Jinksy, on 2011-August-23, 10:22, said:
As dealer, you pick up the hand above, E/W game, at teams.
1st decision - do you think about bidding?
If not, the bidding goes P P 1
♦ (five card majors, strong NT, short club, so 1D should promise four) 1
♠ back to you - what's your call now?
If it leaves room, the bidding goes 1N P P to you again...
I tend to pass more hands as dealer than most, but I would never dream of passing this hand. K&R evaluates this hand as 13.0 and I consider this to be conservative.
Holding 3 suits, chances for a misfit are low. The probability of at least an 8 card fit opposite this distribution is 89% and for a 9 card fit 44%.
Opening balanced 11 or 12 HCP rubbish, but passing this hand is in my opinion poor hand evaluation. I do the opposite.
Having made a poor Pass with 3 first round controls a negative double of 1
♠ is obvious.
Over 1 NT I bid 2
♣. Partner neither doubled 1NT nor rebid his
♦. I think a likely
♦ lead against 1NT will not be a promising start for the defense.
I deem it unlikely that 2
♣ will get you in serious trouble. Far more likely you give up a part-score swing by defending a difficult to defend 1NT.
On the
♦ lead against 1NT I discard a
♣, since a discard in the majors is too likely to cost.
Rainer Herrmann