[Echognome]

For my next hair raising deal, I give you the following promising selection:

♠A73
♥A73
♦Q
♣KJT864

You are still playing in a local swiss teams, and are at love all when there are two passes to you. You perhaps should have suspected something spooky was going to happen when you had identical major suit holding.

So after two passes, you decide to try to make life a bit more difficult for opponents by opening 3♣. LHO chirps in with 3♠ and partner raises you to 4♣. RHO now bids 4♠ and you have a difficult time knowing who makes what. Since you are playing teams, you decide to bid 5♣ and LHO doubles ending the auction.

LHO then leads the ♥K and you are soon chalking up -300 on your scorecard.

Here is the full deal:

Scoring: IMP

P - P - 3♣ - 3♠
4♣ - 4♠ - 5♣ - X
All Pass

---

Note that on a neutral spade lead, you win in hand and advance the ♦Q. If South takes that, you can pitch your two heart losers immediately. If South ducks, you cross in spades and lead the ♦K throwing a heart. South can then switch to hearts, but it's too late.

But on the ♥ lead you stand no chance. So not only does LHO make a very shaky double, but finds the killing ♥ lead on this auction where hearts are never mentioned.

All you can do is shake your head and tell your story over a few pints. Bridge can be a tough game.

[Gerben42]

These opponents are too strong for me. I think if I had your experiences I'd take up something easier

[whereagles]

Well, I must confess I would have doubled 4♠. You gotta tell a junk preempt from a 3rd seat defensive one...

[MickyB]

While I can understand your frustration about the lead, I also dislike your 5♣ bid. If you are going to act it has to be with a double IMO, and at the table I would be more worried if partner bid 5♣ than if he passed.

[hotShot]

I think rising your own preempt is a bad habit. This is asking for a dbl and your hand is not good enogh for that.
You made them guess and now it's time to prove they guessed wrong
So dbl 4♠, or pass.

[cherdano]

Of course this is easy to say when it isn't myself who lost the IMPs, but I think a productive post-mortem should focus on:
1. Was 3♣ the right bid? It's certainly very swingy; I wouldn't be surprised to miss 4♠ that way (even in a light-openings partnership), but I also wouldn't be surprised if it gained IMPs in the long run.
2. What to do over 4♠? Esp. it should be good to discuss with partner what a double would show - a pure penalty double, or just a good 3rd seat 3♣ with defense? (If you like such 3♣ bids, and I suppose you do, the latter is probably better.)

As for the double and the lead, well, that's life.

Arend

[han]

Matt, on several occasions you have told me how much you hate this kind of auction: first opening 3C, and then (without any good reason imo) guessing to bid 5C again. You think that this kind of bidding is awful, yet you do it here and then complain about your bad luck.

[keylime]

I agree with Hannie's sentiment, under one condition:

Do you and p, have some way to show a competing 3♣ hand, versus a stronger rebid hand? If you do then -300 is rightfully merited. If not, then it's a different story.

[whereagles]

One thing is opening 1st/2nd seat 3♣ and bidding 5♣ later. Most agree this is bad practice and something to avoid. (But I think there are some preemptive hands that justify further bidding.)

Opening 3♣ and bidding later after a 3rd/4th seat opener is a whole different story. A 3rd/4th seat preemptive opener can be made on rather wide-ranging hands, so a further move by opener is completely normal. Especially 3rd seat.

Most of the time, however, it is RESPONDER who should clarify his type of hand. In this case, for instance, a bid of 3NT comes to mind (instead of 4♣). That 3NT means "pard, if opps bid game, please bid 5♣ with an offensive hand, or pass/dbl with a defensive one." 4♣ would mean: "I don't think you should bid 5♣ regardless of what you have."

[Echognome]

Tough crowd. I can understand a lot of the points raised here, but somehow my partner was completely sympathetic. Let me explain why.

1. My systemic opening on the hand is 1♦. Although this could end up good for us, I didn't feel it was going to help us along the way.

