[mw64ahw]

Playing with a pick-up partner basic SAYC how do you address the various challenges?

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How the bidding went

Spoiler

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I had intended to reverse in ♠ to show a strong hand, but the 4♠ bid just showed the Ace & invited the slam which was passed out.

Plan the play

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The full board

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[DavidKok]

I think you might have made errors when submitting the hands and/or auction. I like 4♥ by West over 2♣. No comment on the rest until the post has been fixed or confirmed to be accurate.

[mw64ahw]

DavidKok, on 2021-November-05, 15:12, said:

I think you might have made errors when submitting the hands and/or auction. I like 4♥ by West over 2♣. No comment on the rest until the post has been fixed or confirmed to be accurate.

Looks ok to me. West initially passed and East bid 1♥ in the actual auction. South then bid 2♣ rather than 1♠. All a bit odd unless I've missed something.

[sfi]

mw64ahw, on 2021-November-05, 17:21, said:

Looks ok to me. West initially passed and East bid 1♥ in the actual auction. South then bid 2♣ rather than 1♠. All a bit odd unless I've missed something.

Your diagram shows North bidding 4S. It looks like you are missing a couple of N-S passes near the end of the auction.

[mw64ahw]

sfi, on 2021-November-05, 17:52, said:

Your diagram shows North bidding 4S. It looks like you are missing a couple of N-S passes near the end of the auction.

Thanks corrected

[DavidKok]

East bid a 5-card heart suit ahead of a 5-card spade suit, and then ignored the weak jump to game? Poor West.

[AL78]

DavidKok, on 2021-November-06, 05:30, said:

East bid a 5-card heart suit ahead of a 5-card spade suit, and then ignored the weak jump to game? Poor West.

The bidding is poor but 6♥ is there. If a club is led, win, run the ♦Q (doesn't matter if South covers or not), cross to the ♠Q, dump the club loser on a top diamond, play a heart to the jack. Only loser is the heart ace. You can instead use a spade to dump the club loser if you wish.

East is way too strong for a simple overcall in the protective seat, but going by this hand, it looks like East is an inexperienced player.

[Stephen Tu]

1. On the actual auction, West owes East a 5d cue over 4S, having already denied a good hand with 4H.

2. It's a big error for East to start with 1H planning on reversing to "show strength". In standard systems, you don't plan a reverse sequence with 5-5s to "show strength" (there are some "canape" systems that do this systemically but usually only in non-competitive situations). In standard, reversing shows both strength *and* that the first suit is *longer* than the second. If you plan to reverse, you'll run into multiple problems:

• partner may pass 1H holding a weakish hand with a good spade fit, not being quite strong enough to move over 1H.
• you'll have to bid spades *twice* to show the fifth one, which will sometimes be at an uncomfortable level and too high, and also convince partner that you have 6+ hearts which will sometimes lead to him putting you into a 5-2 heart fit and a level higher to boot.

Instead, try a Michaels 2D cue-bid and make a game try if partner bids 2M only.

3. You don't actually want to be in slam on average IMO. I think with most of the HCP outstanding South rates to have HAQ more often than not. Also I don't see how you are supposed to determine in the auction that West has the right shape/cards to make the club loser go away. I would have passed 4H and made 6.

[DavidKok]

AL78, on 2021-November-06, 06:42, said:

The bidding is poor but 6♥ is there. If a club is led, win, run the ♦Q (doesn't matter if South covers or not), cross to the ♠Q, dump the club loser on a top diamond, play a heart to the jack. Only loser is the heart ace. You can instead use a spade to dump the club loser if you wish.

And all this line requires is two winning red finesses, South not having ♥AQ, and normal breaks in the side suits. I think club ace, spade to the queen, diamond ace, diamond ruff, spade ace pitching a club, club ruff, heart finesse is a better line. I suppose if North has the king of diamonds South is almost guaranteed to have ♥AQ and you are never making (then again, ♠Jxx, ♥A, ♦xxxxx, ♣KQJx is an opening in my book) but it is still better to go down one than to go down two. My line depends on the heart finesse along with some risks of ruffs (for example, you are immediately off if the spades break 6-1, and my line fails if North has five spades and the ace of hearts). I would be happy to miss this slam.

[mikeh]

Neither south nor east understand much, if anything, about bidding.

Stephen dealt with east’s bidding very well.

I do quibble a little with his suggestion that west owed east a 5D cuebid over 4S. I’d agree with him had the auction been east opening 1H and then cuebidding over 1H p 4H p…

But east denied a very strong hand with the 1H reopening bid. So west was faced with an impossible auction. Either 1H was a very bad bid (as it was) or 4S was a very bad bid….the two are completely inconsistent. It’s as if one’s partner opened a 15-17 1N, one raised to 3N with a balanced 10 count and saw partner bid a pick a slam 5N.

