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Playing the Hand- General Principles |
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When the Opponents Open the Bidding |
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Index of Lessons |
As we concluded the last lesson, we commented that once you have the basics understood, you should sit down and play with others of your skill level. You might also have one person who has somewhat greater knowledge and can help everyone else analyze each hand and learn as much as possible from it. You should be prepared for your first sessions to be for the purpose of learning, and you should be prepared to discuss each hand and critique each other's bidding and play.
To simulate that experience, let's take a look at ten hands, dealt at random. You'll get to see all ten hands at the outset, and you can see what you think each player might have bid and what the final contract might have been. Then you will be able to jump to a section on the page to see the actual bidding, and you'll be able to see the rationale each player followed in making the bid that he did.
The Hands
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HAND 01
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HAND 02
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HAND 03
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HAND 04
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HAND 05
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HAND 06
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HAND 07
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HAND 08
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HAND 09
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HAND 10
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Now you are ready to learn about how to play the hand, once you have bid to your contract.
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Playing the Hand- General Principles |
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When the Opponents Open the Bidding |
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Index of Lessons |
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Comments:
(1) A textbook opening in a 5-card major
(2) East might double, but that would be for takeout, so he passes
(3) A textbook takeout double; opening count, shortness in the opponents' suit and support for the other three suits
(4) No extra values or a second suit
(5) East knows he is forced to bid, but also knows he holds the one exceptional hand- when he is long in the opponents' suit. So he converts West's takeout double into a penalty double, and hopes that the bad trump split will give North problems
(6) Knowing North is in trouble, South would like to rescue him with a different suit, but he has none, so he is forced to pass
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Comments:
(1) "I have 17 points or more!"
(2) "I have less than 9 points"
(3) "I have an even hand with 19-21 points"
(4) "Do you have a 4-card major?" (South thinks the hand may play better in a trump contract if there is a fit)
(5) "I have a 4-card Spade suit and may also have a 4-card Heart suit."
(6) "Spades will be trump. Please bid game if you have 20-21 points"
(7) Since North has 20 points, he bids the game
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Comments:
(1) With 2 5-card suits, bid the higher one first
(2) With just 7 points, it is a close decision as to whether to simply pass or bid Spades, but a 7-card suit should almost always be bid
(3) North now shows his second suit
(4) Another close decision. The Spade suit is certainly rebiddable, but the fact that South has support for North's first bid suit tips the scales in favor of a raise. If North has Spade support, perhaps he will show it.
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Comments:
(1) A 7-card suit, but not enough points to overcall
(2) West knows the partnership has over 20 points, enough for him to bid his own suit instead of just raising Spades. But he needs 10 points to go to the 2-level, so he just shows his Spade support
(3) East now knows that West must have more than a minimum hand, since with his Spade support he could always have passed. Game is close. East makes a move towards game by cue-bidding Clubs to show that he has the Ace or a void.
(4) West also realizes that East has more than the 13 he promised since he did not simply pass 2 
. He places East with at least 17 now; East is making a move towards game but knows that West must have less than 10 points for his simple raise. East is telling West where his outside strength is so that West can judge if it is well-placed. West is happy to know about the Club control, and now tells East about his Heart control.
(5) East knows that since West did not show a Diamond control, he does not have one. When West shows his Heart control (which, of course, must be the Ace, as a void is very unlikely, East's King becomes more valuable. East decides to raise the cue-bid, which shows a second-round control (either the King or a singleton).
(6) West can now bid game. He has figured out that East's 17-18 points are in Spades, Hearts and Clubs- right where they need to be; there are no wasted Diamond honors. So even if they are a point or two shy of 26, the card placement should work in their favor.
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Comments:
(1) With a good 6-card suit and less than 13 points North pre-empts in Clubs
(2) South has a powerful hand after North's pre-empt; there is certainly a game or slam. South decides to bid his Hearts- a new suit which North cannot pass
(3) North shows he has support in Hearts
(4) South's hand is now a blockbuster. Six Club tricks and five Heart tricks are assured. If North has one Ace, there is a small slam, so South uses Blackwood to ask for Aces
(5) North's response showes no Aces (if he had all four, he would not have pre-empted)
(6) Missing two Aces, South stops safely in 5 Hearts. (He could, if he wished, have passed the Blackwood response of 5 Clubs and played the hand in that game, but he gets more points this way.)
As an interesting side note, some players treat a void as an Ace when responding to Blackwood, but we do not suggest that here. If we change North's 
10 to a small spade, then when South stops in 5 
, North can infer that South was looking for the Spade and Diamond Aces. Since a void in Diamonds is also first-round control, North would not have been wrong to raise to 6 .
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Comments:
(1) South knows that game is assured and bids his best suit. North may not have a real Diamond suit. North cannot pass this new suit bid.
(2) North cannot raise spades and has no other biddable suit. He can, however, rebid Diamonds to show that he does have a real suit.
(3) South doesn't yet know what trump should be, so he bids his second suit. It is another new suit and again North cannot pass
(4) North cannot raise Clubs or Spades, and cannot bid his Diamonds a third time. Since he is forced to bid, he bids in Notrump
(5) South is satisfied with 3 
. While the hands are somewhat mismatched, it appears that Hearts is the only suit not covered. South expects that the opponents will lead Hearts, the only suit not bid, but hopes that North has an honor in the suit (not unlikely, given that he did not support either Spades or Clubs)
When you are forced to bid but have no suit you can bid (or bid again), Notrump is the bid to make. Here, it worked out well as North-South only lost three heart tricks and a Diamond trick- just making their contract.
