I gave this hand in yesterday's work-out
J105
765
10632
Q76
AK5
9743
A42
9
Q5
KJ87
AK1052
9843
Q82
KQJ1083
A94
J
Dealer was North at love all. The bidding went: pass -pass-3
- 3NT- all pass. 3NT looks like a reasonable bid but had no chance. Whereas 5
is an excellent contract and makes.
South's 3
pre-empt did the damage. Has South opened the more normal 1
opener the bidding might have gone like in the viewgraph match that I was watching:
pass- (pass) - 1
- (dbl);
pass - (1
) - 2
- (dbl);
pass - (3
) - 3
- (5
);
all pass
5
was an easy make.
It got me thinking "Is there a case for opening this 13 HCP hand witth a pre-emptive 3
? It looks like the main danger is missing game for NS. Give North instead a 10 count say
J10x,
765,
KQ32,
A76 then 4
would be missed. How likely is this? The points to be shared in the 3 hands is 27, and the median share would be 9 in each hand. So if I now take away the J
from the North hand it reduces to 9 which is the median. I conclude that the chances of game being on from East's POV would be less than 50% but not much.
This leads me to having a rule of thumb as to what is the maximum strength for a 3rd in hand pre-empt to make it an overrall winner?
Usually 3 level pre-empts are made on 7 card suits . I believe there is a very good case for opening in 3rd nv on a 6 card suit, but how strong? Take away Q
( a possible defefensive trick) and I think the case for opening 3
is very strong, but with the hand as it is perhaps just do it if you are behind and need a swing to win a match.