Bidding Slams With Voids

I was watching a few hands played in an expert team game on BBO yesterday.  At both tables the East-West pair had some problems bidding this hand.

East 7 AKQ985 QJ82 Q10

Nobody was vulnerable and South started it off with a pass.  West opened with 1.  Here is what happened at one table.  Let’s follow along as East.

West	North	East	South
			pass
1	pass	2	2
3	pass	3	pass
3	pass	4	pass
5	pass	?

East 2 bid was game forcing and West 3 showed a good hand with diamonds and clubs.  East showed diamond support and West’s 3 bid showed a first or second round spade control.  I like East’s 4 bid.  It suggests to me that East is still looking for controls.  You might ask why East doesn’t just bid Blackwood since if he has enough aces slam is quite a good possibility.  We will see why in a minute.  What would you do over 5?

………………………..

West had bid all he had.  The heart void didn’t look that great.  So he signed off in the diamond game.  And now I think East made a mistake.  He bid the slam anyway.

West KJ2 - AK1043 K9763

East 7 AKQ985 QJ82 Q10

Now let’s see what happened at the other table.  That was the table I was watching and it was what interested me about the deal.

West	North	East	South
			pass
1	pass	1	1
2	pass	2	pass
3	pass	4	pass
4	pass	?

At this table East just bid 1 but after West showed his clubs East created a game force with a cuebid of 2.  Now West was able to clearly show his 5-5 hand (or even a possible 6-5 hand) by bidding 3.  East was trying to show his slam interest and diamond fit with the 4 bid.  West showed his spade control with a spade cuebid (which might have been important if East had two little spades).  Now East had a problem.  He had great cards for his partner with a fit in both minors and a source of tricks in hearts.  So he bid Keycard Blackwood with 4NT.  Do you see the problem?

West	North	East	South
			pass
1	pass	1	1
2	pass	2	pass
3	pass	4	pass
4	pass	4NT	pass
5	pass	!

East showed 2 keycards without the diamond queen.  Now East knew that no slam was possible since they were missing two aces or the diamond ace and king or if he was really lucky the A and the K (which means the slam would be on a finesse for the K at best).  He really didn’t want to bid the slam.  As it turns out 5NT is the only contract that has a chance.

Just bidding 5NT is out.  That bid is a grand slam try promising all the aces and the king and queen of trump.  But in this auction I think 5 would have asked partner to bid 5NT to play.  In different circumstances it might be a grand slam try asking about spades but that doesn’t make much sense since West has already cuebid spades and it seems very unlikely that additional spade cards are needed.  But there is a lot of risk in bidding 5 here unless you and your partner are on the same wavelength.  Anyway West decided to tough it out in 5.  If partner had one heart with his 5-5 minor suits then it would make if there was a heart split.  We know that this bid didn’t work out when partner turned out to have a heart void.

There are a couple of lessons to take away from this hand.  First, if you bid Blackwood it is a good idea to have some place to play the hand if you are short keycards.  You may want to think about how you can end up in 5NT if that is the spot you want to play.

You might also consider having some other way to ask for aces if you plan to play in a minor.  Some players (me included) use four of an agreed minor as ace asking.  Here 4 asks aces.:

West	North	East	South
			pass
1	pass	1	1
2	pass	2	pass
3	pass	3	pass
3 or 3NT	pass	4!

Now when West has too few East can sign off in a safe 5 contract.  Notice that in all cases West should not show (or even get too excited about) a void in partner’s suit.

More to this hand than meets the eye: A student, a hand and a problem

I watched a student play this hand.  When you first look at it the hand seems very easy but as it turned out it wasn’t as easy as it looked.

	Dummy K1093 Q862 K K1097
West		East
	Declarer QJ8 AKJ109 9753 Q

Playing imps we arrived in 4 with no opposition bidding.  The opening lead was the 6 and east wins the trick with the A and switches to a heart.  You win the A as everybody follows.  How would you play the hand?  Do you see any problems?

You have only three loses off the top, the three aces in the off suits.  In a suit contract it is a good idea to count losers not just top losers.  You usually start with declarer’s hand.  Here declarer has one spade loser, no heart losers, a club loser but the potential for four diamond losers.  You are going to have to lose the A so the problem is to get rid of the other three diamond losers.  You can ruff some of them and discard some of them on black suit winners.  But you have to be careful about the timing.  Do you see the trap?

