Jimmy Sez #1

Sometimes, it is true, that the worst bids in bridge end up being the best match-point scores.  This hand occurred at the Friday night unit club game against a very competent husband and wife partnership... 

I had opened 1H.  After partner bid 2C I had a problem.  At this time I wished we had been playing Flannery but we weren’t.  I pondered my possible bids.  2S was out of the question since this was a reverse and I didn’t have near enough values.  2H?  No!  This would show six or more hearts, 2NT?  No!  The singleton club made the bid unappetizing. I finally settled on 2D as a temporizing bid hoping I could clear up the bidding later.  As you can see my partner couldn’t take the joke and I landed in 5D.  Playing the 4-3 fit to take 11 tricks would mean a few good things would have to happen.  First the diamonds must break 3-3 and the opponents cards must be pretty evenly divided,  no singletons or voids.  The 2S brought the spade queen to the ace. I played the Ace of clubs then ruffed a club.  I then played to the KH then ruffed another club which was overruffed with the diamond queen. At this point all my clubs are good but the opponent now led the king of  spades blocking me on the board and not allowing me to draw trumps since my trump ace is singleton.  Now  all the spades are good and I still have the AH.  Lead to AD then ruff a heart and cash the KD which leaves the only loser to be the outstanding trump.  Here are the other hands:

                        S- K 8 6 5                                            S- Q 7 4 2

                        H- J 9 4 2                                            H- Q 10 8

                        D- Q J 3                                              D-  9 4 2

                        C- 9 7                                                  C-  K Q 5

Rule:  Counting winners is almost impossible so try to hold losers to two trump tricks.  

          Note:  3NT will be very difficult against strong defense.