Today's hand presents a bidding problem to the majority of players. North opens one club and South responds one diamond. North shows his four card heart suit. South shows a four card spade suit.
At this point, North indicates that he has a very good hand by bidding three spades. Some players would bid four spades. I don't think that the North hand is quite that good.
South, with much more than he has shown, bids four clubs. This is known as a "cue bid". He is not showing support for his partner's first bid suit, he is showing the ace of clubs. He is also showing slam interest. If he was not interested in looking for slam, he would just bid the spade game.
North cooperates in the search for slam by bidding four hearts. This shows the ace of hearts and denies the ace of diamonds. It must be noted that bidding four diamonds to show the void (which is, after all, first round control) is wrong because partner has bid diamonds as a suit.
South's five spade bid is a slam try. He is telling partner that he needs more than four small spades to bid the slam. I don't think North could be faulted for passing, but his holding may be just good enough to justify his bid.
As long as the outstanding trumps divide 3-2, the slam will depend on the position of the king of spades and/or the position of the ace of diamonds. If West leads the ace of diamonds, declarer will be able to play for twelve tricks by trumping the opening lead and playing the ace of spades to guard against a singleton king in either hand. When the king does not fall, a small spade toward the queen allows the defense to take their one and only trick.
Unit 125 of the American Contract Bridge League will host the Ohio Master's Sectional Bridge Tournament starting next Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Solon Valley Pary Center, 6340 Melbury, Solon. The afternoon session features seperate pair events for players with more than 1,500 masterpoints and for players with less than that. The evening session will start at 7:00 p.m. with a Stratified Open Pair event as well as the first session of the bracketed knockout teams.
A two session Open Pair event will start at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday. The second session will start at 3:30 p.m. This event will be stratified. Stratum A1 will be for players with 3,000 master points or more and Stratum A2 will be for players with less than 3,000 master points. Single session flighted events will be held at the same times for Flight B players (less than 1,500 master points) and Flight C (less than 750 master points).
Separate events will also be held for players with less than 300 masterpoints at each session of the tournament.
Team events for players of all levels will start at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday.
Additional information and partnership assistance is available by calling 440-248-3983.
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Bernstein is
a free-lance writer in Solon. To reach Harvey Bernstein: hjb0416@yahoo.com