A Miracle for Christmas day

Richard posted this week an interesting example of declarer play but what I would like to focus on is the opening bid of 2. Is this hand too good to open 2?

Consider a board proposed by the ghost of Christmas’ future and an alternative Christmas Miracle if North’s and West’s hand had been swapped.

East deals E-W Vul:

                                  K

                                  KQ3

                                  KJ753

                                  T652

 A6543                                                   QT972

 865                                                        9

 -                                                             AT9842

 AKJ93                                                    8

                                 J8

                                 AJT742

                                 Q6

                                 Q74

Now E-W can make a Christmas miracle of 6 but are unlikely to be able to bid it if the opening bid of 2 only shows spades and a minor and less than an opener. 6 relies on a miracle to make namely picking up the K singleton, but perhaps some clues may be picked up from the bidding.

First let’s have a closer look at East’s hand, while weak on high card points this is a 6 loser hand if partner has  or . West has a 5 loser hand (modified where A are less 0.5 losers) with  fit. Using rule of 18 (18 - 11 = 7) this indicates a possible grand slam may be possible before checking key cards.

However for West or East to have interest in a slam they need to be able to convey their respective losers to each other as soon as possible. 

If we were bidding this hand I would expect the bidding would go something like this against an average Acol pair:

 N             E               S             W

                1 (1)      2 (2)    2 (3)     

4 (4)    4 (5)       -             4NT (6)

-              5 (7)       -             5 (8)

-              5 (9)       -             5NT (10)

-              6 (11)     -             6 (12)

-              -                 -

(1)     <=  6 L

(2)     6 less than opening hand discounting doubleton J and Q.

(3)     <= 8 L 5+ 

(4)     Pre-emptive raise fast arrival

(5)     3+ support min 6L

(6)     CROSS

(7)    1 key card

(8)    CROSS

(9)    0 K

(10)  CROSS

(11)  1Q (8 Total losers 1A)

(12) sign off. 

The key key is that by East showing immediately their loser strength this allows West to continue the bidding to explore slam despite aggressive pre-emptive bidding by NS. 

Play:

Lead K. Any other lead allows discard of losing heart. All follow. As nothing else looks appealing follow with Q. This will put declarer on table and may encourage finesse to singleton K. Counting losers Declarer can see that there is plenty to spare provided  break 2-1 and with absence of any double of 6 this seems a good bet. 6 can also only make if missing  honours are split. If we assume South has A cross ruffing & reveal Q and Q and the forces play A when South plus low to  lead.

Started by SEAN LYNCH on 25 Dec 2018 at 12:13PM