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For Junior, Intermediate and Novice players..and others. It’s Fri day.

The Battle of the Minors.

Sometimes, not very often, the only suits which seem to matter are the minor suits. There are a couple of valuable lessons to learn from the following “bridge argument”.

 

You have clubs and your partner has diamonds. 1 promised at least 4 clubs. Which suit to we want to make the trump suit?

Let’s see what happened at the table. The news was not good for West.

 

West just did not like diamonds and so decided to make their suit trumps. East gave up bidding.

North led 3 (it would have been the same if North had led a small heart). West won the first trick with A and played J. North took their ace and played Q and then a spade to South’s J.

South switched to a low heart, ducked to North’s Q. North continued hearts to South’s 10 and West’s A. The defence had taken 4 tricks and there were three more to come.

West tried K to South’s ace. South cashed K and then played a 4^th heart. North had to win another club trick for down 3, a terrible result for East-West especially as they were playing Pairs and it was a part-score deal, - 300.

West failed to appreciate what East’s 2 bid meant. Typically, they were showing 6-9 hcp and at least 6 diamonds. Let’s see what would have happened if West had passed 2.

Again, it did not matter which major was led at trick 1. Let’s say 7. Say declarer ducked the first trick but won the spade continuation with A. Although it would be better for East to play clubs from their own hand, they needed to play clubs immediately to be able to discard one heart on Q before the defence switched to hearts.

So, K at trick 3. The defence played a third round of spades and then switched to hearts. East took A and discarded one little heart on Q before playing J. Whether or not North took their ace immediately or not (ducking is theoretically better), the defence could only take 2 spade tricks, 1 heart trick and both minor suit aces…2 making. Diamonds played two tricks better than clubs. Why should West have passed 2?

Are you listening, partner?

When both players have a long suit but one has few high card points, it is usually better to make the suit held by the weak hand (here East) as the trump suit. The above showed why. Playing in clubs, the East hand did not score one trick. The diamond suit was wasted.

Yet, playing with diamonds as trumps, declarer was able to score a valuable club trick to discard a heart. West had entries to the club suit with the major aces. East had no such outside entries.

It is not a good argument if West said that 2 might have been a 5-card suit and that they had to tell their partner they held 6. The argument is unsound even if the initial 1 could be less than 4 cards in length. It is 90% certain, probably even higher, that when West bid 2, they were showing at least 6 clubs….no major suit, no diamond support, no no-trump bid. East knew that when they bid 2. Therefore, East was promising at least 6 diamonds, no less. Unless West had no diamonds or maybe held 7 reasonable clubs, they should pass 2. At least they held J. It was possible East had no clubs at all.

J would have been so much more valuable in a diamond contract than 4 was in a club contract. Yet, even if West's diamond was not an honour, they should still pass 2. 

One additional reason to pass 2 was that East needed one trick less to make their contract than West did in 3. Note also, that West should not bid 2NT over 2. Misfitting hands with relatively few high card points play poorly in no-trumps. West should have passed 2 not happily but in the knowledge that there was no better place to be. The reward would be a plus score.

West should have been grateful that South did not open the bidding as then they may well have bid up to 3 in one or two bids and their best chance of a plus score would have gone.

 

So, even if you were playing a short club opener, East had described their hand with 2. Let the “minor battle” end at the 2-level.

Richard Solomon

There is plenty of bridge this Friday evening. There is the Loveblock New Zealand Wide Pairs and also the final round of the Trans- Tasman Challenge, for kibitzers from around 8.30pm, a 16- board match through this link. 

http://www.aj92.com.au/results/results.asp?yr=2023&dir=anzc 

 

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