[flytoox]

Here is a hand I didnt do well yesterday.

Scoring: IMP

---

The bidding goes as follows.

W N E S
-- -- P 1S
3H X 6H! ?

You dont know much about west's style, but east is kind of nasty.

Now the question is, what do you choose?

Double to take a sure plus? or venture 6S or sth else?

This is board 3 of last session. Your team are leading 15imps after two sessions, if that matters.

I will post the play problem later.

[jukmoi]

I try 6♠. East is likely to hold something wild like ♠ - ♥ Qxxxx ♦ Axxxxxx ♣ x. Even double-slam swing is possible.

[gwnn]

What exactly is a 'kind of nasty' style?

[Hanoi5]

I'm gonna double. What if partner has all the Kings and the spade Q is third (or 4th)? I want to make sure of my plus.

[flytoox]

gwnn, on Jun 7 2010, 08:07 AM, said:

What exactly is a 'kind of nasty' style?

By this I mean you cannot infer much from his bidding.

Or put it this way: 6H promises long heart support. But that is all.

[Codo]

6 ♠, I bet they let me double 7 Heart sometimes too.

[Free]

6♠ is pretty normal, but I'm not happy with it since I have a side suit and a first round ♥ control. Perhaps 7♣ is better, who knows...

[Fluffy]

forcing pass mike?

[kfay]

In my opinion we're in a forcing-pass situation so I pass.

Seems easy.

When RHO is a passed hand, unfav, LHO preempts and they're in slam.... the director, the caddies and the LOL's know they're sacrificing so this fulfills my last-ditch contingency policy for FP situations.

I may have to rethink this after considering partner's possible actions... I definitely don't want him to bid 7 of something (except maybe spades). So maybe first reaction isn't the best option.

[dake50]

Which hands would not be in partner's double? Has 2xA? 3+controls?
TopX before Q-bid 4H has 2xA +SK +K? ie 4 controls in 4H?
Which in 4S? Which would keyask?
4C,4D promise what?

What cases am I left to expect?? Do I know 4+4 controls? my 2xA+his A(not in H)?

Did X deny even tolerance for S??

Well structured makes this decision clear. At least not blowing gas.

[ceeb]

I like pass. Of course it understates the spades, but bidding 6♠ with this seems like being stampeded; on average I think we'll do better going along with whatever pd guesses.

[655321]

I like 6♠.

Partner won't be able to bid 6♠, so if we want to be there it is up to us to bid it. It is true we are a bit light on for values, but the void in hearts is good (a singleton would be very bad, they probably have 11 or 12 hearts, and if we had one heart partner could also have a singleton), the 7th spade is good.

Also, it doesn't seems that we will get a big number against 6♥, so we can bid lower percentage slams here. For example, if we knew that we would always get exactly 300 against 6♥X, then we would do better by bidding 6♠ even if it makes only one time in three. (Actually the IMP scale changes that calculation a bit, -9, -9, +15, but the principle still applies)

[flytoox]

Scoring: IMP

---

At the table I bid 6S, all passed.

West lead HA, ruffed. How do you play the hand?

[655321]

I guess to run the spade Jack.

It does seem like a complete guess to me. If the opponents are 3631/1633, the hands could be either way around. LHO did not lead a club, perhaps because he doesn't have a singleton, perhaps he does have a singleton but also has Qxx of trumps, perhaps he has a singleton but chose to lead from his AK thinking his partner can't have an entry.

RHO should have shape, but perhaps he is more likely to bid 6♥ with a singleton spade than Qxx spade. I think that is the strongest indication for running the Jack. Maybe RHO is even 1651. With some of these hands he could have bid 6♦ for the lead if he wanted to, maybe LHO has a singleton diamond and still led from his ♥AK.

Maybe a case for playing spades the other way is that you pick up singleton queen in the 3-1 breaks, but I will still play RHO for the short spades and run the Jack.

(Edit) If LHO does have Qxx spade, I will try to come back to hand with a club to draw the last trump.

This post has been edited by 655321: 2010-June-07, 23:04

[Free]

I'd play ♦Q and see who has ♦A. Then I'll make my decision in ♠. This is not without risk, but we also have to guess the ♣ later on so we might as well gather some info first.

[655321]

Free, on Jun 8 2010, 03:32 AM, said:

we also have to guess the ♣ later on

That turns out not to be the case.

[jukmoi]

I will also run the ♠J based on that RHO should have a very distributional hand. If the ♠ behave we have plenty of tricks (13) without a ♣ guess.