Hilo Bridge Club

We had another fun discussion in yesterday morning’s lesson. Subject was the reasoning that led to two of my bidding errors from Sunday:

Exercise 1. It’s Your Call:

You are the dealer (favorable vulnerability) and open the bidding one diamond. LHO passes and your partner responds one spade. RHO passes and it’s your turn. Bidding so far:

Here is the your hand (the hand I held):

How good is your hand in view of partner’s response? And what is your rebid? Give it some thought before scrolling down to read my reasoning.

My thinking was that partner must have five spades. Why? There are 13 missing hearts in the other three hands, and partner would have responded one heart with 4-4 in the majors. But holding five spades and four hearts, partner would respond one spade. And partner would also respond one spade with 5-5 shape in the majors. Since opponents were silent at their first turn (did not overcall or preempt in hearts), I concluded there was an odds-on likelihood that partner had five or more spades. With the presumed 8-card or better spade fit and my big hand, I invited game in spades by leaping to three spades.

That was a mistake. “Odds-on” does not mean it’s a sure thing. I failed to allow for the possibility that partner held only four spades. Much better would have been to show my invitational hand by leaping to three diamonds. We could still find an 8-card spade fit (or better) as the auction progressed from there. There was no need for me to be in such a rush.

BTW, do you agree that my hand contained invitational values? How do you evaluate the hand?

Exercise 2. It’s Your Call:

Put yourself in my seat as West enjoying favorable vulnerability. North deals and opens the bidding one spade. East passes and South responds two spades. Bidding so far:

Now it’s West’s turn. West holds:

The question is should you “balance in the direct seat”? That sounds contradictory (and it is), but it’s sometimes done when you deduce from the bidding that partner is unlikely to balance in the pass out seat. In this case you are worried that the bidding will die with North-South in two spades. Why are you worried?  You think they can make two spades, and you would like to push them up one level. But is it right to pre-balance with your hand by bidding three hearts at this point in the auction?

Give it some thought and then scroll down.

I made the mistake of bidding three hearts. It was way too aggressive without a known heart fit and much better hand, including decent strength in my 5-card heart suit. There is good guidance for balancing in direct seat on Wikipedia (looks like Larry Cohen probably authored most of it). You can prebalance at the two level if the auction in not higher than two hearts and you have a reasonable prospect of finding a fit. The link has a nice summary of when and why you should consider balancing.