Deal of the Week
by Bucky Sydnor
How Would You Evaluate These Hands?
Hand evaluation, and re-evaluation, turns out to be one of the major keys to success in bridge. It is because of your hand evaluation and re-evaluation that you pass or bid on, whether for a part-score, a game, a slam or to double for penalty. Some hands are easy to evaluate, some are not. Often it is the re-evaluation that is the key to getting to the right place. Here are two hands that are an evaluation challenge. For today, look over my shoulder as I evaluate the hands.
For the first hand, I am the dealer, all red, and pick up this hand:
-----♠J98652 ♥KJ987 ♦Q ♣A
I have 11 HCP, but the ♦Q is not pulling her full weight and the ♣A would be so much better if it were the ♠A. I am going to downgrade the ♦Q and pretend she is the ♦2, giving her no value. That means I have 9 HCP. But I have 6 spades and 5 hearts. I think this qualifies as a minimum opener. If I can find partner with 3 spades and 3 hearts and little else, say two queens and a jack, I think there is a play for 8 tricks and possibly 9. But I need to be alert to possible trouble ahead; it just depends on partner’s bidding. So I’m opening 1♠. The bidding then goes:
-----1♠ – P – 2♣ – P
That’s encouraging. Partner has an opening bid as we’re playing 2/1 game forcing. 2♥ seems a normal rebid. A second possibility is 2♠, though not much of one. But I am going to show partner my hand, so 2♥ it is. Then I hear 3♦.
Uh oh. Partner not only has an opening hand, she has most of her cards in the minors. We’re in a misfit!
Before I knew we were in a misfit, the normal thing to do would be to rebid the hearts, showing 5, but if we’re in a misfit, I’d rather play in a 6-1 spade fit than a 5-2 heart fit. Yet partner could be 1=3=4=5, so I’ll stick with the original plan—3♥. Partner responds:
-----1♠ – P – 2♣ – P
-----2♥ – P – 3♦ – P
-----3♥ – P – 4♣ – P
Well it looks like partner has 6 clubs and 4 or more diamonds. Since we’re in a misfit, I want to get out of the auction as low as possible in spite of the fact that we’re in a game forcing auction. While partner may well have 1 spade for me, and playing in spades is worth more than playing in clubs in matchpoints, I have the ♣A for partner. In addition, I do not know what her singleton spade is—if she has one at all—but even if she has the ♠A, I would still have a lot of spade losers. I’m passing.
If partner plays in 4♣, she will make it on a poor opening lead.
I’ll show you the whole deal in a minute. For now let me take up partner’s hand. She was, and now I am in third seat, all red, and picked up this hand:
-----♠K ♥3 ♦A10976 ♣KQJ1073
But the bidding goes differently: pass, pass to me. I am going to open 1♣. Sure, diamonds might be our partnership’s best suit, but the clubs are so much better than the diamonds it is almost like I have 6 clubs and 4 diamonds, in which case I would definitely open 1♣. My partner responds 1♠ (as you can well guess). The opponents do not interfere in the ensuing auction, which is this:
-----P – P – 1♣ – P
-----1♠ – P – ?
It’s my call and I need to re-evaluate my hand based on the auction so far. Of course it won’t help to spend time wishing I’d opened 1D in the 10 seconds I have (but I can obsess about it all night as I try to go off to sleep). If nothing else, the club suit is both longer and stronger than the diamond suit. Meanwhile, with my partner’s 1♠, my ♠K can be considered full value, giving me 13 HCP. If I give myself length points for diamonds and clubs I have about 16 points. Because of the very nice club suit I could upgrade the point requirement of a reverse (17 points) and bid 2♦. I think the great club suit warrants it: 2♦. (The downside is that I am a queen shy of a minimal reverse and that could hurt us if we are in a misfit.) My partner responds 2♥.
-----P – P – 1♣ – P
-----1♠ – P – 2♦ – P
-----2♥ – P – ?
Partner could be weak, say holding
-----♠Qxxxx ♥Axxxx ♦xx ♣x
or she could be a maximal pass, but with the change in suit, she has made a one round force–I cannot pass–regardless of whether we play it as natural (which we do) or artificial (4th Suit Forcing), which says nothing about hearts. (It is very hard to navigate reverses without a system in place to distinguish between a forward going bid and a weak, distribution hand. Advanced players use Lebensohl; if you don’t want to learn that, Root & Pavlicek offer a less complicated (though not simple!) one in their Modern Bridge Conventions [1981].)
What should I do now? If I continue to describe my hand, I should bid 3♦, showing partner I have 6 clubs and 5 diamonds. However, if I want to apply the brakes to this auction I should call 3♣; bidding 3♦ would force partner to bid 4♣, if she wanted to return to clubs. The trouble is that bidding 3♣ now shows 6 clubs, 4 diamonds to go along with a reverse of a minimum of 17 points (it could be 19 or more!)
Now my partner rebids her hearts, showing at least 5-5 in the majors. I would rather be in a 6-0 club fit (the worst scenario) with a very nice suit than a 5-1 fit in hearts or spades, so I bid 4♣. This now shows 7 clubs and 4 diamonds. But partner now corrects to 4♠. I feel like I cannot sit for that and so bid 5♣. My partner finally passes.
Below is the deal. I will go down one because of a less than superior opening lead. After declarer has shown a 2-suiter, a club lead would have been better after which I could have been down 2, showing that 3C was our best spot. Click here to see the play of the hand.
