Friday,
February 11, 2005 5:11 AM
Matchpoint
Sickness
PITBULLS:
It
must be matchpoint paranoia
that you must respond with a bad 4 card
major. This fear of missing +140 instead of +120 gets negatively re-enforced
way more often than not. Here is a pair against us tonight that shows this
silliness in action. xxxx
xx KJx AKJx
Partner opens 1♦
so what is your response ? Say you have bought into the 4 card major silliness
and respond a spade ( which is what happened) now partner bids 2♦ so now what ? The player said she did not
want to bid 3♣ because she did not want spade preference so she leapt to 5♦. This goes down and 3NT makes 4. Lets back
up and bid this hand properly by bidding 2♣ and showing where you live. If
partner can not bid spades who cares about this suit ? Partner bids 2NT and you
bid 3NT . A simple auction that gets complicated when you respond a non suit.
Partner
opens a minor and you have a huge fit for her but you have a 4 card major.
Forget about the 4 card major it just complicates the auction. Axxx
Ax AKxxx xx partner
opens a diamond so make your systemic bid that shows your strong diamond raise.
If 4 spades is the spot , perhaps you might get there from partners side but
slam exploration is severely impeded when you start proceedings by ignoring
your huge fit with partner. Same principle with this kind of hand with
interference. Q bid to show your fit rather than making a negative double to
get your spades into the fray.
Garozzo
says Bridge is a game of suits .
You hold K109x x KQJ10xx Qx and
partner opens 1♥
so what do you respond ? I do not like a spade as you may lose a beautiful 6
card suit which is exactly what happened. If you respond a spade , you have
bought into the philosophy that Bridge is a game of HCP’s and not suits. Very non Italian of you !! The
opponents responded a spade and Tom Gandolfo interfered with 2♣ & the
opponent Q bid with 3♣ and I interfered with 5♣ which got doubled. The doubler
wanted to warn partner that he only had a 4 card spade suit. Subsequently they
went to 5♥
which makes +680 . 7♦
is a lay down and diamonds were not even mentioned in this auction ! The
culprit is this silly urge to bid a 4 card spade suit which I will hereby refer
to as the “matchpoint sickness”. Sometimes you must make
the best lie. Its not much of a stretch to bid 2♦ with this hand even though you play 2/1 forcing
to game. You must give some value to a beautiful 6 card suit as suppressing
these suits complicate auctions later on.
Same
with pre-empting . If you have a systemic pre-empt do not let a 4 card major
deter you. Partner opens a club and you have xxxx
x xxx KQJxx make your system 3♣ bid if
that is weak. If partner has the rare hand that 4♠ is cold so be it. The many
other times by describing your hand ,
you may jam them out of a red suit game or find a 5♣ sacrifice or game
early etc, etc.
When
I have a hand that might prove difficult to
bid , I take a chance
and suppress a 4 card major over a heart opener. Think about it. The only time
you might lose is if partner has a weak Flannery. If a stronger Flannery hand ,
partner is going to bid the spades anyway. I held AQxx
void J109x KJxxx playing with Nancy. I decided that even if Nancy had 4
spades , 3NT might still be the
better contract so I bid a forcing NT. Nancy bid 2♣ so now I was glad I bid 1NT
going in because I had a chance of showing a strong
club raise with a 2♠
bid. We ended up in 3NT for +690 which was a good result but a shaky 6♣ makes
for +1370. I confused Nancy enough that she now knows how to show strong minor raises after a heart opener
and a forcing NT J