Help
Sue and I had an OK game. We finished in third overall, averaging a smidge below 60% over two sessions. We could have won it all, but ran into some bad luck, some bad decisions on our part, and the typical problems inherent when you don't have any firm agreements.
There there seems to be an inordinate number of slam, bother grand and small. Freak hands abounded. I'm going to add a few of the hands that I found interesting for one reason or another.
This hand was typical for the night:
South opened 1♠ and Sue jumped to 3♦. North bid 3♠ (dreadful underbid) and I needed to figure out what to do. Normally 5♥ would call out to me (and 5♥ is cold), however, venturing to the the 5 level felt wrong. I decided to raise partner's Diamond suit to ensure that I'd get my ruff versus a Spade contract. The opps ended up declaring 4♠, and that ruff gave us a near top. Sue lead a low Diamond. LHO went up with the Ace and got MOST perturbed when this got ruffed out.
Here's another freak where we didn't do quite so well
North opened 2♦, showing 18-19 balanced. Transfered to Spades, then bid 5♦ exclusion. The partnership landed in 6♠ and I had to find an opening lead. I went passive and lead a Spade (I wasn't counting on a Diamond void and Club stiff). They rolled up the contract and the good guys got a zero.
Here's another bad result (the combination of these last two cost us first place)
Sue and I had virtually no agreements. Most of those focused on competitive auctions rather than sniffing around for Grands. Needless to say, I was thrilled when Sue opened 2♣
We produced the following
2♣ - 2♠
3♣ - 3♠
4N - 5♣ (1430)
5♦ - ???
I ended up stuck here. I wasn't sure whether step would deny the trump queen or 5 of the trump suit would deny the trump queen. I spent so much time thinking this over, I I forget that I should be worrying about what bid showed the trump queen + the King of Diamonds.
6N was an average minus and hurt a lot.
One of the opponents got a bit peeved over this one:
Sue opened 1♠ and I needed to decide what to bid. I see two reasonable choices. Treat this as a three card limit raise or overbid slightly and game force.
We were playing 2/1, so I counted on partner for a pretty sound opener and decided to game force immediately.
2♣ struck me as a reasonable bid. The bid is low enough that partner can describe their hand. Better yet, it might deter a lead. Sue rebid 2♥, I raised to 4♥ and there we played.
LHO got a bit bent out of shape when his partner open lead a Diamond and I tabled the dummy. The hand ended up pretty flat. (Hard not to get to game and the lead didn't matter much) However, I thought that selecting the best response was a bit tricky.
