SInce I always seem to mess up when I rotate the hands, the hand reported below, is not.
Dlr: North
Vul: Both
North
KJ42
T72
5
98543
West East
9
A873
AQ3
K954
AQJT83
K964
JT6
7
South
QT65
J86
72
AKQ2
Auction:
North East South West North East South West
P P 1
1
P P 1
dbl
1
4
* P 4
3
4
P 5
P 5
P P P P P
P
* splinter: forcing raise in
promising 4 trump and 0 or 1
This board was a push in the match. Not a lot to the play, but the differences in how the auctions progressed seemed somewhat instructive.
At our table, West started with a double, I put pressure on the opponents by raising to 3
. East did well by asking partner to name his best suit, but did not feel that he could move over the jump to 5
. Pre-empts do not always give your partnership or team an opportunity to gain, but it always increases the difficulty for your opponents to be sure that they got to the right contract. And sometimes, that is enough.
At the other table, I felt that East had an opportunity to move toward slam and chose the weaker action. I can understand that East may regard the splinter as an overbid, but we are talking about a hand that is rich in controls opposite a partner who says his hand has improved with the ruffing potential of the East hand. More importantly, East’s hand has improved after partner’s cuebid. All four controls are working –
A, K of trump, and K in partner’s cued suit. Since you are headed for 5
anyway, how can it hurt to show the
A? If partner quits in game, so be it, but at least you cooperated with a hand you should not be ashamed to lay down as dummy.