You have to keep hearts in dummy to ruff diamonds.  Once all the hearts are gone if all of your diamonds are not gone the opponents will be able to cash diamond winners.  Let’s look at what actually happened at our table and that will illustrate this problem.

Declarer played a second round of trump and then ruffed a diamond.  The diamond ruff was fatal!  Now declarer gave up a spade.  West won and returned a heart.  Declarer was able to discard a diamond on the fourth spade but still had a diamond to lose.  This was the whole hand.

	Dummy K1093 Q862 K K1097
West A54 543 10862 A85		East 762 7 AQJ2 J6432
	Declarer QJ8 AKJ109 9753 Q

Can you afford to play a second round of trump?  Yes, but when the trump do not break you cannot now ruff a diamond.  Your next play must be a black suit keeping two trump in dummy.  If the defender wins and returns a third trump you can give up the other black suit ace.  You will be able to ruff one diamond in dummy and throw the other two diamond losers away on black suit winners.  If the defender wins and returns a diamond you can ruff the diamond leaving a trump in dummy and play the other black suit.  If the defender plays a third diamond there is a still a trump in dummy to ruff it.

This hand is about timing.  You must keep enough trump in dummy to handle diamond ruffs.  If you are going to give the lead up twice then you must keep two trump in dummy.  You can ruff a diamond but only if you do not play a second round of trump or you can play a second round of trump as long as you don’t ruff the diamond.  (It is better to play a second round of trump because if the trump split you have no risk of having a winner ruffed).

What about the idea of just planning to ruff three rounds of diamond in dummy in the first place.  This is not the best plan because you cannot easily get back to your hand for all those ruffs.  You would win the heart return in hand and ruff a diamond.  You cannot cross back to your hand with a trump because you have the same problem as above, you will only have one trump left in dummy!  You must play a black card and you are back to the line discussed above.

New downloads available from Barbara Seagram!

We’re featuring Barbara Seagram this month over at masteringbridge.com. Check out the new articles posted this week at http://www.masteringbridge.com/news_seagram.php

You Have To Look At the ABTA Master Point Press Teacher of the Year Page

Who Is this Masked Man?

If you have a chance you really need to see the ABTA Master Point Press Teacher of the year page on Facebook.

Teacher of the year Page

If you love your bridge teacher or just bridge teachers in general become a fan.  We have lots of nominees and more still coming.  Nominations close at the end of the month.

The teacher pictured is Dave Gandorf.  He is from Houston Texas and his primary “stomping grounds” is The Clear Lake Bridge Club.  This is his unusual way of teaching holdup plays.   We have been flooded with emails of support from his students and you can see why.

I LOVE IT.  What a wonderful way to get his idea across.  Who could ever forget it!  It does bring to mind  Murder At The Bridge Table by Matt Granovetter  and  I Shot My Bridge Partner by the same author.  It is Texas after all, partner!

Suit Preference Signals

There is one final type of signal and I use it a lot.  It is called a suit preference signal and yes, it is used to show what suit you prefer.  One very common use of this signal occurs when you are giving partner a ruff.  Suppose partner leads his singleton.  You can win the ace and lead back a card for partner to trump.  After partner trumps it he is going to know how to get back to your hand for another ruff or at least what suit you want lead even when you don’t have a quick entry. 

We start out with four suits: one is the trump suit so lets eliminate that for now,  the second is the suit partner is ruffing and  that leaves two others.  So if you return a high one you want the higher of the two remaining suits led and if you return a low one you want the lower of the two remaining suits led.  Here is an example:

	Dummy Q1098 Q105 K1098 K9
Colin My Son 76 3 J6532 J5432		Linda J2 A9842 A7 Q1086
	Opponent About To Be Sad And Sorry AK543 KJ76 Q4 A7

South opened the bidding with 1.  Colin was too weak to bid unusual notrump even though he did have 5-5 in the minors so he passed.  North had about 11 dummy points and so made a limit raise (3).  I passed and South was good enough for game and bid 4.  Now Colin led a heart and I won the A  Colin could have the K but he is also quite likely to have a singleton.  To cater to this possibility I return a heart but which one?  There are two suits for Colin to chose from, the two minor suits.  There is no way for him to know which ace I have (if I indeed have one) except … I return the 9 telling him I want the higher of the two remaining suits.  Now he returns a diamond and I can give him another heart ruff.  A defensive crossruff always feels sooo good.

