Monday, December 19, 2005 1:39 AM
PITBULLS:
There
is a time and place for everything. Pigeon shooting is the Bridge strategy of
causing inexperienced Bridge players to go wrong sometimes at the expense of
your own partner. You use a multitude of tactics one of which is bad
pre-empting. You open bad pre-empts and break pre-emption rules by bidding
again. This strategy can and does confuse inexperienced players. Against good
players this strategy quite often backfires and assists them into getting into
their optimum contract. They use forcing pass theory , Q bids and the opponents
bidding to give their partnership an accurate picture of their hand. The
opponents bidding gives valuable information on which to base their declarer play.
Klimo
a local Bridge expert is an advocate of the “modern” style of undisciplined
pre-empting where partner must
take a back seat in the auction. 1st seat in IMPS he held K Jxxxxx x Kxxxx and opened a weak 2♥. BJ Trelford doubled and Kiz Fung upped the ante to
3♥. I passed and Klimo bid 4♣ which was intended to
make things more difficult for BJ. BJ held AQ9x
Ax AKJ10xx x so vul
against not he can simply bid 4♦. Doubling
first and bidding his suit single handedly vul vrs not at the 4 level describes this hand nicely. I held 10xx Kx xxxxx AJx so I can not just make a simple raise to a diamond game. I made the
cheapest Q bid I could by Q bidding 4♥. BJ , noting that I passed over 3♥ , discounted a grand slam and just bid 6♦. BJ made short work of the play be stripping clubs
and hearts and if LHO held KJx of spades she would be endplayed for the
contract.
What
if Kiz chose more aggressive action to compound the pre-empt ? Would it have made a difference ? Say
she bid 4♥ going in , I would have doubled to show “cards”. BJ
would have bid 5♦
or even 6♦ and I have no problem bidding 6♦ if BJ does not. What if Kiz chose to bid 5♣ over
BJ’s 4♦ ? I would have chosen a pass as forcing pass theory
is in effect on this vulnerability
when dealing with pre-empts. BJ has shown his hand already by doubling and
bidding his suit so he now doubles. I now initiate the “pass and pull” part of forcing pass theory and bid 5♦ . BJ will bid 6♦ in a flash.
At
the other table Perry chose not to
employ the “modern pre-empt” by passing in first seat and this left the
opponents to their own devices.
They reached 5♦ and lost 13 IMPS. Susan said that BJ & I had an
easier ride at our table with the “pigeon shooting” going on at our table. Yes
we did. This might be one of the reasons I am against undisciplined bidding just for the sake of
bidding. More often then not you just help good opponents.