Hi all
Your RHO (North) opens 1
. Yawn…
21. All blacks takeout
2. What else?
3. I’m fairly certain this is too high, but I don’t dare…
Partner starts with the Ace and switches to a .
Surprising developments. And things get better when declarer tries the King of . I take the trick with the Ace and return the Jack of as Lavinthal. Hoek ruffs and returns a for my Ten. Partner surely doesn’t have five (he would have bid them) so I cash the Jack too and give Hoek another ruff, with a heartwarming Ten of (!). Hoek puts the cherry on the cake by throwing the Queen (number thirteen) into the arena, promoting my trump possession to three tricks. Down five.
Evidently there’s no question whether I should have doubled. Could I have known the fish was this big? Declarer scampered away with -250, wiping away his sweaty relief for not getting doubled.
At Star 21 pairs out of 33 played in hearts, two of them in 4
. 4
-5 was the only one of the lot that got doubled. At IMPS it’s just too hard to double.
For the curious, EW played four times: 3
doubled -1 wasn’t it, but 1NT +2 (without a diamond start or switch you always make 3NT) and 3
+2 or 4
doubled +1 were. Apparently you also can bid 5
instead of 2
;-) The remainder were NS pairs playing either 3
-2 (one of them doubled, which is easier to do) and 6 in 1NT (half making, half down; one pair was down 5, imagine that!)
With 21 points, it’s a sick hand for NS.
You cannot double 3
, unless you already know your opponents are as ridiculous as they seem to be on this hand. 3
by South is unbelievable bad bidding.
honours in south 3
will be an easy make (especially with the spades 4-2).
Normal NS pairs will have nine hearts for their bidding and when NS have the same honours with the