Suit preference signals can be used in some other cases too although they are not as common as count or attitude signals.  Suppose that you are following while declarer plays off a suit in a trump contract.  You would like to tell partner which of the other two suits you prefer.  But since you are following you cannot play an attitude card.  You can use the order that you play your cards as a suit preference signal.  So if declarer is playing clubs and you want spades and not hearts you follow with a high club and then a low club.  If you want hearts you play a low club and then a high club.

In fact some people have their card marked trump suit preference signals.  When declarer draws trump, if they can do so safely they play a high trump first to suggest they prefer a high ranking suit and a low trump if they prefer a low ranking suit.

One of the disadvantages of suit preference signals is that they can only distinguish between two suits and in many cases three suits may be possibilities.   Some people play a method of signaling where they can tell partner about three suits all at once.  These methods have names like Lavinthal and Odd-even.  The main idea is that using the rank (high or low) or parity (odd or even) to send a message about which suit they like.

If you would like to know more about these more complex methods of discarding then follow this link.

The Fine Art of Discarding 

There are many time where you just don’t know what to do on defense just looking at your hand and dummy’s (and listening to the auction of course).  So partner’s signals are a critical aid to helping you out.

Thanks to a readers who pointed out errors in the previous post which have now been corrected.  All help is welcome!

Questions and Answers

I noticed that I had been rather negligent in answering questions people left for me on my blog.  So here are some answers.  Please feel free to ask lots of questions and I will try to answer your more promptly next time!

Tammy posted this question:

I am a beginner bridge player and had a question on bidding. I was playing the other night and had a 16 point hand. I had 5 spades and 4 clubs. My partner had a nine point hand, with spades and clubs, but higher clubs. I bid one spade, the next person bid 2 diamonds and my partner did not bid. We could have had a strong club hand, but without a bid by my partner we never got to this. Does one not bid a minor if their partner starts the bidding with a major?

Answer:

Tammy, you were perfectly right to open the bidding with 1 spade.  You didn’t say exactly how many spades partner had and how many clubs but let’s assume she had three spades and four clubs.  With nine points you would normally raise partner to 2S even in competition.  The 2 diamond bid should not have deterred your partner from bidding.  When you find a fit in a major you should be happy to raise.  With 9 points your partner is not quite good enough to show a limit raise.  Many experts show a limit raise by cue bidding the opponent’s suit.  If your partner had 11 points (an invitational) hand then she might have bid 3D (cue bid).  This bid says nothing about diamonds, it just shows the invitational hand with spades.  You may be playing that 3S is a limit raise and if you do then your partner would make that bid with a slightly better hand.

What about showing clubs?  Generally when you have found a major suit fit of at least eight cards (as here) you don’t bother to try to find a minor suit fit.  However, with an invitational hand then partner could bid two clubs with five good ones.  This is forcing for one round.  That means when partner bids a new suit, opener should bid again.  So partner could bid two clubs and then after your next bid raise spades.  That would show an invitational hand with spades and clubs.  But your partner was not quite good enough for that.

So the short answer to your question is: Partner should have bid 2S!  Now with 16 points you might well try for game and with nine points partner should accept your try.  25 points should be enough to make four of a major a lot of the time.

Marcin posted this question:

How do bridge players pronounce SAYC. 

Answer:
I have always just said the letters S-A-Y-C and I have never heard anyone do otherwise.  Its sort of like IBM (without all the wonderful hardware and software).

Ai posted this question:

You opens 1S and partner bids 2S now what?  If you have a typical minimum hand you would pass.  If you have about 16 or so you can try for game.  More about that in a minute.  If you have 19 or more dummy points than you would bid game.  Experts use a variety of ways to try for game.  As a beginner you might just bid 3S as your game try.  But you can get more sophisticated than that.  Experts use two major techniques long suit and short suit game tries.  A long suit game (or help suit game try) goes like this:

3D I have length in diamonds but I would appreciate some help there.   You want partner not just to look at his point count but where his points are located.  You might have a hand like

S AQJ54 H Q543 D K2 C A2

If partner has

S 8765 H AJ2 D Q43 C 543 7 points

then game is quite good but if partner has

S 8765 H 543 D Q43 CKQJ 8 points

game is poor

Some players play short-suit game tries.  They bid a short suit (a singleton or void) and that says partner throw away cards in that suit they will not help.  And some players play both.

