Last week I wrote about trusting partner instead of the opponents. Well, I should have followed my own advice on Board 13 last night. My partner opened 1H and RHO made a takeout double, while I was looking at this very nice hand:
♠ 7 4
♥ 7 6 5 2
♦ A K Q
♣ A 6 3 2
We play Jordan, so a 2NT bid by me shows a Limit Raise (heart support and at least ten points) or better. This hand certainly qualifies. However, given that RHO should have close to an opening hand for her takeout double, it seems slam is out of the question, and I don't want to give the opponents any chance to find a spade fit if they have some distributional freak. I therefore jump to 4H immediately.
Partner makes the surprising bid of 4 Spades. We play Kickback; this means that once we have found a trump fit, the suit directly above trump is Keycard asking. This allows us to stay a bit lower in the auction (and room to ask for the Queen) than when 4NT is used. I dutifully respond 5D, which shows 2 Keycards without the Queen of trump. Now partner makes the even more suprising bid of 6D, which should be asking if I have the King of Diamonds.
What is going on? My 4 Heart bid should not have shown partner that I had a great hand. It really said I was pretty distributional. Is he reading me for something else? How could he think I have two Aces and now the King of Diamonds, especially when the opponents made a takeout double? What I am supposed to do is bid anything other than 6H if I have the Diamond King. I decide to bid 6NT. This will keep us at the 6-level in case we have had some kind of misunderstanding. Partner can correct to 7H if he wants, knowing that I have the Diamond King. Partner thinks this over quite a while and passes. Here are our hands. (RHO had a 7-count with 4-0-6-3 distribution!)
♠ A K 3
♥ A K J 9 8 4 3
♦ 10 7
♣ Q
♠ 7 4
♥ 7 6 5 2
♦ A K Q
♣ A 6 3 2
We have 13 tricks, of course. I should have trusted partner's 6D bid more than my RHO's takeout double, recognizing that partner must have extra Hearts. Not only did I have the Diamond King, but I had the Diamond Queen--obviously an extra trick partner would not be counting on. Rather than bidding 6NT to give partner a choice between 6NT and 7H, I think I should have bid 7D, giving partner a choice of grandslams, either 7H or 7NT. If I held the King of Clubs instead of the Diamond Queen, then I could have bid 7 Clubs. If I held neither card, then I guess 6NT is the right bid, and partner should pass, as he can only count 12 tricks (7 hearts, 2 spades, 2 diamonds, and 1 club). In that sense, he was lucky that I didn't have such a hand and hear me blast into 7H in response to his 6D query. I still don't know how partner took my 4H bid, but he obviously was not deterred by the takeout double! Having said that, he was extremely lucky that I didn't have the hand my 4H bid said I could have (heart fit with no Aces), as he would have lost two diamonds and a club off the top, and his Keycard ask would have caused us to go down 1 in 5 Hearts.
It turned out that we got a top board anyway, because no one bid a grandslam and other pairs were naturally in their 11-card heart fit, taking the same 13 tricks. Still, it was a good hand to learn from.
I really like to be able to show the balanced nature of this kind of hand. Perhaps over the X you could XX and then (jump) raise hearts?
ReplyDeleteIf there hadn't been an intervening X you could use Jacoby 2NT which shows a balanced raise of this strength. I like to play 1Major-2NT to show about 12-15 pts with 2to4 cards in partner's major (Pender and Ross, world champions from the 80's used to play 1Major-2NT showed a balanced hand with 2to7 cards in partner's major!). That comes up much more often, and particularly at matchpoints, gets you to great 3NT contracts when the field is in the major game making the same # of tricks.
My partner (E) on board 3 had a hand where this might have worked well also: 1S-? with AK96.J9.Q86.Q876 2NT followed by a spade raise would have described this hand very well!