Friday, December 21, 2007

Matchpoint Dilema

Playing matchpoints last weekend with my friend Carl i held this unimpressive collection:
Q9x
JT
xxxx
QTxx
We play a 12-15 1NT opening and inverted minors. Carl opened 1 Diamond red in 2nd seat and it went pass to me. What would you do?

Pass seems obvious but really with the two tens, the nine and 4 diamonds I felt that my hand was pretty decent and would play okay opposite partner's likely 16-18 notrump and of course if partner was unbalanced I didn't think he'd be disappointed with my diamond support. Fortunately I had started thinking about all of these possibilities before the auction started and was able to respond 1 Spade in tempo. I figured I would survive as long as partner didnt have a really strong hand with 4 spades. Anyway, partner's next move was a 4 Club splinter. My goose was cooked at this point, so I signed off in 4 Spades. West led the ace of diamonds and this was the dummy:
AKJx
x
KQJxxxx
x
We had arrived in the only game with a legitimate chance! Alas, West shifted to a heart and East played another heart. I thought for a while about whether I should ruff, but if I didn't, E-W could easily play clubs and force dummy anyway, beating me at least 2 when trump were 4-2 so I went ahead and tried for the maximum. West was pretty annoyed that it took me so long to make the "obvious" play of ruffing and playing trump, but soon she was in on the joke. In fact after I played my 3rd trump from dummy West, who showed out, packed up her cards in disgust...it was a little amusing to graciously concede the rest of the tricks. Down 6 was not such a hot result, but I like the logic of my action in some ways. I admit pass probably has more going for it, but it is fun to mix things up a little and a pass would have ruined this story...any thoughts?

3 comments:

Kenny Z said...

These 3 card major bids of yours are becoming common enough that we'll need to alert them as partnership agreement. Can I PLEASE use that as an argument to get you to stop? :)

Becker said...

not until i get officially written up by the director! i'd like to have something else added to the notes about notrump openings that are already on record for us.

Dean said...

I once played with a partner who never raised with 3. I got sort of out of practice playing in 4-3 fits, so I started bidding 3 card majors.

I admit to kind of liking it when no other bid really fits over 1D.