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Second encounter.

It’s the second board of the day, the second board of three days with lots of bridge to be played. You have been fired up by making a part-score on the first board and sort your hand for the second encounter. There’s not much sorting involved because you have nothing to put in the gap where the spades and the diamonds normally go. “A bit early for something like this” you muse.

 

No time for day-dreaming as after a couple of passes, your right-hand opponent had opened a weak 2, holding a few more spades than you do. The world…well, the other three players at your table, awaits.  

Fans of losing trick count would fail to find many losers at all in your hand! There’s just the little matter of which suit you want to make trumps. Well?

One approach would be to seek partner’s input. 3 would seem to be sufficiently high (4 might get your partner thinking your opponent had misbid…and had not got spades at all!). There’s a slim chance that your partner might bid 4. On the actual deal, they might bid 4, which leaves you with the problem of finding their better of your two suits. However, were they to choose 4, an option, wheel out Key Card or simply bid 7 since there must be some heart length in partner’s hand.

The other approach over 2 would be to reach for the “Stop Card” and put 6 down on your pad, practical if a little disappointing as you would really like to go for gold (grand). You are playing Match Point Swiss Pairs. So, you do want to be in the major suit.

This produces a longer than 10+ second pause from your partner who made sure they had seen your bid correctly. That became the final contract and soon you were to see that your partner had a reasonable number of hearts but not the queen. Somewhat surprisingly, West led 10 and this is what you saw:

 

Those honours in dummy were not especially useful though the singleton club most certainly was.

The lead smelt of a shortage. So, you decided to draw trumps (the Q fell doubleton) and then ruffed a club. However, East discarded on this trick and you were left having to lose a trick to the cunningly concealed J…..making 12 tricks for a 50% score. We will show you all four hands shortly.

Many less memorable deals followed over the next two days of bridge. On then to Swiss Pairs on Day 3 and you were comfortably settled in having played three boards already. You had played the wrong part-score, down 3, and had missed a making game already (you know the feeling?) when East opened 3 in third seat. You thought nothing much of that because you had rather a nice collection of hearts and clubs, a bit like the one you held a few sessions before. Strange, again only one loser, and so you thought the fast way would be a good practical way. Your 6 ended the bidding with West leading J.

Your partner made similar noises to an earlier similar auction a day or two previously but being a disciplined player (their words!) resisted the urge to raise a level. Nice ruffing value too. You played out the board, drawing trumps before A and a club ruff and then two club discards on the KQ in dummy, making all 13 tricks.

Then, the director was called!

 

Your table was not the only one to play this and other boards for the second time in three days! Well, this was more memorable than some of the other boards! A couple of rogue sets had worked their way into the third day's Swiss Pairs.

The upshot was you got to play four extra boards with a much happier outcome than the repeat ones you played. Oh, first time round, you played the right part-score and bid comfortably to the making game your way. Maybe those boards were not as memorable as the one above!

It was interesting that one East chose to downgrade their hand to a Weak 2. A case could be made for opening the East hand 1 or even 4. The change in opening certainly delayed the realisation of the “second encounter”.

What are the odds of getting two deals with 7 great hearts and 6 great clubs in the same weekend? Too great to be true!

More for our JIN Club players tomorrow.

Richard Solomon

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