Natchpoints, nobody vul, your partner is a robot, he deals and opens 1
. Your opponents pass throughout. You hold:
AKJ7653
Q97
A54
void
What's the plan? Yes, it depends on what the agreements are. Ig you bid 1
partner will respond 2
. And his hand is minimal so if we are going to a slam it will be up to us to pave the way. I later put four bots at the table and had them replay this. The response was 1
and they ended in 4
.
The bots play Soloway jump shifts so, as S, I decided to give it a try. 1
- 2
. Partner now bids 2NT, after which I can show
support and short
by bidding 3
. Except that the bots treat this as showing four card support for
. Not all Soloway jump shifters agree that it shows four. Also. I was not thinking right and just bid 3
(rather than 3
) showing a good hand with good spades and with heart support (also showing four, according to the bots, and denying shortness since I could have bid my shortness). We ended in 6
.
Now let's look at the hands:
8
AKJ86
K932
QJ2
AKJ7653
Q97
A54
void
Ok, the club values in the N hand are wasted, but if spades are 3-2 and hearts are no worse than 4-1 this looks like 13 tricks. Draw trump in 3 or maybe 4 rounds, rough a spade to establish that suit, and you take 6+6+2+0=13 tricks. So it seems we want to be there.
I tried it again with the bots, where I forced the initial response of 2
. N bid 2NT, I bid 3
, then I turned it over to them .This time they got to 6
instead of the 4
that they got to when I left them entirely on their own, but they still did not get to 7.
Getting to 6
was worth 75%. Some were in 6
which makes, but without the overtrick.
https://tinyurl.com/yxmskjgfDo you agree that on the NS cards we we wish to be in 7
?
Any ideas about how to bid it?
The problem, I think, is that 7
is a really good contract because you can reasonably hope to take six tricks in the spades suit. The Soloway 2
, followed by
support, shows a good spades suit but it hardly promises a likely six tricks opposite a stiff spot. So it is the S hand that must decide whether to go to 7.