[inquiry]

Abalucy Invite only tourney
NS VUL
IMPs

South you hold
S - Q 8 6
H - T 5 2
D - A 8 2
C - Q J 9 7

Bidding...

(1C)-Pass-(Pass)-?

What do you bid at unfavorable vul, in pass out seat, and why.

Ben

[luis]

Pass. Automatic.
I wonder why you post such a question Ben....

[inquiry]

Quote

Pass. Automatic.
I wonder why you post such a question Ben....

Because I didn't pass... :-)

[inquiry]

I asked this question to generate a discussion of balancing 1NT bids. Over 1S opening, I will balance back with 1NT with as few as 9 hcp. Over 1C, I generally have a weak 1NT opening bid (11 to 14/bad 15). As a passed hand, my balacing 1NT over major is not much changed, but the requirement over a minor is lowered to good 9 to 12. What is your balancing NT range, and when can you dip to 9 or 10 hcps?

Since I was not a passed hand here, the "correct call" based upon hcp has to be pass. This is further supported by the totally flat distribution, and poor quality of a lot of my hcp (queen rich, suggest defense) and my four card holding in their suit. In fact, PASS clearly stands out. In the 14 table event, 6 times the auction went (1C)-Pass-(Pass)-? and the other five times, the player with my hand correctly passed.

However, I didn't. I overbid, and got into a little bit of a problem. By not passing, I caused big problems for myself, not once but on the next several rounds of bidding.
I balanced 1NT and RHO dbled and partner redoubled (to play I assume). Of course, I am stuck with my decision to bid 1NT and will have to pass the redouble, but RHO bids 2D, the auction continues (the redouble alerted as SOS)...

(1C) Pass (Pass) 1NT ?!
(DBL) RDBL (2D) Pass
(2H) DBL (RDBL) ?

Over the rdbl, I am again worried, is pass correct? But if I bid, what can I bid, so I choose to pass. The bidding continued....

(1C) Pass (Pass) 1NT ?!
(DBL) RDBL (2D) Pass
(2H) DBL (RDBL) Pass
(2S) DBL (3C) ?

If RHO had not bid 3C, would I pass 2Sx? I guess, again, I would be stuck. But what should I do over 3C. The last thing I want partner doing now is to bid on, so I doubled. East had a control rich monster, but we would have made 1NTxx, and they can't make anything at the two level, but can make 1C. Clearly 1NT was a bad bid, but sometimes good things happen when you make a bad bid. This was a key 10 imp swing (-3 to plus 7) for us. The results were...

3CEx-2  300  7
3NE-4  200  4.69
3NE-3  150  3.38
2HN=  110  2.23
3CE-2  100  2.08
2SE-2  100  2.08
3CE-1  50  0.54
1CE=  -70  -2.69
1CE=  -70  -2.69
1CE+1  -90  -3.23
2DW=  -90  -3.23
1CE+1  -90  -3.23
1CE+1  -90  -3.23
2DW+1  -110  -3.69

Full hands were:

S - Q 8 6
H - T 5 2
D - A 8 2
C - Q J 9 7
S - 4 3 S - A K 9 5
H - 8 6 H - A K 7 3
D - K 9 7 6 5 4 D - T
C - T 5 2 C - K 8 6 4
S - J T 7 2
H - Q J 9 2
D - Q J 3
C - A 3

[Codo]

Hi Ben,

my pd cannot have the hand he had.
11 HCP and 4432 qualifies for a take out double of 1 Club. Okay, maybe you play these doubles stronger, but then you sometimes have to pay the price :-)
This time, good bridge from your opps had make the contract 2 Diamond X =, which is no success for you compared with 1 Club= or +1....
I believe, that 1 NT maybe is no winner in the long run.
If this is your deck, pd is long in clubs too and they will find a better spot to play. And if not, you may win the board anyway.

Kind Regards

Roland

[inquiry]

Quote

Hi Ben,
POINT 1.
my pd cannot have the hand he had. 11 HCP and 4432 qualifies for a take out double of 1 Club.

POINT 2.
This time, good bridge from your opps had make the contract 2 Diamond X =, which is no success for you compared with 1 Club= or +1....

POINT 3.
I believe, that 1 NT maybe is no winner in the long run.
If this is your deck, pd is long in clubs too and they will find a better spot to play. And if not, you may win the board anyway.

Point ONE. This hand was played 14 times. Once, south overcalled 1H, once he doubled as you suggested. The other 12 times South passed. So I guess, it is safe to assume partner can have this hand.

