Post by a***@yahoo.co.ukNorth
T2
Q9763
3
AQJ84
N E S W
P
P 2S X P
4H AP
After a club lead I made 13 tricks.
A83
AKT4
AKT9
93
How should this have been bid?
Some people would have opened North's hand, but that seems overly
aggressive unless there's a conventional bid that shows it (some people
play 2H to show that sort of hand, but that's rare). So the initial
pass seems reasonable.
Most actions you can take over a weak two would typically show around 15
points or so (maybe a bit weaker with a good takeout shape). So South
has extras for the takeout double, but probably not by enough to show a
ridiculously strong hand (which is normally done by making some random
forcing bid that doesn't fit their hand, and then pulling the partner's
response into a bid that does, to show extra strength). I can thus buy
double has being the best bid here for South; assuming no relevant
conventions and that 3S (whatever its meaning) requires more points on
this shape, the only other bids worth considering are 2NT and 3NT, and
South has only a single stop, probably not enough.
That means that North will want to jump with their response on maybe
about 10 points, adjusted for how good the fit with South is. North's
hand is maybe worth about 12-13 upon hearing that South has hearts (it
was almost openable as it was), so 4H is a slight underbid, but in
the absence of relevant conventions there may not be any other bids
available. In that case, South probably has to pass here.
It looks like we're going to need a convention of some sort. One thing
that would help a lot here, and is a commonly agreed convention, would
be for a bid of 3S by North over South's takeout double to be
invitational in some unspecified way (to be clarified by future
bidding). South would initially interpret it as invitational to 3NT (as
any other interpretation would risk going beyond 3NT) – and would bid
3NT due to the Ace of Spades – but North would follow up with 4H to
show that it was actually a slam invite in hearts. South is
substantially stronger than promised (and hearts is just about the
best suit that North could have offered), so is likely to continue
with whatever control-asking convention the partnership has available.
An example bidding sequence for this:
Pass, (2S), X; 2S = weak
3S, 3NT; 3S = unspecified invite; 3NT = Spade stop
4H, 6H 4H = slam invite in Hearts; 6H = signoff
It's possible for South to mess around with Blackwood and the like over
the slam invite, but AFAICT South's going to bid 6 even if North has no
keycards (as that would then necessarily be compensated for by
solidity elsewhere), and you need a pretty advanced system to be able to
risk 7 here (the partnership probably has somewhere around the
equivalent of 32 adjusted points on this bidding sequence, which is
not normally enough for a grand slam).
--
ais523