Hand of the Week #16

The month of July started off a bang at the bridge club, with lots of wild bidding at the Tuesday 01 July game. Along with three slam hands, here was a tricky five-level decision that tested both sides:

Dealer North NS vul	— J 9 7 3 2 A K 5 K 9 6 5 4
A K Q T 9 5 2 T J 7 4 2 Q		J 7 6 4 A 8 6 6 3 T 8 7 2
	8 3 K Q 5 4 Q T 9 8 A J 2

West	North	East	South
	1	Pass	2NT!
4	Pass!	Pass	5
5	Pass	Pass	Double
Pass	Pass	Pass

My partner opened 1, and I made a game-forcing raise of hearts, denying any singleton or void. (Playing the Yellow Card or off-the-shelf 2/1, Jacoby 2NT shows this hand. The bid I actually made at the table with Michael in our system was an artificial 3.) West, with a long spade suit and no defense against hearts, jumps to 4. After that is where it gets interesting.

Partner knows that our side has forced to game on high cards. Logically, we cannot want to sell out to 4 undoubled. Either our side is going to declare, or we are going to double our opponents' sacrifice. North's pass of 4 is forcing! If North knows he wants to defend, he doubles; if he knows he wants to bid on, he bids 5; if he wants South to make the decision, he passes. His void in spades suggests bidding on, but his weak hearts and his AK both suggest defending.

South, looking at his own hand, sees only one card, the A, that can take a trick against 4: on defense, the hearts are going to get trumped and the Q will likely never set up. Therefore the decision to bid 5 is clearcut.

Normally it's wrong to bid again after you have preempted once already. But Marlene Bell judged well that we were going to make 5, and, at favorable vulnerability, went on to 5 knowing that if her partner had one trick, she would go for 500 instead of losing 650. If her partner had nothing, she might be set 800 but our side would have missed a slam. (If East had two or more tricks there was a risk that 5 was going set - but that was very unlikely given the bidding.) Had she passed, East should have bid 5 rather than defending 5, for all the same reasons.

North again passed the decision to bid or defend around to South. We doubled, and cashed the only three tricks we could -- the extra spades in East letting Marlene ruff her diamond losers and go down only one instead of three. But she was getting a top for any score less than 650: the other N-S pairs were all in 5 or 5X, making.