Take me to the bridge, Laurie

[dmaze]

narya has managed to suck me into her somewhat-regular bridge group. I feel like I'm getting up to "okay"; certainly I've figured out all of the core mechanics, and in bidding land I generally have a good feel for what I want to say if not how to actually say it. Playing last night I definitely noticed there was a difference between "I made a mistake" vs. "I just didn't figure out the puzzle". Mere ineptitude doesn't actually bother me so much, since I figure that if I play enough hands I'll start to get better at figuring out where the cards I need are. It's making active mistakes that can get in my partner's way that's bugging me more.

The last hand of the night was certainly the clearest in terms of "if I was more experienced I would have figured out the puzzle". I had a very solid 1NT opening hand (I think K-Q-x-x in spades and A-x-x in the other three suits; we play 1NT as 15-17 points), and as dealer opened:

1NT   P   4NT   P
6NT   P    P   P

When the cards came down I could see there was one missing trick each in hearts and clubs, and just couldn't figure out how to recover either of them. So I wound up down one on something that should have been makeable, but I don't feel like I made an active mistake there.

The weirdest hand of the night I think I also dealt: A-J-x-x-x-x of clubs, A-x-x-x-x in spades, one each small diamond and heart. With nine high-card points, opening 1C or 1S felt very strange (promising 13). I instead wound up opening a preemptive 3C which went around, but we then missed our 9-card spade fit and probably a makeable 4S game. The rest of the table was convinced I should have opened it at the one level, and that might have gone better, but it felt like a significant lie about my hand's strength. Judgement calls. Yeah.

The most frustrating in terms of bidding had 9 high-card points, with four hearts and six clubs. My partner dealt, and we bid:

          1D    P
1H   2S    P    P
Help!

Now a 3C bid shows my clubs, but it's a free bid of a new suit at the three level and shows more strength than I really have. My partner probably has minimum strength, around 13 points. Consensus at the table was that counting 22 points makes the three bid reasonable; as it was, I passed (and I think they made their two spades) and probably missed a reasonable partial.

Comments

[dmaze]

Note to self: in competition "bid your opponent's suit" is available as a strong bid. So on this last deal I can outright bid game, 3S is strong (game forcing, obviously, but we don't have an obvious game and I probably don't have a spade stopper), and anything else is weakish, with 2NT in particular probably being invitational with a spade stopper. That makes 3C okay with 9 HCPs (I didn't make the cue bid and so I'm not strong) and 6 clubs.