This hand bugs me

Questions and Commentary provided about hands requested

Have a hand you and your partner couldn't figure out how to bid? Why did everyone else make a contract you are sure you couldn't? Stuck for a lead, that apparently everyone else figured out?
We encourage our I/N players to submit troublesome hands to our Director/Teacher review team and we'll try discuss them here.

Instructions to submit a hand:

These instructions allow you to submit a hand from within the BBO website to the Director(s) account. In the far right control, click on the History tab. This tab has several choices (at the top of the control). My Table and Recent Tournaments are the most useful controls right now. During the game, you can display My Table and it will show you your previous results in the current game you are playing. If the game is a barometer game, you will see your real time percentage score (or IMPs in IMP game) of the rounds already completed. This view shows each hand played in the lower part of the screen. With the "Hamburger" icon, you can choose the 'Export' option, and then "Send to Member". If you send the hand to 'vacb271072', 'kcschwols' or 'john2500', it will be shared with the director team and we'll try answer your question and/or publish it here as a lesson.
My table will continue you show you your last game until you start another game or logoff. If the game has already flushed out, you can use the Recent Tournaments control to get to the same information on the boards you played; follow the same 'hamburger'->Export->Send to Member process described above. Note, sometimes BBO takes some time to make the most recent tournament available, if you get a 'unable to access database' error message just try again some time later.

Lose a trick to make a slam. Sometimes you have to plan to lose a trick to force your opponent to lead back to you at their disadvantage. This could also be titled the power of tens and nines.

Jack Spades is lead, and won by declarer. Looking at the hand you have 4 club tricks, 2 diamond tricks, 1 heart trick and one more spade trick for a total of 9 tricks, so you need to make 3 more tricks for slam. For the slam to make you need to pick up the Kh for another heart trick. Where else can you manufacture tricks? Start by running two clubs to get to dummy and take the heart finesse. So far, clubs are split and the heart K is in the right hand as you win the Jack hearts. At this point, the only hope of winning extra tricks is to make South lead. If you take the clubs, you have to lead from dummy or if you cross to the AK of diamonds. However, if you play a small diamond and force South to be on lead, he'll have to either lead away from the KH or allow you to then try a diamond squeeze/finesse of north. So, play a diamond and only win in dummy if North covers. Go ahead and try the double dummy, the only making line is to play a diamond after winning the JH finesse. The three tricks you needed, the KH finesse and you pick up both your 9s of hearts and diamonds at the end.

There can be only one Captain in an auction. Consider the hand and auction below. In the auction, I open 1 club, my partner responds 1S and I complete my reverse in hearts, showing 18-19 pts. This is a bit of shade, the bid should show 18-19 high card points. My partner, loves his hand a bids 4th suit forcing. This should make him Captain of the auction. I bid 3NT as I think I have described my hand: big on points, 4 hearts and at least 4 clubs. Any other shape would allowed me other bids. Partner bids 4clubs, this is completely forcing, although undiscussed. Is it Gerber? Is it Minorwood in clubs? It could be a cue bid showing first round control, in which case its a void in clubs, because I have the Ace

What would you decide 4Club would mean? I decided on Gerber and gave a response of 2 Aces, which is 5 Spades, but bad luck, this is also partner first bid suit. Partner raised is to 6S. Oh no, did I missed what 4C meant? Was it showing a club void? I was scared of partners 6S bid, thinking maybe he missed my aces response and thought I was showing 2 card support or something. The moral of the story: Trust Partner

Unusual vs Unusual. You might not like making 2-suit overcall bids, but your opponents most definately will. You should discuss with your partner how to deal with that interference. Opponents are jamming up your bidding space, and you have to use their bid to convey more information to your partner quickly. Consider the following hand:

After an unusual 2NT (showing both minors) North needs to show his hand and points. Simply bidding 3S doesn't help South decide on game and gives opponents a chance to find the excellant sacrafice of 5Diamonds. Note, the uncertainity by North-South prevented either side from even doubling (which could have turned the total bottom score to just a dismal low score.

Adding Unusual vs. Unusual to your toolbox fits the bill. If you have 7-10HCP and support for partner, just simply raise him. If you have 10-12 points and support, cue opponents overcalled suit. No, not NT, their bid is artificial, so you can cue bid the suit they are implying. This is exactly what we do if they just overcalled 2C or 2D (bid 3C/3D to show a limit raise or better). So, bid 3C to tell partner you have 10-12HCP hand and support for his suit. Finally, have points (~10HCP) but no support for partner (2 or fewer). You have 2 choices, if you strength in either of the suit implied by the opponent, you can double. This tells partner that after the other opponent picks a suit to let the bidding come around to you, where you can double again for penalty or take other actions. If you don't have strength in opponent's suits and don't have support for partner's suit. We have another bid, we can cue bid the oppoents higher implied suit; in this case 3D. This tells partner your side might still reach game, and it might be that uncontested suit (hearts in this case). Trust me, if you have the above conditions you will have 4 good or 5 hearts. Worst case (2 spades, 3 of each minor leaves 5 cards left that must be hearts).
.An important thing to note too, opponents bid is artifical; his partner has to bid. This means the bidding will come back around to you if you pass, so you can pass with weak (0-7HCP) hands and still get decide later to show support for partner suit. You can pass with very unusual hands to see what opponents do before you act. Be patient.

Oh, and for the above hand. Partner should just jump to 4S, he can see we have a 10-card fit and has less than 10HCP. Without interference, jumping to 4S is the usual bid. Why let the opponents muck around and find the comfortable diamond fit, make them guess at the 5D as a good sacrifice

Jacoby 2NT is more than just the first bid. Make sure you discuss with your partner what the subsequeent bids mean.

The Usual treatment after the Jacoby2NT bid is to show shortness. In this case, bid the Diamonds to show a singleton. The bid of 3S confused partner

Here's a hand we can talk about

How to scare the daylights out of your partner. I decided the hand is actually ultra powerfull after opponent have found a heart fit. It increases the potential of this hand to take 9 or even 10 tricks. Partner is lying back waiting to play against 4H (doubled vul might score 500), however, I lock down the plus 420 as the QD in partners hand is all I need

After opponent leaves in 2C Doubled, I thought my partner was in serious trouble:

A redouble from the pass out seat tells partner that we might have a better option if we run to either unbid suit. Fortunately, my partner looks at the potential in his hand, assuming that I would have a probable honor in one of the major suit and left the redouble in for 760 points and a top board.
You can also see a nice little end play making East lead into the last two clubs.