My recommendation would be that a beginner should start out with long suit game tries if they want to go beyond just raising the suit to the three level.

Signaling Attitude – I like it!

While count is very important, a lot of the time, what partner really needs to know is whether you like a particular the suit or not.  We call this type of signal an attitude signal.

Attitude signals are used on a lot of occasions but they always serve the same purpose to tell partner that you have something good in a particular suit (or not).

Suppose that partner leads a spade against notrump and you hold the Q10984.  Dummy has the AKJ.   You would really like partner to lead another spade when he gets in.  What do you do?  You play a high spade.  You might think of it as jumping up with a high card… jumping for joy or high as in High 5.  Way to go partner, you found me!

Its a good idea to play the highest spot card you can afford to make it really clear to partner what your message is.  Don’t be stingy!  If you didn’t want partner to continue spades you would play your lowest spade.  You are telling your partner your attitude about the suit.  In this example the 10 would be appropriate.

Playing a high one to say you like it and a low one to say you don’t like it is called playing standard attitude.  Standard because that is how most people played it for years and years. 

Here are some other common situations where you might use an attitude signal. 

a) Declarer is running a long suit, squeezing you and your side will have to discard.  You have a winner in one of the suits.  You want to let partner know that he can safely discard that suit since you have it covered.

b) You have a discard to make while declarer is drawing trump and you want to make it clear to partner which suit to lead when he gets in. 

c) You are following suit but you want to let partner know that you have an entry in the suit being led since you have some established winners or may be giving partner a ruff

It would be impossible to list every situation.  The best way to think about it is that either in following suit, especially when partner leads the suit or in discarding you throw hi to encourage and low to discourage.

Let’s go back to that notrump hand we mentioned earlier.  South opened 1 and 2, South bid 2NT and North raised to 3NT.  Partner decided to try a spade.  You are very happy with the spade so you play the 10.  While declarer is in dummy he decides to try the diamond finesse.  Partner wins and he knows that it is right to return a spade.

After partner’s spade return the hand will now be defeated.  Declare does not have enough tricks without setting up clubs and after that you will be be able to cash your spade winner.  But if partner switches to a club then declarer will be able to make the contract.  But suppose the position had been like this:

Partner would need to shift to a club when in on the diamond.  Then you can return a heart for another club through and a big set.  How can partner tell?  On this hand when the spade was led you would play the 4.

Now you may be wondering when do you play a count signal and when do you play an attitude signal.  This is not the easiest question to answer.  Many expert partnerships talk about this at length to make sure they have it right.  And we will look at it in the next blog.

Signaling Partner – Count

Partner leads an ace against a suit contract and dummy shows up with three little.  You have a doubleton.  You hope that partner has the king (as he will most of the time) and you want him to play the king and give you a ruff.  This is one of the most common signals and one of the most useful.  As you move up to the expert ranks you and your partner will probably want to add a lot more signaling to your repertoire.

There are a number of different signals.  The most common signals are COUNT and ATTITUDE.  Count is used to help partner work out how many cards you have in a suit.  In general when you signal Count you will signal whether you have an odd number or an even number.  With that information partner will often be able to work things out.  Lets look at one of the most useful Count signals.  This happens when declarer is playing notrump with a long suit in dummy and few or no entries.  Suppose this is your hand and dummy and you are defending 3NT after the auction went 1NT-3NT. 

A6   432 KQJ108 532

J109
65 
A54
98764 

You led the J.  Partner won the K and return the 2.  Dummy won the A.  Declarer leads the K from dummy and partner plays the 2, declarer plays the 7.  What do you want to know?  The most important thing right now, the one you really want to know is how many diamonds declarer has.  It appears declarer has no entries to dummy now except in diamonds.  Your goal is to minimize the number of diamond tricks declarer takes.  To do that you want to take your A on declarer’s last diamond.  Then declarer will have no way to get to dummy for any more diamonds.  If you wait too long and take your A when declarer has already run out of diamonds you gave declarer too many diamond winners.

