Your Call 07

Is taking a risk at match points warranted when there could be more to gain than to lose? And the same can apply to teams play though of course there is much more to gain and to lose if you get it wrong. In a match point game, as in the following deal, it was just one board, and the total match points at stake were the equivalent of 4% for the session, to make it easier for the reader to relate to the narrative.

Board 3 from Friday 2/08/24
Dlr South EW Vul

	JT6 AJ87 T842 53
K873 6542 J753 9		954 KQT AKQ96 T2
	AQ2 93 AKQJ8764

What a hand South has! But not a 2C opening, with no real chance that the bidding will die in 1C, so that is what South should open. North should respond with 1D if we bid according to lesson 1 in the learners’ bidding book. But nearly all Norths would bid 1H, since that is about as much as North will be able to muster, and it is much more meaningful. East now bids 2D and South can see that 5C must be almost laydown given that North has responded 1H. East’s bid of 2D has increased the value of the AQ of spades, so South might well be thinking about slam. How can South investigate a possible slam? I put this to my panel of players and it seems that most would just bid 5C but some seeing a possibility of a slam would take the sadistic approach and torture partner by making them bid, by either doubling 2D or cue bidding 3D or reversing in the three card spade suit. Whatever the case, it seems that nearly all players with the South hand would simply bid 5C, and that is what they all did in our club session. Only one South was ‘crazy’ enough to bid 6C and paid the price. A number of my panel would also have ended up in a reasonable 6C after forcing the bidding and finding North with one ace, surely the ace of hearts.

Is the price of bidding 6C, and failing to make, such a big price to pay? If every NS pair in the session bids 5C and makes, and you are the only one to bid 6C and go down, instead of sharing the match points with every other pair, you get zero for that board and score about 1% less for the session. But if you bid the slam that nobody bids, and make it, you score 4% more for the session.

Now, looking at the NS hands and East’s bidding, would you still go with the field or take a gamble and play for odds of 4 to 1 or just take the same score as every other pair? And, of course, you still have the chance that your opponents will come to the rescue, as happened twice at X-Clubs, with a spade lead followed by more scintillating defending to let the slam make!