on Sep 11 2005, 02:14 PM, said:

You have a minimum opening and no shortness in their suit.

How do you arrive at that "minimum" evaluation? How many minimum openers would you expect to make 4H opposite a Yarborough with a 5 card Heart suit ... because I would only expect to lose three bullets in defence in this case. Of course with a combined 29 count I would not expect the opponents to have bid like this, but I only mention the point to illustrate the potential power of this hand.

I shall post the full hand and further comments shortly.

[1eyedjack]

OK folks here is the full hand as dealt. I have rotated the hands for convenience.

Scoring: IMP

---

E-W were a pair of GIBs. I clicked on the 1S overcall and it was defined as (inter alia) 5+ card suit. Even so I have some sympathy with the bid, although it is not ideal even for a 4 card suit overcall, having 4 in the unbid major. So, partner did not have the expected singleton Spade.
Anyway, I ran the hand through Deep Finesse and it came up with the following observation:
N-S can make 9 tricks in Clubs, with no variance whatever the opening lead.
E-W can make 7 tricks in Spades on a low diamond lead (or C:A lead followed by low diamond switch at trick 2) but on any other start they make 8 tricks in Spades. And this dispite that they only have a 7 card fit and we only have an 8 card fit. Personally I would be happy to play in 4CX-1 rather than rely on defeating 2S.
If I pass 2S, would partner bid 3C? I don't know. Would I WANT partner to bid 3C on that hand if I had values in Spades instead of Hearts? I think not.

[mikeh]

This post illustrates a point I made in an earlier rant.

We see a hand on which it is 'right' to compete to 3♣. Note that partner holds the 10x of ♥.

So we have someone advancing the idea that is must be right to bid on the South hand.

Designing your methods around specific hands on which a particular action is, double dummy, correct is the path to insanity and/or very bad bridge.

I could go on at length on this particular hand, but consider just 3 obvious points:

West could hold AJ9x of ♣ and make a juicy penalty double... the fact the the opps rate to hold 8♠ does not automatically give your partner ♣ length, and he could have 3 ♣ and still find west with AJ9x.

West could be about to bid game and your partner, understandably expecting a somewhat different hand for 3♣, may take a save....

If you develop the habit of masterminding, you are going to have a difficult time finding any good player willing to play with you. I think of a good partnership as similar to a pair of trapeze artists. The only reason they can perform at their level is that they have absolute trust in partner. Masterminding removes the basis of that trust, and telling yourself (and partner) that there are hands on which it is appropriate to mastermind is poor partnership technique.

[1eyedjack]

I have no problem with the notion that it is possible to construct hands on which taking action in direct seat works out as a losing option, either in this case or generally.

By the same token, nor do I think that that there is anything excepionally outrageous about the distribution of the other three hands as they happened, except perhaps for one aspect that counts in favour of passing (the Spade distribution), despite which it works out right to bid.

Partner's H:T is an asset on this hand, no doubt about that. On many other hands it will not be necessary.

There comes a cut-off point between masterminding the hand and taking pressure off partner from making losing options.

If you never make a bid for fear of walking into a penalty double with AJ9x sitting over you then I reckon you will be strangely silent throughout a lot of auctions where others are bidding and occasionally falling into a trap but far more often picking up 4 or 5 IMPs.

[Free]

Clear pass, p didn't bid ♦ or NT or double, and I don't have any good bids available imo.

[pigpenz]

clear pass, every time you kib or look at hand records there are always hands that you wish you had a way to get into the auction with minimal amount of risk. Here the risk is too great....sometimes we just have to let the opponetns play the hand.

[helene_t]

I would expect LHO to be strong, probably heading for 4♠.

[Fluffy]

At MP bidding 3♣ toavoid partner bidding 3♦ can a be a good strategy.