Some Observations

Vil asked a panel of mixed ability about the following hands. He offers his own opinions here.

You are South, match point session.

1. The Bidding has been:
Dealer N EW VUL

SouthWestNorthEast
--1Pass
2Pass2Pass
?

Your bid, holding:

K92
AK
AQ97
KJ87

There was an apparent obsession with No Trumps when there is a perfectly good slam that can be played in a suit contract - even when you know you have a 5-3 fit. I even had some of the more advanced players suggesting that if they were to play in No Trumps they would get a favourable minor suit opening lead. Does that seriously compensate for the simple fact that an easily available spade ruff in the South hand will produce one more trick if needed? In any normal match point session, bidding and making 6S will score at least 70% and bidding 6S and making an overtrick will score 90% so is it worth risking (and I believe it IS risky given this South hand) 6NT? We are, after all, playing in a club session, or at best in an open tournament and not in a world championship and even then only those
desperate for every match point would contemplate 6NT as a better alternative to 6S.

This was North's hand:

AJ843
J963
K42
A

How comfortable would YOU have been in 6NT on any lead but a spade? Ironically, if I remember correctly, the spade finesse worked, diamonds broke, and the 6NT syndrome was a success for the extra couple of percentage points.

2. Dealer S ALL Vul
The Bidding has been:

SouthWestNorthEast
Pass1XPass
?

Your bid holding:

KJ84
K653
Q754
7

There is clearly a huge difference between how the newbies and how the more advanced players play in response to partner's double of an opening bid. The DOUBLE, in my view, is the most useful and most versatile as well as the most underused tool that a bridge partnership can have. The situation we have here is the most basic one we have, an opening bid of 1D by an opponent and a takeout double by partner. We have quite a reasonable hand, especially considering that partner's takeout double has show at least a 4-3 holding in the majors. That is how most of us have been taught, and is the accepted norm. Those who suggest that you should double as long as you also have an opening bid (ANY opening bid!) have been taught in the old biddies' school of 1950. So, assuming our bridge has progressed a
bit further than that, given that partner has at least four cards in either spades or hearts, and has doubled, asking us to compete, what should we do? Which major should we 'guess' and should we just bid 1H or 1S? We should not forget the fact that partner has forced us to bid by the takeout double. If we took away the two kings and replaced then with twos, we would obviously bid 1H. But our hand is much better than that, equivalent to at least a raise to two if partner had OPENED 1H or 1S. So we should bid either 2H or 2S, whichever is partner's suit. But since we don't know that, and since we have both, we have a very simple solution available, a CUE BID,
another much unused tool. A cue bid of 2D asks partner to bid her better major, which has to be at least four cards long. When partner does that, is our hand good have bid 3H or 3S with a better than minimum hand, knowing that you have the hand that you do. There is also another possibility: partner, with 4-4 in the majors and say a 15 count, can now bid 3D, another cue bid that says: I have enough to try for game, if you have 8 or so HCP and good support in the majors, we should be in game. Great how it works.

One of my panelists had a different approach, probably one that others also use. He would have bid 3D not just 2D in response to the double, suggesting game, which is not any different to the slower approach which I favour. There is, I feel, no need to hurry when you can have a meaningful discussion more slowly to arrive at the best outcome. That brings me to my favourite bidding sequence of all time, which I will give you for your amusement as well as puzzlement. This is how the bidding went on one hand:

Dealer West

SouthWestNorthEast
---1
XPass2Pass
3Pass4Pass
5Pass6Pass
?

The bidding has all been in one suit until the six level. It is bow North who has to decide on the better slam. But this partnership's understanding and trust was so good that North actually bid 6D to get SOUTH to name the slam, knowing that it may be better to have the lead come from the opening bidder.

Just for fun, can you guess the actual NS hands as they were 25 years ago? Such crazy bidding was not unusual even in those unenlightened' days!