I didn't realise that actually playing in these sessions can be so much fun. As part of our club's mentoring programme, I was asked to partner a player who has just been through his lessons and who had been playing for a couple of months at most. I was astounded at his ability. Despite the fact that he did absolutely nothing wrong, we were a distant third our way, with the two top scores well over 65%. My partner was obviously a quick learner and a fine thinker.
Board 10 from Wednesday 23-Aug
Dealer S ALL Vul
This deal was not the most successful for us, despite the fact that no other pair reached what should have been an easy slam to bid. Our problem was two fold. Firstly, when South opened 1C, I wanted to make a jump shift to 2H to show my great suit and good point count. I was then going to bid spades and hopefully end up in the right slam. But I could not bid 2H as we had agreed before we started that a jump shift by responder would be 3-5 HCP and equivalent to a weak two. That is not a bad way to play it, but the lack of an ability to jump shift with the given North hand did not help our cause. I responded 1H and partner jumped to 3C. This was another slight yet crucial difference between how I play jumps and how he did. The way I prefer to play a jump rebid is to show 15-17 HCP and a 6+ card suit. The South hand is much better than that, and opposite a 1H response, is worth a bid of 3NT, which ostensibly shows 19 or 20 HCP and a balanced hand. True, it should be more balanced than it was, but the trick taking potential is huge, expecially with the near running clubs and holds in the other suits.
After a 3NT rebid, I would have simply bid 6H after checking to make sure we did not have two aces missing. As it happens, 6NT also makes but because of my singleton diamond, that would have been safer from my point of view. As it was, over the 3C rebid I bid 3S and when partner now bid 3NT I bid 4H, which he did not convert to 4S. 4H making only six was not a great success since there were a number of pairs in 3NT making six and some even made seven when West led a club despite South's opening bid in the suit! Such is life on Wednesday nights at The Hutt, but great fun nevertheless. I'll let you know how we get on next week.
KT742
AKQJ63
2
9