This week’s tip: Count your tricks. Not just your certain top tricks but your potential tricks. There are actually EIGHTEEN highly likely tricks for NS in the following deal, so getting to 7NT should be easy wouldn’t you think?
Board 5. Dealer N NS Vul
North opens the bidding with 1D. It hardly matters what South does as long as North does not pass, because all South needs to do is to ask for aces (for the crude bidders an immediate 4C!) and when North says “I have three”, do some very basic maths on the almost 100% expectation that there will be EIGHT spade tricks from spades (I won’t bore you with statistics but from such a suit I always expect eight tricks). One South I know of responded with 1S and North jumped to 3D, a reasonable enough Acol way to bid such a hand. Now when South asked for aces and North showed three, there were going to be about eighteen tricks if North had the queen of diamonds, and thirteen sure tricks made up of eight spades, three aces, and two kings, so bidding 7NT and claiming immediately would seem a mere formality. How common a result was bidding and making 7NT? Well, across all of Xclubs, there were 118 NS pairs and only eight bid 7NT. There were some in 7S which as far as I am concerned, deserves a side suit ruff and is a non thinker’s bid since both 7S and 7NT will require eight spade tricks unless the DIAMONDS produce six vital tricks when spades behave highly improbably (Jxxxx or Jxxx in one opponent’s hand).
Every bridge player I know is always hoping to bid and make a grand slam. So many let this cast iron opportunity slip by!
J52
A
AQT7653
A4