There are many valuable lessons to be learned from this hand. Evaluating the South hand comes first. The hand contains sixteen high card points and a void. There is a six card diamond suit and a five card heart suit. We could consider this to be a "four loser" hand. There are no losers in the spade suit, two in the heart suit and one in each the diamond and the club suit. If the ace of clubs were the ace of hearts, I would want to open this hand with a two club bid. But that is not the case and one diamond is the correct opening bid.
After two passes, East, who is holding a monster hand in spades, makes a take-out double. I could make a case for just bidding three or four spades. West has failed to overcall and North has less than six points. The best effect of bidding this way rather than making a take-out double would be to keep the opponents from getting to their optimum contract, whatever that is. The risk is that you will go down and that the opponents did not have a game contract anywhere, so it is a gamble.
After the double, South jumps to two hearts to show a powerful hand. North shows his six card suit. South bids hearts again which indicates that he has five of them. The inference from this bidding is a hand with six diamond and five hearts.
North has a definite preference for diamonds and shows it. South knows that his partner has less than six points (from the initial pass), and settles in five diamonds.
After two passes East makes what can best be described as a "frustration" double. It is hard to envision the opposition being able to make eleven tricks when East holds nineteen high card points, but he should stop and think. If South has five hearts and six diamonds, he can't have many spades. Also, it is very difficult to defend when all of the defensive assets are on one side of the table.
West led the seven of diamonds. Nothing else is better and when partner doubles it is often correct to lead trump. In this case it just didn't matter. With diamonds two-two and the club queen falling doubleton, declarer easily scored up twelve tricks for plus 650.
Both sides had the opportunity to have an effect on the outcome. If East does not double five diamonds, the score will be only 420. If South bids the small slam (unlikely), the score will be plus 920. Proper evaluation and the application of simple logic will help you get your best score.
Congratulations to the following local players who have achieved new levels of success in their bridge careers.
Ken Resnick of Beachwood and Wayne Ward of Newbury have passed the 1,000 master point level and are silver life masters.
Kyra Hahn of Cuyahoga Falls and Gerri Owens of Silver Lake
have passed the 500 master point level and are bronze life
masters.
----
Bernstein is
a free-lance writer in Solon.
To reach Harvey Bernstein:
hjb0416@yahoo.com