TALES OF AKARANA

 LIVING IN A NEGATIVE FREE-LESS WORLD

 

I'm neutral with regard to whethter negative free-less is better practice but I would like to comment on Board 6.

 

Board 6 East deals EW vulnerable.

                              Spade-small 8

                              Heart-small J765

                              Diamond-small KT9842

                               Club-small J4

Spade-small AT76432                                       Spade-small QJ5

Heart-small Q4                                                 Heart-small AK932

Diamond-small 6                                                    Diamond-small J5

Club-small 973                                                 Club-small K86

                                Spade-small K9

                                Heart-small T8

                                Diamond-small AQ73

                                Club-small AQT52

 

4Spade-small played by East (not West) appears to be the contract to be in if systemically possible to get there. Only failing if South finds an opening underlead from Diamond-smallAQ73 with then an immediate switch to a Club-small by North.

This is an example of a board with a systemic advantage, in this case for the very small subset of pairs that would open the East hand 1NT with a 5 card major and play systems on after a double or 2Club-small overcall by South. Although as most pairs would not play 2Club-small as natural over a 1NT these days or double with 15 HCP they would also have to be fortunate to be playing against the very small subset of pairs that would. Evidently, from the actual results, neither of this very small subset of players play at Akarana.  

With the weakness in Club-small West should be trying to get East to play the contract if systemically possible so any opening lead would be up to any high cards East might hold in this suit. 

Bidding could be something like:

N        E        S       W

           1N      2Club-small    2Heart-small

-          2Spade-small      -        4Spade-small

-           -          -

where:

1N  - 12 -14 HCP balanced may include 5M

2Heart-small - transfer to Spade-small

A possible bid that might be bid by South over the 1NT opening would be 2NT showing both minors. Provided EW had an agreement that bidding 3Club-small was a game forcing response with Heart-small, and similarly bidding 3Diamond-small was game forcing with Spade-small then 4Spade-small played by East could still be reached. However, a 4Diamond-small sacrificial bid over 3Diamond-small from North would be more likely to occur and the Diamond-small lead from South would then also be more likely. Although the temptation of a 'safe' Heart-small lead might still sway South from the killing underlead. East may well have had the KDiamond-small rather than the KClub-small in which case South underleading the ADiamond-small would have been a misfortune for NS.

I'm not advocating for or against 1NT being able to contain a 5 card major, but this board is a good example of where systemic advantage or disadvantage may give a better or poorer result on some boards for some pairs. 

 

  

 

Started by SEAN LYNCH on 01 Apr 2019 at 12:46PM

Post a Comment

You need to be logged in to reply to threads.
Click here to log in.

Latest Posts on this Thread

  1. Brad Johnston01 Apr 2019 at 01:15PM

    Opening a strong NT, most pairs play natural runouts to the 2-level - as it's more important to be able to offer all the suits than right-side three of them.
    With game-going hands this obviously isn't an issue, and it is possible to have the agreement that systems are on at the 4-level.

    There could be an auction such as:

    1NT x 4D! p;
    4S ap

    Where 4D is a transfer to spades.

You need to be logged in to reply to threads.
Click here to log in.
Our Sponsors
  • Tauranga City Council
  • TECT.jpg