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Comments:
(1) The usual rule for bidding hands with three 4-card suits is to begin with the one below the singleton. But North cannot bid 1 
, since that is the Strong Club, and his suit is not good enough to bid 2 . Neither his Heart nor his Spade suit are biddable, and his hand is too unbalanced for Notrump. So 1 is his only choice; partner will not assume he has a Diamond suit until he bids them again
(2) South does not want to pass what might be a "short Diamond", but he has no biddable suit. Bidding 1 is his only choice
(3) West has a 7-card suit, and decides to bid it since he is only at the 2-level. He figures that if North-South have the preponderance of the points, they will continue bidding
(4) North is stuck. He has no other suit to bid, and to raise Notrump might be dangerous if the A is knocked out early and the opponents run their Diamonds. Even though he has 17 points and is pretty sure his partner has another 7 or so, they have no good trump suit, and so he reluctantly passes
As it turns out, North-South could have made 1 , so the fact that East-West didn't let them play it was good. But East-West couldn't make 2 either; they lost six tricks. You will encounter many hands where neither team can make very much. On such hands it is better to be a bit aggressive, even if you go down a trick or two.
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Comments:
(1) With 21 points, a definite Strong Club opening
(2) With less than 9 points, a negative response
(3) North has a powerful hand, and wants to force South to bid again, so he jumps.
(4) South knows his team is just shy of game, so he makes one move toward it, advertising something towards the high end of his negative range (0-8). With no biddable suit, he bids in Notrump
(5) North revalues his hand to 18 points, but knowing that the Clubs will run he has 7 tricks by himself. He hopes that South has a stopper in spades and can help in diamonds or hearts. He took a bit of a gamble in forcing South to bid, but his hand looks really nice. If he is doubled, he will run back to clubs.
North's agressiveness was rewarded. West, on lead, did not know which of his suits to lead, so he tried a low spade. This set up an eventual Spade trick for South, but he did not need it, as the contract came home with six Club tricks, two diamond tricks and a Heart.
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Comments:
(1) North begins this interesting hand by bidding 2 . Remember that when you are playing a Strong Club, this is the only way to show a normal opening bid with a Club suit. North only has 12 HCP, but his two distribution points allow him to open
(2) East has a very good Heart suit, and tries an overcall
(3) South knows immediately that with 16 points opposite 13, game is assured. He just doesn't know where. While he has good support for his partner's Clubs, he knows that playing minor-suit games can be tough, since eleven tricks, just shy of a slam, must be taken. So he decides to show his Spade suit first; if they have a 4-4 or even a 4-3 trump fit, the solid Clubs and South's A should give them a good shot at game
(4) Knowing that North-South have the preponderance of the points, West would have liked to raise partner's Hearts to pre-empt, but he doesn't have enough of them or enough points. He thought about doubling South's Spades for penalties, but decided it would be better not to scare them out of a possible 4-3 trump fit. If they end up in a Spade contract, he plans to double them then.
(5) North did not like South's Spades, and did not think he should rebid his 5-card suit. So, because he was forced to bid, he temporized by bidding Notrump (even though he had no stopper in the fourth suit- Diamonds).
(6) With no support from partner, rebidding his nice Heart suit would be a dangerous move for East
(7) With no Spade support from partner, South now shows his Club support
(8) North confirms that Clubs will be the trump suit. With only 4 of them, he might have tried Notrump instead so he would have to take two fewer tricks to make the game, but with 5, having Clubs as trump is safer. North did not jump to game because he doesn't yet know that his partner actually has opening count
(9) Knowing that game is very close, South bids his Diamonds. This bid does three things- it forces North to bid again, it shows control of the Diamond suit and it tells North that South has enough points to make game a likelihood (as he has now bid beyond a Club partscore). If South had had just a minimum, he would have passed.
(10) Knowing now what South is doing, North obliges by showing his control of the Heart suit.
(11) South confirms his own control of the Spade suit
(12) North has nothing else to tell South, so he simply returns to the agreed trump suit. If South wants to go further, North thinks, it is up to him.
(13) South stops to think. He knows North has a real, biddable Club suit, and so they have 5 tricks there. South can supply two more in Spades and one more in Diamonds, and North can either supply the A or a void(which takes care of South's singleton). Since North did not raise South's Spades, he has three or fewer. If he has a doubleton or singleton, South's two smaller Spades can be trumped; if he has three, then at worst there will only be one Spade loser. The big question is Diamonds. South would dearly love to know how many North has. If he has a singleton, then a slam is odds-on, but South decides that since East overcalled in Hearts, then North is likely short in them (maybe just Ax) and so it is likely that he has two or three Diamonds. If South bids slam, he cannot afford both a Spade and a Diamond loser or even two Diamond losers. Given all this, he decides it is not worth jeopardizing the game to try for the slam, and so he passes (wishing once again that he had X-ray vision).
There is a lot of analysis in this hand; it is a good illustration of the thinking that goes on during bidding, as players try to describe their hands to each other. Sometimes it can be hard to integrate all the information and inferences, but that facility will come with time. Having bid Clubs first, North was the Declarer, and so East properly led one of his Heart honors. North could see why South had taken so long with his last bid; slam was indeed very close. In the end, North, with careful play, was able to make the slam. You will find out how when we discuss the play of the hand.
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Comments:
(1) After three passes, West can actually open with only 12 points or so, which he does here, since he has support for both major suits. Neither is biddable, so he opens in Diamonds. This does not promise a Diamond suit unless and until West bids them again.
(2) North's Heart suit is not good enough for an overcall
(3) East bids his Spade suit
(4) West likes Spades, and considered raising them, but he knew that since East did not open they do not have enough points for game. So why get higher than you need to?
With careful play, East made his contract and took one extra trick. You will see how when we discuss the play of the hand.
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Playing the Hand- General Principles |
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When the Opponents Open the Bidding |
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Index of Lessons |