South was almost as bad as east. 2C??? With a minimum 4=1=4=4?

[AL78]

mikeh, on 2021-November-06, 07:33, said:

Neither south nor east understand much, if anything, about bidding.

Stephen dealt with east’s bidding very well.

I do quibble a little with his suggestion that west owed east a 5D cuebid over 4S. I’d agree with him had the auction been east opening 1H and then cuebidding over 1H p 4H p…

But east denied a very strong hand with the 1H reopening bid. So west was faced with an impossible auction. Either 1H was a very bad bid (as it was) or 4S was a very bad bid….the two are completely inconsistent. It’s as if one’s partner opened a 15-17 1N, one raised to 3N with a balanced 10 count and saw partner bid a pick a slam 5N.

South was almost as bad as east. 2C??? With a minimum 4=1=4=4?

This sort of bidding is common at club bridge. On a bad day they stuff you up.

[AL78]

DavidKok, on 2021-November-06, 07:07, said:

And all this line requires is two winning red finesses, South not having ♥AQ, and normal breaks in the side suits. I think club ace, spade to the queen, diamond ace, diamond ruff, spade ace pitching a club, club ruff, heart finesse is a better line. I suppose if North has the king of diamonds South is almost guaranteed to have ♥AQ and you are never making (then again, ♠Jxx, ♥A, ♦xxxxx, ♣KQJx is an opening in my book) but it is still better to go down one than to go down two. My line depends on the heart finesse along with some risks of ruffs (for example, you are immediately off if the spades break 6-1, and my line fails if North has five spades and the ace of hearts). I would be happy to miss this slam.

I agree you don't want to be in it, but if you are in it for whatever reason, you are playing for a layout where South has the heart ace only, so the favourable lie of the cards here allows you to make on any rational declarer play.

Reminds me of a hand last Thursday when partner holds a minimum opener, I hold a 10 count, we got to 2NT making 12 tricks, because we have a double minor suit fit with both major aces, and both minor suit finesses work with the diamonds 3-3, so we have ten minor suit tricks and two aces. On more likely layouts we should just make it.

[Stephen Tu]

Deleted

[HardVector]

You lost me with the initial pass.

[mikeh]

AL78, on 2021-November-06, 07:56, said:

This sort of bidding is common at club bridge. On a bad day they stuff you up.

The forums are a resource for getting better, not for an endorsement of very bad bridge. I may sometimes (often?) come across as harsh, but imo sugarcoating one’s criticism tends to dilute the point being made.

It’s tautological to say that bad players are bad because they play badly, but the road to improvement begins with recognizing bad bridge. Then, hopefully, one learns and reduces the frequency as well as the magnitude of the errors

As Stephen pointed out, bidding 1H, intending to ‘reverse’ into spades is bad. I’ve seen players with 2,000 master points do silly things like this…it’s a common mistake. Of course, doing this as a balancing overcall is even more awful since advancer is far more likely to pass such a balancing bid than an opening bid. Both the lower and upper limits of a balance are far lower than those for an opening, so advancer needs much more to move over a balance than over an opening.

As for bad bridge being common…of course it is. My personal, non-scientific estimate is that maybe 10% of regular club players have a reasonable grasp of the game. That’s no reason to dial back constructive criticism. I hope the OP recognizes that criticism is not personal. None of us were born with an understanding of the game. It takes years to become good. And then only if one learns from the nearly infinite number of mistakes one makes

I’m a pretty good player but I still make mistakes. They tend to be more subtle than the ones we see here. Indeed, some of them are so subtle I don’t even know they were mistakes!

Fortunately I play, usually, with very good partners….good in all aspects of being a good partner…and so we often discuss boards we’ve played, and we are all looking for mistakes we’ve made, with a view to understanding why the bid or play was an error, so as to improve.

I think I once played a 26 board session in which I made no mistakes at all. One out of thousands of sessions. And I’m pretty sure that if I could go back over that session, from some 20 years ago, I’d now see things I should have done differently.

Personally, I like finding out I’ve done something sub-optimally. Maybe next time I’ll do better, armed with (I hope) the ability to recognize the error.

[AL78]

mikeh, on 2021-November-06, 12:24, said:

The forums are a resource for getting better, not for an endorsement of very bad bridge. I may sometimes (often?) come across as harsh, but imo sugarcoating one’s criticism tends to dilute the point being made.

