Thursday Tips 15
This week’s tip comes from Thursday 23/10/25: Don’t be a smarty. It may well backfire on you!
Board 1
Dealer W EW Vul
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KJ6
K85
AQ752
Q9There are in fact more than one “Thursday Tip” for the reader, but the main one is: if you don’t have a reasonable bid then PASS is a good option. The Easts who could no resist an overcall of 1H when North opened 1D were successful in keeping NS out of the 4H game that was in the offing for EW. In fact, when 4H was bid it was seldom made, even though it could have been. That is because declarer played with the odds and played the hearts from the top, losing a trump trick as well as two top clubs and a diamond. What is the best defence against 4H? Stangely enough, it is to play three rounds of clubs and thereby offer a ‘ruff and discard” to declarer. If declarer ruffs in dummy, he can no longer play the hearts for one loser even if East is known to have four hearts. And yes, there were a number of Norths in 3NT, presumably after East had overcalled in the four card heart suit. Some made, some did not, and most Easts led the ace or king of clubs and read the situation correctly when declarer produced the NINE on the opening lead, and continued with three more club tricks, but alas the clubs were blocked.
We used to have saying “Where there’s the nine, there’s the queen”. In the case of doubleton queens, that makes a lot of sense and this time the East can cash up four club tricks. But the continuation is critical. Only a low diamond is safe since a heart allows declarer to make five heart tricks easily and a spade finds the queen for declarer, who can then proceed to wrap up nine tricks. There were many failures in 4H but unfortunately for the ‘operators’ who overcalled 1H, there were also many failures in 3NT and any pair that bid and made 3NT still scored about 80%.
So, my tip is to keep your nose out of the bidding unless you can overcall in a five card or longer suit or have a takeout double available, which should be ‘major oriented’. This East hand qualifies for nothing but a PASS.
