[dburn]

Scoring: IMP

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You are East on board four of a 7-board Swiss Teams match. Last round. Going in, you lead by 5 VPs (20-0 scale) from the second-placed team and are playing the third-placed team, who need to blitz you to catch you.

On board one, you have bid and made 6♦ with:

Scoring: IMP

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On board two, you have bid and made 4♠ with:

Scoring: IMP

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when South's heart lead from ♥964 proved fatal. You would have made it on a trump lead also, but not on a minor-suit lead; the opening leader held ♠2 ♥964 ♦K9653 ♣K985 and your uncontested auction was simply 2♠ (good weak two bid) - 4♠.

Board three appears flat.

Now, South opens 3♠ which is followed by two in-tempo passes. And you?

[jjbrr]

pass

[MarkDean]

I would also pass.

[655321]

dburn, on May 31 2010, 09:16 PM, said:

Dealer: South Vul: N/S Scoring: IMP

♠ 972 ♥ K1098 ♦ AQ975 ♣ A

[A lot of irrelevant verbiage snipped]

Now, South opens 3♠ which is followed by two in-tempo passes. And you?

The spade length makes this an easy pass I think.

(Edit) If I were forced to make a non-pass call, 3NT looks best, partner is very likely to have a spade stopper and on a good day we might be able to make 9 tricks.

This post has been edited by 655321: 2010-May-31, 21:00

[gwnn]

in any other position I would pass it out but NOW I think this is a pass.

[Phil]

Speaking from the perspective of the 3rd place team....

We bid the obvious, but tricky 6♦ on board 1 (we had an interesting discussion on whether or not 7♦ could be made) which felt like a pretty good spot against a likely 3N at the other table and a possible +11.

We made exactly 3♠ on Board 2 when the auction of 1♠ - pass - 2♠ - x; 3♠ - AP. We felt slightly lucky with +170 with the ♥KQ on, and the ♥9xx falling, though felt relieved that game could go down on the right lead, so this felt like a -6/+1/+6 position. Board 3 was a push.

As I look at my cards on the 4th board, I feel like I've had a decent set so far, and that the other team would be playing down the middle to protect their 5 VP cushion over the other team, and its very possible that DBurn might be trying to protect against a swing and will take a call here which seems dubious.

So I pass.

[hanp]

Would have doubled if I had made 4S on a trump lead. Now I pass.

[mich-b]

Pass, because I believe this to be the right call .
And because I think it is almost always too difficult to figure out correctly what might have happened on previous boards , what will happen in the next boards , and what is happening in the matches of other teams..

[gnasher]

I don't really understand what you're supposed to do differently when defending a lead, but on the rare occasions when I face this problem I just play my normal game except that I try not to go for any large penalties. That seems to be two good reasons for passing.

[whereagles]

Joining the easy pass, on grounds that pard is likely to be weakish due to short spades + no action.

[pooltuna]

whereagles, on Jun 1 2010, 08:15 AM, said:

Joining the easy pass, on grounds that pard is likely to be weakish due to short spades + no action.

Color me bawk bawk bawk. The colors are wrong to take any action IMO.

[ArtK78]

If I were the 3rd place team, needing a blitz to have any chance of winning, I would not be passing out this hand. Of course, one doesn't know if the 3♠ bid is normal, since the preempter could be pressing after three results which, at best, are pushes, but are likely to be -10 to -17 in the aggregate.

So, I do what I think is right and I pass. But it would not surprise me to find that balancing with a double is the winning action.

[mikeh]

Pass.

I assume that we didn't get to first place by playing for swings: we simply tried to play our best. If so, it seems to have been working, so why would one go away from one's comfort level, trying to read the tea-leaves?

I'd never balance playing sound bridge, so why do it now? Sure, the other table might choose to swing...but the reason it's called swinging is that it usually loses.

Besides, I stopped trying to estimate how the other table was doing many, many years ago: somehow their results never accord with my expectations.

[dburn]

Well, I passed. Partner had

♠64 ♥AJ765 ♦K4 ♣10862

The pre-emptor's partner had the singleton ♠A and three diamonds, so three spades went down two and (with the right view in trumps) my side could make six hearts.

The first three boards were all flat - our counterparts at the other table also bid six diamonds; our team-mate also led a heart against four spades (and his partner did not duck it, which would have forced declarer to guess diamonds); the flat-looking board lived up to its appearance.

On the fifth deal I found a ridiculous defence to a vulnerable game that beat it only one instead of three (it wasn't an awful contract, but the breaks were bad). The last two boards were as flat as the first three, so we... won the match comfortably, because our other team-mate received an even more ridiculous defence to the game that allowed it to make.

There is a moral in all of this, if only I could find it.

[whereagles]

the moral is well-known: "preempts work"

[cherdanno]

dburn, on Jun 2 2010, 03:50 AM, said:

There is a moral in all of this, if only I could find it.

Don't ridiculously misdefend vulnerable games when you need a swing? (Or when you don't want a swing.)

Anyway, I assume board 4 was a push also?

[dburn]

cherdanno, on Jun 2 2010, 04:21 AM, said:

Anyway, I assume board 4 was a push also?

No. The opening bid at the other table was four spades, passed out and down three.

[pooltuna]

whereagles, on Jun 2 2010, 04:07 AM, said:

the moral is well-known: "preempts work"

yep and just because you can make 6♥ doesn't mean you have the system to bid it

[whereagles]

it's totally ridiculous to bid 6♥ here.... come on, no bidding system discovers a block in the OPPONENTS suit

[dburn]

whereagles, on Jun 2 2010, 04:41 PM, said:

it's totally ridiculous to bid 6♥ here.... come on, no bidding system discovers a block in the OPPONENTS suit

Well, actually...