Bridge results

Royal Gazette Staff

Created: Sep 25, 2010 11:00 AM

With David caught somewhere between Hurricane Igor and Chelsea versus Blackpool, I'm back for another week as your guest columnist.

As most of you know, Igor caused the postponement of last weekend's Sectional Tournament. This has now been rescheduled to begin on Friday, October 22.

Robert Todd and MacKenzie Myers are two of America's brightest young bridge professionals. They are frequent attendees of our January Regional.

They greatly enjoy this association with Bermuda and, this year, decided to come a week early before the Sectional to give a series of workshops, private lessons and/or playing sessions. These proved extremely popular and were a great success.

Though Robert lives in Florida and MacKenzie in the Pacific Northwest, they have decided to form a partnership that, I think, is a big favourite to soon be members of high seed Vanderbilt and Spingold teams.

They play a complex form of Precision and I was most impressed with the result they achieved on the following hand I gave them.

You hold ªQJxx &Copy;AKx ¨Kxx §AKx and hear your partner open 1 Spade.

Most of you, not knowing my devious mind, will blast some form of Blackwood and hear that partner has 2 Aces or, using RKB, 3 Key cards and bid 6 or 7 Spades or No Trump.

As partner has a bare minimum of the following – ªAKxxx &Copy;xx ¨Axx §xxx – you will realise that you have only 11 tricks and any slam is doomed.

Our two visitors had a bidding sequence that clearly told them this and stopped in 4 No Trump.

Systems like 2 over 1 game forcing or Precision are designed to go slowly on good hands and reserve something called "fast arrival" for bad hands.

I would bid a Jacoby 2 No Trump on the big hand. This shows a game forcing hand with 4 card trump support for partner's opening suit.

Opener holding a minimum can now utilise " fast arrival " and jump to 4 Spades

telling partner of the minimum. In this case 3 Spades is a stronger bid than 4 Spades. Some of you also refer to this as making a shut out bid. Something that partner is highly encouraged to pass.

Do not, however, get caught up with the idea that you are doing this because you have only 11 high card points. AK A are generally good cards to hold over a Jacoby 2 NT. It is not these as much as their being coupled with a 5 2 3 3 distribution that makes the hand a minimum. Change a Club x to a 6th Spade or a 4th Diamond and I would not bid 4 Spades. Nor would I with a side Queen kicker.

Obviously partner has way too good a hand to pass 4 Spades. Most bridge club members use a form of Ace asking Blackwood that is called Roman Key Card or 1430 for short. This convention makes the King of trumps, in this case Spades, a 5th Ace.

A bid of 4 No Trump asks for the following answers.

With 1 or 4 Key cards ( Aces ) bid 5 Clubs.

With 0 or 3 Key cards bid 5 Diamonds.

With 2 Key cards but no Queen of trumps bid 5 Hearts.

With 2 Key cards and the Queen of trumps bid 5 Spades.

So holding AK A one replies 5 Diamonds.

Now it is time for the big hand to pause and think. Partner has shown a minimum, but yet has 3 Key Cards (with Opener being the responder, the possibility of 0 Key Cards can be discarded). The actual hand should not be

too difficult to contemplate. However knowing one has only 11 tricks is one thing, but being able to do something about it is another. A bid now of 5 No Trump would normally be a continuance asking for side Kings. A bid of 5 Spades has a meaning generally – bid 6 with 3 pass with 0. Neither treatment makes much sense here. But partners are known to make mistakes and one does have an out that assures an 11 trick contract.

After a response to RKB of 5 Clubs or 5 Diamonds the bid of the next suit asks the question "Do you have the Queen of Trumps"? So here one can bid 5 Hearts over 5 Diamonds knowing that partner has to bid 5 Spades lacking the Queen.

Naturally this bid allows one to pass.

As MacKenzie pointed out, this hand is a rare case of a response showing 2 Key cards being better for a slam than 3. Such "fast arrival" hands as :-

ªA10xxx &Copy;xx ¨AJx §Qxx 12 tricks if either Spade or Diamond finesse works.

ªAKxxx &Copy;Qx ¨QJx §xxx A laydown 12 tricks.

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