Point TWO
2 Diamond can make, but on a major lead do you really think it will? Will West duck clubs twice after the 1NT bid by me? Of course not. At the table, he will eventually get around to playing a club towards the king, and when that loses to the ACE, he will lose 3C, and with the Diamond 8 in my hand, three diamonds. Of course if I a make the typical CLUB QUEEN opening lead, he will probably guess clubs correctly.

POINT 3
I Know bidding 1NT is not the right bid. In fact, I titled this thread with "how wrong" was I, because it is clearly wrong bid: and I knew that when I bid it. Sometimes in a short event, 8 boards, 10 boards, etc, you take a shot to create a swing. The team that wins are usually being given some gifts, and two or three average minuses can do you in. I have to admit I don't think I got any real gifts last night and yet we were fortunate to win, but we bid two excellent slams, and picked up 7 imps on this board. That was 27 or our 38 imps. We grabbed another 6 when we stayed out of a hopeless 4S after partner opened 1NT and I held 6-2-1-4 hand with six spades the AT and the stiff diamond Q. We didn't get one board where opponents bid a silly game or slam, or went for a huge number. It was good bridge throughout (well, except for this bid by me). So I "gambled", and my partner was quick to point out (correctly) that he expected more for the balancing double in a very polite way, mainly explaining his bidding, not being critical of mine.

BTW, back to what I would like to discuss, do other people stretch this balancing NT to 10 hcp by unpassed hand and if so, under what circumstances. Was I off by two full hcps, or more?

[luis]

About how "wrong" you were I think that 1NT is a close option to pass. I play a reopening 1nt as 10-14 HCP and almost mandatory. So with good 9HCP you may have that bid.
I'd have passed but ihad my pd bid 1NT no problem at all.

[lenze]

Hi Ben:

Your 1NT is NOT a bad bid. It is the first thing that came to me when I looked at the problem. A agree with Luis that a pass is also reasonable. The problem on this hand is partner's RDBL. WHAT WAS HE/SHE THINKING?? Players who HANG partners that balance will soon loss good partners

[luis]

Rdbl to play is ok.
If 1NT is agreed as 10-14 when reopening then with 11 in my hand our side has 21-25 combined HCP and I do want to play 1nt xx.

The very bad bid in the auction was 2h, once pd bids free 2d you should stand for 2d. Pulling 2d doubled to 2h would have been a mistake pulling 2d BEFORE it gets doubled is terrible.

[inquiry]

Luis is right. 2H's is not a good bid at all. I also don't think a whole lot of 1NT-X. EAST has no reason to assume his partner has anything, and he has to wonder where the heck the diamond suit is. Some one is sitting on bunch of diamonds, and if it is NS that will be the source of lots of tricks. So if we are counting bad bids, 1NT by me, not great, DBL of 1NT, not great, first rdbl, looks ok to me, 2D looks ok, 2H worse bid of the board.

I am also happy to see that perhpas, as bad as 1NT was, it isn't being boo'ed too loudly.

[lenze]

Quote

Rdbl to play is ok.

Let me see if I understand you. You a have 21-25 HCPs and were not going to bid a game. You are in 1NT X which should produce +180 or +380 with an overtrick, which should be an excellent score. But, you are going to be greedy and warn the opponents they have made a serious error in judgement so they can escape to a contract you may not beat?

The key word is "TACTICS"

[luis]

Quote

Let me see if I understand you. You a have 21-25 HCPs and were not going to bid a game. You are in 1NT X which should produce +180 or +380 with an overtrick, which should be an excellent score. But, you are going to be greedy and warn the opponents they have made a serious error in judgement so they can escape to a contract you may not beat?

I guess 1NT redoubled is more than +180 lenze.
And if they don't have a fit we penalize anything they may want to play.

[mishovnbg]

Hi Ben!
As my teacher liked to said: "If you win, you was right" .
I comment your bid at table, because like to have more established agreements with you. I played such bid like: (9)10-12(13) bal or (11)12-14(15) bal or (14)15-17(18) bal or Raptor. We have no agreements about, so I suppose weak NT (12-14). Now I know we play it 9-15 relative to position, vul, type of tournament, contestants...
Misho

[mikestar]

1NT isn't that bad, 1 to 2 HCP light but nobody wants to sell out to 1C. Partner's XX is a larger overbid. IMO, XX should show the same type of hand as

(1C) - P - (1NT) - P
(P) - X

Sound opening values and club length (a trap pass). XX is needed for this type of hand--you want to try for a penalty, but will want to be in 3NT if there is no good penalty is available.

All of partner's queens and jacks help you make 1NT, but some of them will be worthless if you defend a suit contract, making XX less attractive.

An expert declared should make 2D. There is no reason to fear a ruff and the bidding is far from conclusive as to the AC. So why not take out insurance against A or Ax offisde?