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 2Spade-small. Is this hand too good to open 2Spade-small?

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:

                                 Spade-small K

                                 Heart-small KQ3

                                 Diamond-small KJ753

                                 Club-small T652

Spade-small A6543                                                   Spade-smallQT972

Heart-small 865                                                       Heart-small 9

Diamond-small -                                                            Diamond-small AT9842

Club-small AKJ93                                                   Club-small 8

                                Spade-small J8

                                Heart-small AJT742

                                Diamond-small Q6

                                Club-small Q74

 

Now E-W can make a Christmas miracle of 6Spade-small but are unlikely to be able to bid it if the opening bid of 2Spade-small only shows spades and a minor and less than an opener. 6Spade-small relies on a miracle to make namely picking up the KSpade-small 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 Spade-small or Diamond-small. West has a 5 loser hand (modified where A are less 0.5 losers) with Spade-small 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

                1Club-small (1)      2Heart-small (2)    2Spade-small (3)     

4Heart-small (4)    4Spade-small (5)       -             4NT (6)

-              5Club-small (7)       -             5Diamond-small (8)

-              5Spade-small (9)       -             5NT (10)

-              6Club-small (11)     -             6Spade-small (12)

-              -                 -

(1)     <=  6 L

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

(3)     <= 8 L 5+ Spade-small

(4)     Pre-emptive raise fast arrival

(5)     3+Spade-small 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 KHeart-small. Any other lead allows discard of losing heart. All follow. As nothing else looks appealing follow with QHeart-small. This will put declarer on table and may encourage finesse to singleton KSpade-small. Counting losers Declarer can see that there is plenty to spare provided Spade-small break 2-1 and with absence of any double of 6Spade-small this seems a good bet. 6Spade-small can also only make if missing Spade-small honours are split. If we assume South has AHeart-small cross ruffing Club-small&Diamond-small reveal QDiamond-small and QClub-small and the forces play ASpade-small when South plus low to Spade-small lead.

 

                                                               

                                    

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

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