IAC vs ACOL - Challenge #3 Sunday May 1st

[Curls77]

Thanks all for participating and captains for organizing their teams!

IAC did so much better this time  , congrats to winning teams:
* Double Down (Captain: djc11): djc11 & v2008 + esji & rtadep
* BLU and friends (Captain: blubayou): blubayou & ShawnT + Bernt 5 & Gesie 5
* Black Chickadee (Captain: hi bye): hi bye & rinaj(James950) + Voldenuit & Faraday
* 7NT team (Captain: Wackojack) Wackojack & Veeree + CCR3 & Tislafi

You can find PDFs of all matches, as well as travellers and copiable LINs, in 2022 05 sub-folder of IAC Drive, the link is: https://tinyurl.com/mrycy7fz
Right-click on the document that you want to see and choose download.

Well done everyone, and cudos to our ACOL opps : )
We hope you will plan to join the next challenge, on 1st Sunday of every month. Mark June 5th in your calendar and gather your team!

[yleexotee]

Sanya has asked that I take a look at some hands. Let's try hand #1
In our match, neither team got to PAR (the optimal contract - seeing all hands) and thus both teams went down in the wrong contract.   HOWEVER, ACOL got a +14 IMP score when our side overshot. Lets see what happened:

North Hand       South Hand
KQ95                10764
-                       A72
8753                 AKJ4
AQ1064             K7

With our table playing the hands:

• North has 11 HCP, and a void in Hearts. I believe many would open this a fairly standard 1 . However, our north, presumably thinking about the rebid, decided to open an unorthodox 1 and they were off to the races!

            (Speaking of the rebid, I think there are plenty of options after 1 - If p bids 1 , then 1 will follow and the same with a 1 response. If p bids 1nt, then pass will follow)

• South has a great hand opposite a 1 open and has the obvious Jacoby 2nt. (showing 4 card support and game forcing)
• North bids the customary continuation with 3h showing shortness
• And now things get interesting as the ops jump in with a lead directing X over 3H
• South is looking at all suits stopped, with no losers in Hearts, the top two Diamonds, and what could be only 1 loser in clubs, so they cue 4C with a little extra in their hand. I believe this is a fair bid with what has been shown so far. 
• But ACOL refuses to go quietly into the night, and W bids 4 to show partner that they have a long fit.
• North, having opened on a few less HCP, with a shape misleading 1 , and a hand full of diamond losers should probably decide to call it a day with 4 . BUT, what fun is that, and partner is encouraging. So, they bid 5C showing the Ace.
• East is still trying to buy the hand and bids 5
• South, now "knowing" that they have a 9 card fit, no heart or club losers, and at least the top 2 diamonds, bids 6 . I believe this is a reasonable conclusion.
• East doesn't believe a word of it and adventurously doubles that 6 with every remaining point in their hand. (I should say that I disagree with the double. P has nothing but long hearts which helps nothing in defense. It appears the ops have top clubs covered so singleton lead does not help. not having the ace of hearts, and ops not afraid of hearts, that looks like a dead end. If the spade honors are split between the ops hands, and you having given away that you hold all the spades, I think you could be looking at nothing more than your Ace of trumps as a trick)
• Unfortunately, the contract can't be made and is down 2 on the lead of King of  , and, perhaps not thinking through the full implications of the bidding, declarer actually goes down 5 for 1100! giving ACOL a huge bump of 14 IMPs to start. (even though ACOL went down 2 in 3NT on the other side). So the swing here is probably a cool 25 IMP (should be 520 to IAC). 

[yleexotee]

The bidding might go:
1C -(surely X)- 1S(!)  (not up the line even though its a GF hand. 1S takes up the responding space for ops, and I'm worried we might lose the spades if I start 1D [see the other table]!)
Now, if West can bid with this weak hand and 6 hearts without getting too high, then they will. 2H might be ops overcall - but how does p interpret this, points or no?)
North will bid 3H, cue bid, showing a good spade raise. (I don't count on east bidding 4h assuming they know the jump is weak)
South might be tempted here, but its a flatish hand and the spades are crummy. but lets say they want to check and they don't have non-serious 3nt to use and they bid 4C instead.
At this point, north has no diamond stopped and it looks like that is guaranteed to be in East's hand. I think North bails in 4S (but I could be convinced that 4H might be in order showing hearts controlled but no diamonds control - we can argue whether that should be done and Todd can tell us about Last Train issues, etc).

so 1C-(X)- 1S - (2H)
     3H- p - 4C - p
      4S.  p p p
This is the PAR contract, making 10 tricks.

[yleexotee]

What happens if we bid diamonds first?

1C- (X) - 1D - (2H)
??
Difficult situation now for opener. In this scenario, original openers 1S is looking a lot better than before!
2S is looking like a reverse, so that is out
3C? probably shows 6 and a stronger hand
3D - this looks reasonable
3H - cue bid raise, is probably too strong for this hand, but I could be convinced of it because the void is so helpful.

3H - p -??

extra stuff in hand, and south knows they have GF values. 3S might not be out of the question, hoping it doesn't look like cue bid in diamonds. new suit here is forcing.

now p can find the hidden spade fit!!  4 and Voila!  I'm probably dreaming about how this would go. 

1C- (X) - 1D - (2H)
3H - p - 3S - p
4S p p p

[yleexotee]

Finally, note that on the ACOL team, they had the same dilemma of a take out X and a heart bid, and they decided on a jump to 3nt. They lost the spades fit, but its a reasonable bid, however it goes down at least 1 (2 on our table)

[Curls77]

Thanks Jack and Joe that both analyzed some boards, I put them as well as Colin's in the same 2022 05 folder of https://tinyurl.com/mrycy7fz