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for Junior and Intermediate players and others...maybe a little hard for Novice players today. Oh it's Fri "super" day!

“Super- Accept”!

There’s not liking one’s partner’s bid. There’s quite liking it and then once every so often, there’s absolutely loving it. Which category do you think West’s hand fell into when this was the start of the auction?

 

1NT was 12-14 and 2 showed 5+ hearts.

You would really want a fourth category for this hand as you absolutely adore the fact partner has 5 hearts. You need very very few high cards in partner’s hand to make 4..and that is why you must not bid 2 now in case with very moderate high-card values, they pass. You must tell your partner you have a really good maximum (for 1NT opening) hand and encourage them to bid game if at all possible. After all, they have already passed.

Welcome, then, the “super accept”. It can be played in different ways. In its simplest, a jump to 3 describes the West hand well, maximum with 4 hearts. However, many like to make the bidding as difficult as possible for the opposition by using the jump to the trump suit at the 3-level as showing 4- card support but minimum point count and by making any other bid, say 2NT, to show a maximum. You can also bid a side-suit to show a maximum. The meaning is up to you. One option is to bid a suit for which you need help to make game, while promising a maximum hand with 4 trumps.

Here, after any bid other super-accept bid than 3, East can bid the suit below trumps, here diamonds, as a second transfer so that the balanced West hand still gets to be declarer.

For simplicity, let’s say here that West bid 3 to show a maximum. East then would have an easy raise to game:

 

You will notice that the dealer has changed. North was the dealer and perhaps strangely passed in first seat. The dealer was changed above to illustrate the “Super-accept” principle.

The game was Pairs and West’s aim was to make as many tricks as possible. North led A and switched to 10. West drew trumps finishing in the East hand (12 tricks would be easy had there been a 2-2 trump break). A successful diamond finesse and second diamond to the king was followed by a club to the K and a club ruff.  That meant each player had 3 cards left:

8 left South an impossible solution as declarer discarded 9 from hand and 12 tricks could be made.

Some North players got to play the board in spades. There are 5 top losers making 4x a good sacrifice for North-South (-300). However, if East manages to lead their trump and West continues trumps when in with a heart, North will lose a second heart trick..and – 500 would not be a good North-South result whether their opponents had made 10, 11 or even 12 tricks (+480) in 4. Even if North plays clubs after a trump lead, the defenders can still score +500 with accurate defence.

However, today was mainly about super-accepts, a good principle to use when you really like your partner’s transfer after your 1NT opening, or at least have 4-card trump support.

Richard Solomon

Round 6 of the Trans-Tasman Challenge is tonight, Friday. Here is the link for kibitzers with a 30 minute time lag. 

http://www.aj92.com.au/results/results.asp?yr=2024&dir=ttc

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