2-Suited Overcalls

For the next two weeks, Caroline's Conventions, at 2pm on Thursdays will be explaining how to bid your hand when the opponents open the bidding and you, as an overcaller have two 5 card suits in your hand.

Here is an example from one of today's busy supervised sessions

Over South's preempt, West cue bid 4 diamonds a conventional bid showing both major suits (its called a Michael's Cue Bid). East bid game in her best Major Suit.

South led the Jack of Clubs. Declarer wary of this being a singleton won with the ace in the dummy, and drew the trumps by finessing the king of spades twice, leading the queen and then the jack from the dummy, eventually capturing North's King. A losing heart finesse meant the loss of 1 diamond, 1 club and 1 heart. Game made.

April's Tip For intermediates

To open a suit you need just four cards; to repeat a suit,

however, you should try to have six cards. With five cards,

you usually have a preferable alternative to rebidding

your suit.

Hand A	Hand B	Hand C

(a) Open 1♠ but rebid 2♥, indicating your five-four
shape (see deal).

(b) You will not even bid spades once, instead opening
1NT, showing a balanced 12-14 (yes - even with a five-card
major).

(c). You do have a Rule of 20 opener (points + no. of
cards in two longest suits getting to 20). You will open 1♠
but your rebid will depend on partner’s response. Over
1NT or 2♣ you will rebid 2♦; over 2 ♦ you will raise to 3 ♦;
but over 2♥ you will understandably be loath to rebid 3 ♦,
taking the bidding to the nine-trick level with no assurance of
a fit or more than half the pack in points. A 2♠ rebid is best,
in spite of the lack of a sixth spade. Repeating a  five-card suit,
however, is exceptional.

Now onto our featured deal

What happened

The Auction: North should rebid 2♥ to show the five-four shape.
Opening Lead: ♣J

3NT failed on ♣J lead - to ♣Q and ♣K. Declarer won
♣A on the third round, knocked out ♥A, but the defence
cashed a fourth club and ♠A. Down one.

What should have happened


Opening Lead: ♣3


4♥ makes. After ♣J, ♣Q, ♣K, win ♣A and (optional)
play ♦AKQ throwing ♣4. Then lead to ♠Q. Say East wins
♠A and leads ♥3 to ♥A then ♥5. Win ♥Q, lead to ♠K,
trump ♠4, and cross-trump your way to 10 tricks. Game
made.

If you remember just one thing...
I was once asked in an interview to give one useful
piece of advice to intermediate players. This was it: Do
not rebid a five-card suit if you have an alternative.

This is Tip No. 12 (of 251!) from my What Should Have Happened book.
To buy a copy (just £13), click here.

Wednesday Afternoon Duplicate - Board 18 - Losing Trick Count

Bidding a thin game with confidence is one of the joys of bridge. This hand provides an excellent example of one of the tools we can use to help our judgement in the bidding - the Losing Trick Count.

You should use the LTC in the following circumstances:

1. Your hand is UNBALANCED
2. You have a FIT
3. You are the OPENING partnership

As East, we only have 3 points, but when partner opens 1S we calculate our losing tricks as we fulfill the criteria above.

To work this out, consider each suit in turn. For each of the AKQ we are missing, we count one loser. You can never have more losers in a suit than you have cards. SO East has:

Spades - 3 losers (missing AKQ)
Hearts - 2 losers (missing AK)
Diamonds - 3 losers (AKQ)
Clubs - 1 loser (missing A)

Our total is 9 losers, which as a guideline is what we expect from raising 1 of a suit to 2 of the same suit.

Opener also calculates his losers when he hears of the fit opposite. Here we have:

Spades - 1 loser (missing Q)
Hearts - 1 loser (missing A)
Diamonds - 1 loser (missing A)
Clubs - 2 losers (missing KQ)

Openers total is 5 losers.

Opener then adds together his own number of losers to the expected number of partners losers:

5+9 = 14

and then deducts this total from 18

18-14 = 4

This is the level that he should bid to - 4 spades in this case which we can see makes 10 tricks on a combined 20 points.

Caroline covers this subject in much more detail in her Revise and Play Series on Thursday afternoons. And Andrew has written an excellent booklet on Hand Evaluation & the Losing Trick Count



GOLD CUP NEWS

A little bird tells be of an interesting match tomorrow afternoon - Team Allfrey versus Team Duckworth. Team Allfrey contains Andrew Robson and Alexander Allfrey and Team Duckworth is apparently fielding Nick Boss and Martin Jones. The result may be reported here over the weekend - depending on the outcome!

Monday Afternoon Duplicate - Board 9 - Landy over 1NT

Lets have a look at the scores from this board:

The board was played 14 times, and we can see that only once was the optimal contract of 2 spades by East reached.

Allowing opponents to play undisturbed in their 1NT contract has been shown over the years to be a bad thing at duplicate. Landy, a bid of 2 clubs over 1NT, is a defence showing 8-15 points (with 16 or more you double) and a minimum of a 5-4 shape in the Majors which has the advantage of being simple to remember but also effective. As responder, you bid a 4 card major if you have one, or bid 2 diamonds with no preference, allowing partner to bid their longer suit. For full details see Andrew's Conventions Flipper.

So a simple bid which on this board earns you 88%. Highly recommended!

Friday Duplicate - Board 26 - Doubling 1NT

Looking through the results from Friday's duplicate - the contracts on this board surprised me the most (excluding the hand where I was in 6 diamonds missing the Ace and King of trumps!) Exactly half the field played in 2 Hearts making 9 or 10 tricks.

As South you should double East's 1NT bid promising 16 or more points.

What, then is poor West to do - vulnerable and no doubt feeling a little uncomfortable? Well, you could stick it out and hope North bids, but that is unlikely. North is almost certain to know that their side has the balance of the points and should pass. So, as West, do something - bid your best suit. You can hardly make things any worse and who knows you might find that North/South can't remember whether a second double is take out or penalties and they do the wrong thing. They may try for their own game, or you might even find a much better contract for yourselves.

At our table West was stoic and passed. As the cards lay, East, in spite of her maximum 1NT opening bid was looking at 3 down, -800 and no matchpoints.

Welcome to The Andrew Robson Bridge Club Blog and HOT NEWS

Thanks for reading our new daily report on the life and times of the world's biggest and best bridge club. We bring you interesting hands, tips for players of every level and all the latest gossip and news.

To kick off, we bring you exciting news of one of the club's leading teachers David Bakhshi playing in the US Spring National Championships in Louisville, Kentucky. Later today, at 3pm our time, David's team will be contesting the Final of the Vanderbilt Knockout Teams. You will be able to watch live vugraph on Bridge Base Online.

To put this achievement into context, as far as I can see David is only the third English born player in the history of these championships to win or be runner up in one of the premier North American events - the other two being Tony Forrester and our own leader Andrew.

Good luck David and congratulations from everyone at the club.

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