It’s tautological to say that bad players are bad because they play badly, but the road to improvement begins with recognizing bad bridge. Then, hopefully, one learns and reduces the frequency as well as the magnitude of the errors

As Stephen pointed out, bidding 1H, intending to ‘reverse’ into spades is bad. I’ve seen players with 2,000 master points do silly things like this…it’s a common mistake. Of course, doing this as a balancing overcall is even more awful since advancer is far more likely to pass such a balancing bid than an opening bid. Both the lower and upper limits of a balance are far lower than those for an opening, so advancer needs much more to move over a balance than over an opening.

As for bad bridge being common…of course it is. My personal, non-scientific estimate is that maybe 10% of regular club players have a reasonable grasp of the game. That’s no reason to dial back constructive criticism. I hope the OP recognizes that criticism is not personal. None of us were born with an understanding of the game. It takes years to become good. And then only if one learns from the nearly infinite number of mistakes one makes

I’m a pretty good player but I still make mistakes. They tend to be more subtle than the ones we see here. Indeed, some of them are so subtle I don’t even know they were mistakes!

Fortunately I play, usually, with very good partners….good in all aspects of being a good partner…and so we often discuss boards we’ve played, and we are all looking for mistakes we’ve made, with a view to understanding why the bid or play was an error, so as to improve.

I think I once played a 26 board session in which I made no mistakes at all. One out of thousands of sessions. And I’m pretty sure that if I could go back over that session, from some 20 years ago, I’d now see things I should have done differently.

Personally, I like finding out I’ve done something sub-optimally. Maybe next time I’ll do better, armed with (I hope) the ability to recognize the error.

As always you are right, apart from calling yourself a "pretty good player". I get the impression from these boards that you are far better than that, and if you and your regular partner played at my local club, you would destroy the field frequently.

I also like to learn from mistakes which is one reason I post hands with poor results on here. The feedback I get is very helpful, however when it comes to reducing mistakes, I have difficulty with that. I still get hands when I am defending where I struggle to come up with a decent defensive plan, and I still have lapses of concentration. I think my vision during the cardplay needs quite a bit of work.

[Gilithin]

AL78, on 2021-November-06, 13:58, said:

As always you are right, apart from calling yourself a "pretty good player". I get the impression from these boards that you are far better than that, and if you and your regular partner played at my local club, you would destroy the field frequently.

Mike is a Canadian international who has played at the very top level (Bermuda Bowl) of bridge competition. "Pretty good" is clearly understatement here. His analysis is also spot on. Like many social players, South has little idea of how to handle a competitive auction while East did more or less the wrong thing at every opportunity.

[mw64ahw]

Interesting comments all

I am a club player with no competitive experience who happens to have spent lockdown studying and simulating various bidding scenarios to the extent that sometimes I have too many tools at my disposal. I then take this into a club environment trying to be as systematic as possible to provide empirical evidence in support of my decision making software.

My challenge on this one was playing with a pick-up partner used to ACOL, but learning SAYC, but with many gaps. (i.e. the first Weak 2 we played got passed out after I bid 2NT!)
After 2 passes for some reason I suspected that partner actually had a bid in them and I was prepared to bid to the 3 level if opener didn't have anything aggressive to say. I don't think the concept of balancing in 4th seat and associated strengths was present so not a concern.
With my regular partner I play the Overcall Structure so would have bid 2NT showing 8+PT ♠ and another suit, but without this option I would naturally have bid ♠ first
However, (and I accept that this may traditionally be poor bidding) I decided to bid 1♥ for several reasons:

• It would provide partner with 2 opportunities to cue-bid if opener showed little strength. (My choice would have been to initially cue-bid ♦ over 2♣ with West's hand)
• If I jumped to 3♥ I guessed partner would not necessarily expect 5♥
• If opener rebid ♠ I would happily defend absent support for ♥
• If no support for ♥ was shown then I could rebid ♠ at the 3-level if 2♠ wasn't passed out/raised. Yes it could be construed that I was 5-6, but I don't think partner would have advanced after their initial pass.

After the 4♥ bid (I usually interpret this as 5+♥ pre-emptive) following on from 2♣s by opener (not much beyond minimum) ; I assume 2♣ rather than 1♠ because of suit quality, 4♠ was an unpassable punt knowing that we had a 10 card fit in ♥ which upgraded my hand further.

Incidentally we were the only pair in game (+2) with 1♠ being passed out at 1 table and 2♥ passed out at another.

So brave, unconventional or foolish - who cares which if I made the top score and can feel smug with validation of my judgement.

[DavidKok]

mw64ahw, on 2021-November-08, 02:16, said:

[...] and can feel smug with validation of my judgement.

This last part will come back to bite you in the long run.

[mw64ahw]

DavidKok, on 2021-November-08, 03:17, said:

This last part will come back to bite you in the long run.

Undoubtedly with a pick-up partner w. limited 5 card major knowledge, although not something I'd dare try with my regular partner.