Again these hands were interesting and again I played a few of them and will comment.
The third board, board 11:
As Jim said at the table, this appears to be a 2
opener. I regard myself as more cautious than many about weak 2 openings. If the
9 were the
2 I might pass, if vul I certainly would pass, but non vul with the suit headed by the QT9 and an outside A? Looks like a 2
call to me. The raise to 4
was optimistic but if the defense starts with three rounds of diamonds I will ruff the third round, knock out the
A, win the
return, draw trump, take the
finesse, and then take ten tricks for a lucky make. But it was not to be, the opponents took two
and shifted to a
. Now off 1 is inevitable.
I sometimes note that LOTT fails, in a recent hand of Joe's I believe it was off by three tricks. But here it is right on the money.18 total trump, 18 total tricks.
On the fourth board, bd 12, I opted for 1!D instead of 1NT despite my 15 count. Not so crazy since despite pard's 10 count I see no way to make 9 tricks on the (fairly likely) spade lead. Playing in 3
I won the opening
lead and played the
A and then, when the T fell, a small
to the 8 losing to the K. Just looking at the A963 in hand and the Q842 on the board I would not want my life to depend on picking up the suit with a loss of only one trick but with luck it happened. Even so, if I am in 3NT that would be three
tricks to go with my two
ricks and i need four more. Lotsa luck. Playing in
, I got the reasonable lead of the
K. In NT, that's not going to happen. Yes,
split. But before I can get those tricks I will be
losing three spades, a diamond and a club. And that's after I bring in the
suit losing only one, and find the
suit 3-3.
So 3NT is not a great contract and should not make. Anyway, I like my 1
opening although I understand it is not everyone's choice. I took the 3
response to be weaker than it was else I probably would have ended in 3NT anyway, off a trick.