2. Our openings are quite aggressive, so game was a long way away when it came to me in third.

3. Given I took a view in 3rd, should I bid again? That's a tough question. Both my 3♣ and partner's 4♣ are wide ranging. In general, partner will not bid with some support and nothing outside. Partner cannot judge the hand well opposite such a wide ranging 3♣ bid. As it turns out, the best thing I could have done was double and hope to beat it. I reasoned that I didn't like our defensive prospects when I only have two sure tricks and partner has club support. My other option is to pass and hope we beat it. However, partner's 4♣ suggests a save (in our agreements). So I bid 5♣ hoping to avoid a game swing.

4. So yes I did this to myself. I preempted the auction and guessed wrong. But LHO not only guessed to defend, he guessed to lead the ♥K. I found it unlucky. You may not.

[han]

We have no mercy Matt!

I don't mind the 3C bid, but I think that your 5C bid does violate the last guess principle. Your 3C has made it difficult for them, and at the other tables they will have a much easier time. You don't really know what partner has, so you also don't know whether they are in a good spot or not (and neither do they). If you did have the agreement that double suggests 5C and says that you have a good hand then that would be an attractive option, but I think that without that agreement you just have to pass and hope that your preemt did its job.

I agree with you that the heart lead was both bad and extremely lucky (for them).

Also, while I think you made a mistake that you shouldn't be making, I don't think that this is unusual at bridge. I keep violating rules that I believe in myself, sometimes knowingly and sometimes not. I'm sorry if my first response was too harsh (I think it was).

[whereagles]

Echognome, on May 16 2006, 11:29 PM, said:

However, partner's 4♣ suggests a save (in our agreements).

Well, that makes it simple no? Pard suggested a 5♣ as a save, not to make. Looking at all those nice fast tricks in your hand, I'd say a save is way off.

[cherdano]

Matt, I wasn't saying you were wrong (and of course if I had said so, I might have been wrong because I didn't know some important stuff about your agreements). I just think that there are two interesting decisions here from your side, and that for improving it is really important to review all critical decisions one has made (if one only looks at critical decisions that deservedly led to an IMP loss, one loses out about learning from 1. mistakes where one missed a gain, 2. mistakes that turned out ok on the lie of the cards, 3. mistakes where the loss wasn't directly related to the decision, such as here).

About 4♣: I don't have such an agreement with anyone, but I suspect it should suggest a save in case you have a pure preempt, and suggest defending in case you have a preempt with a lot of defense. This is way too interesting a question to spend time moaning about South's crazy decisions instead

I think the biggest gain of opening 3♣ with your hand should be to occasionally gain big time by pushing them into an unmakeable 3N or 4M.

Arend

[Echognome]

cherdano, on May 17 2006, 12:29 PM, said:

Matt, I wasn't saying you were wrong (and of course if I had said so, I might have been wrong because I didn't know some important stuff about your agreements). I just think that there are two interesting decisions here from your side, and that for improving it is really important to review all critical decisions one has made (if one only looks at critical decisions that deservedly led to an IMP loss, one loses out about learning from 1. mistakes where one missed a gain, 2. mistakes that turned out ok on the lie of the cards, 3. mistakes where the loss wasn't directly related to the decision, such as here).

About 4♣: I don't have such an agreement with anyone, but I suspect it should suggest a save in case you have a pure preempt, and suggest defending in case you have a preempt with a lot of defense. This is way too interesting a question to spend time moaning about South's crazy decisions instead

I think the biggest gain of opening 3♣ with your hand should be to occasionally gain big time by pushing them into an unmakeable 3N or 4M.

Arend

Arend, I thought your original post was fair.

I'm sure I was wrong on this hand. I was just explaining my thought process for the actions I chose.

I think the interesting to arise from this are what is 4♣ and what would a double from me mean?

Would it mean "Partner I actually have an opening hand with some reasonable defense. You choose what we should do." Or "Partner, they just made a mistake. My cunning plan to preempt on opening values just caught them with their knickers down." Good thing to discuss with your regular partner.