First thought: One of the attractions of IAC is that people stick around for more than one hand.
Second thought along the same lines: Judging by one hand that has gone wrong is a very bad practice. Not just unfair, but also jumping to conclusions often get the jumper to the wrong conclusions.
Now about the hand, That's a very nice
J your partner has, and the
Jx is nice to see as well. Either of us could give your partner a different 3 count where game is pretty hopeless.
If you had a long strong club suit and a stiff spade, a 1
opening is usually safe. Someone always bids their spades, they just can't help themselves. Here, with the opening as 1
, the chance of it being passed out are greater. But that might not be bad at all.
2
? Now I don't know that it is entirely clear that you will get to 4
even if you open it 2
. Let's assume that you play 2
as waiting, and which is what I do and what should probably be assumed with a pick-up partner. It goes 2
- 2
- 2
. Now what? With any moderately regular partner, 3
is a second negative. Now? 3
would be passable after the second negative (again playing as I play). 3
, a new suit, I play as non-passable. Hopefully partner gives something of a false preference to spades. Do you raise 3
to 4
? So far partner has said nothing positive except that he has at least some spades.
I definitely would not open this 4
. As you note, you can miss a lot of slams that way.
So, bottom line, would I open 1
or 2
? I think 1
but I am not sure. Even when I have spades usually someone makes some noise when I have only 18 highs. But sometimes everyone passes and we make 4. As Larry Cohen says on vugraph, Next!
The only thing I really feel strongly about is not judging either choice too harshly. If you one day set out to win a major tournament with a regular partner, you should go over such things in detail. Playing on-line pick up in the main bridge club you do whichever seems right to you. And if pard picks up and leaves, good riddance.