Hi all
No inspiration and little material for stories this week. At Dombo there were several crazy games, lots of voids and 7+ card suits flying around, but there’s just not much to tell about that. So here’s a compilation from last week, a sensitivity theme.
This is Hoek’s hand. He heard me open 1
(unbalanced), his RHO jumped to 2
(weak) and he showed his four card 
suit with a negative double. Lefty raised to the three level and I introduced 
, again a level higher. Well, Hoek knows me a little by now, I have shape instead of points.
But what to do?
I like Hoek’s arguments for bidding 4. You have not enough to raise partner to the game, but you do want to bid on if partner has extras. If I had an Ace extra I would have bid the same, and then we would have reached game. Not now, 4 was passed out, and the lucky break in trumps brought us ten tricks. Switching back to 4 may seem dangerous, it’s only a 5-3 fit, but in 4 they are losers just the same .
On the next deal my partner (Peter-Paul) had to play 6. Due to heavy interference in and a little bit of insecurity we missed our best spot in 6.
West led a . Peter-Paul took the lead in dummy (discarding a ), crossed to his Ace and back to the King. He tried to cash the other two honours, but East ruffed one of them. That and a inevitable loser led to down one. So his plan would have worked out if either the would split 4-3, or a doubleton trump with the doubleton . The odds seem reasonable.
Here’s my plan: take the lead (discard a ), ruff a , ruff a , cross to the Ace of and ruff your last with the King. Now you have to get to your hand and the only way is to ruff another . Draw trumps then, and take the right decision in . It’s not particularly hard on this deal. It looks as if my plan is succesful if trumps are 3-2 (barring some extreme distributions). Nothing more. If one of my faithful readers has another view on this matter, feel free to react.