So if declarer has three diamonds you want to win the third round and if declarer has two diamonds you want to win the second round.  You want partner to shout across the table and say “I have three diamonds!.”  Then you know declarer has two.  But since this isn’t allowed partner has to find another way to tell you.  Suppose partner could play a card that says I have an even number of diamonds.  Could you tell how many declarer has?  If partner has two then declarer has three and if partner has four then declarer has one.  Since declarer opened 1NT you would expect declarer to have more than one so you are pretty confident that declarer has three.  Yes, you can work it out.  And most of the time you will be able to tell either on the first trick or sometimes on the second trick exactly how many declarer has. 

Partner tells you if they have an odd number or an even number by playing their lowest diamond when odd and a high diamond when even.  (It is best to play the highest one you can afford to make it clear).  If partner plays up, up (that is a lower one and then a higher one) you know they have an odd number and if they play high low (a high one and then a low one) they have an even number.  When you think about it using your spot cards to talk across the table is quite awesome.  Those tiny cards can perform a very important function.

This form of carding playing low for odd and high for even is known as standard count signals.  It is a count signal for obvious reasons and it is standard because that is the way that count signals were originally designed.  Later people can up with other alternatives but whatever approach you play the goal is the same.  You are trying to tell partner how many you have.  Count signals are often used when declarer leads towards a long suit or sometimes when partner leads a high card especially an ace.  Partner may need to know how many cards he can cash in the suit or whether to give you a ruff.

Let’s go back to our sample hand.  Here is the whole hand

	A6   432 KQJ108 532
J109 65  A54 98764		K852 J1098  632 A10
	Q743  AKQ7 97 KQJ

Declarer leads the top diamond and partner has played the 2.  You do not take your A.  Declarer plays another diamond and partner plays the 3.  Now you know that declarer has no more diamonds.  It is safe to win the A.  You continue spades and declarer wins the Q and knocks out the A.  If you check you can see that declarer cannot take more than eight tricks, one diamond, two spades, three hearts and two clubs.  However, if you don’t play count and decided to duck the second diamond to be safe declarer will take nine tricks.  Using count allows you to find the winning defense.

New PDF posted to mastering bridge

Linda Lee hosted a practice session on BBO last saturday in the BIL (Beginner / Intermediate Lounge).  A PDF download has been added to our website resources containing the full hand records and write-up from this practice session.  Visit www.masteringbridge.com for details.

Following the Rules

A fun part of learning for me is remembering the catch phrases you hear from books, online and from your teachers.  Phrases such as “be nice to partner” or “eight ever, nine never.”  These things stay with me and although I find myself occasionally breaking the “rules”, I know immediately the moment I do.  The point is that without anyone having to tell me, I’m coaching myself to be a better player.  The “high cards from the short side first” rule, for example, is one I’ve broken many times now and each time I have that d’oh moment when I realize what I’ve done wrong.  Let’s hope all of these moments will catch up with me eventually and I’ll start to remember the rules before I break them.  I have to learn not to be so impulsive and to think before I act.

Last night I played online with my mum (my current teacher) and two of her students.  We often get together on a Tuesday evening and play for an hour or so.  To my surprise, and delight, I was declarer on seven of the ten hands we played, so I certainly got lots of practice.  In the following hand my RHO failed to follow a “rule” that we have all heard many times, something I frequently fail to follow myself.  See if you can spot it.  Here’s the hand.

http://tinyurl.com/yagbcwe

I can often hear my mum’s voice in my head when I play, “now, Sally..”, and this is one of those times.  “Always return partner’s suit”, she would say to me.  And I thought it was just to be polite.  But as you can see here, it costs tricks.  If RHO immediately returns a spade I am forced to play my ♠K and then when she gets in with her ♣A the opponents can run spades.  My plan for this hand was to knock out the ♣A so she really did me a favor.  Thank you RHO! (now isn’t that something you should be saying to your partner?).  In her defense, she did return a spade on the third trick, but by then it was too late and I made my contract with an overtrick.   I could easily have made the same mistake with her hand, impulsively playing my ♣A rather than thinking it through.   Now I can see that it really does pay to be polite.