I played a few of the Wacko hands yesterday. As I think I have said before, one feature that I really like is that is that many of the hands present problems that have no clear cut right approach.
Here is a hand, we are non-vul, our opps vul, I am dealer, I hold a 2=3= 2=6 shape with (as near as I can recall)
Kx
xxx (maybe 9xx)
9x (the 9 turns out to be useful)
AKxxxx
So, do I open? I passed, much to the disagreement of others. If you put a gun to my head and tell me I must open, I open 1
not 3
.
This led to a very chancy but good result. The auction went as follows:
Pass - 1
- Pass - 2
(weak jump shift)
Pass - 3
- X - Pass
?
Ouch. If I had opened 1
, if they then reached 3
(as they would), and if then my partner doubled, then surely I must pull. Partner, because of my opening, would be expecting help in setting this. Actually, had I opened 1
I doubt partner would have doubled 3
. I expect we would end in 5
off 1. Here is partner's hand (again as best I recall)
x
KQxx
KQJ8
QJxx
A 14 count, a stiff in their suit, support for my suit, and no doubt he will have figured me for long and strong clubs. Why? Well, it will begin 1
- X - 1
- some number of
. Our vul opponents will be bidding up their spades (they have ten of them) I will not be supporting partner's hearts, and I did open the bidding. With 4-4 in the minos I would have opened 1
so surely for my 1 ~!C opening I have 5 at least. And some values. Where are those values? In clubs it would seem.
So we would end in 5
off 1 when they cash their aces.
With my initial pass, I can reason that I never said I had any values at all, partner is doubling, for take-out but I should think with good values, in a live auction, not the pass out seat. My values might well be enough, when added to his, to beat this. And so it was.
I started with the
K, dummy came down as 4=4=4=1, I switched to the
9. Dummy has ATxx in
. Terrific. Whether he plays the A, or the T, or ducks, we are establishing some
tricks.
Dummy has the
A so declarer can pick up my K but that's only if he can get to his hand. He can't. He tries the
A and another
, I take my K and lead another
. Partner cashes the
KQ, we now have 4 tricks, he plays another
riffed, and now pard just waits to collect his
trick. Declarer is 6=2=3=2. there is nothing for him to do as near as I can see.
Yes we can make 4
, but if I open this hand 1
it is going to be very hard to stop in 4
. Basically, I think we can't.
I have no quarrel with a
opening. I think opening it 3
carries a high risk of missing a game (when the other cards are laid out differently) but different players will see this differently. As I said, I like the Wacko hands because there is room for a difference of views.
Note that we have 10 clubs, they have 10 spades. LOTT claims that there should be 20 total tricks. We can easily take exactly 10 in
, I don't see how the opponents could have made 3
, I think they have only 8 tricks coming. LOTT is often off by a trick, here it is off by 2 tricks. LOTT can be a useful guide, but I would not want my life to depend on its accuracy. I am more than willing to admit that passing that X was risky.
The hands were interesting, and fun. I made some errors. What else is new?
We could discuss some of the others.