Crockfords Plate Final

What is the best hand that you have held and passed throughout? This deal from the Crockfords Plate final set a personal record. At favourable vulnerability I held

♠ 4    ♥ A 10     ♦ A K 8 4 2   ♣ A K 7 3 2

Right hand opponent opened 4NT, asking for specific aces. There didn't seem to much point in bidding so I passed and the bidding continued 5♣ (no aces) - pass - 6♠. My vulnerable opponent must have some sort of giant major two-suiter, so 6♠ is unlikely to be more than one off and may well be cold, so I passed again. The full deal was

and 6♠ had to go one down. At the other table South opened 1♠, West bid 2NT to show the minors and South rebid 6♥ on the next round. West doubled and North now made the costly decision to convert to 6♠. West doubled this and we lost 3 imp on the board.

Looking back at our auction, I think that I should trust my opponent and assume that his choice of contract is likely to be making. So I should have bid 5♦ over 4NT and 7♣ on the next round. It's not often that you sacrifice against a slam holding three aces and two kings.

This deal showed why we punters were messing around in the Plate final, as only one table out of eight found the cold 6♥. Meanwhile, in the real final four tables out of six played in 6♥ doubled and the other two found the par contract - two off in 7♣ doubled to gain 16 imps.

Cautious Bidding

In the Swiss Teams at Newport we were playing for the first time in a team with Sue Ingham and Gwynn Davis. Gwynn writes a blog entitled 'Cautious Bidder', which you can find on the East Wales web site. In the first match we took this caution to extremes, playing two potential grand slams in game and missing another small slam. The grands are too embarrassing to report, but the small slam was more interesting.

I think the bidding up to 3NT was fairly automatic, but my 4♠  was over cautious. I ran a quick simulation with the North hand opposite a hand with 15 to 17 points and at least six good clubs, and slam was making most of the time. On reflection a jump to 5♠  over 3NT would have been a better description of the power of my hand. The board was flat, and only seven pairs out of 36 bid and made slam, so maybe it was not that easy.

After an inauspicious start - not necessarily a bad thing at Swiss teams - we played rather better and finished a respectable fourth. Gwynn describes one of the later hands, where my partner's bidding is described as 'feisty' rather than cautious, in Cautious Bidder article 108.

Show Up Squeeze

In the last 16 of the Crockfords Plate we didn't make too many errors and had a comfortable win, though this grand was maybe a bit fortunate.

I must admit to a senior moment when I bid 7NT - for some reason I thought that we had 12 top tricks, so that the grand would be laydown at best or on a finesse at worst. Luckily Ann was kind enough to provide the queen of diamonds so that I did indeed have 12 top tricks and two chances for a thirteenth

West led a spade and I could see two lines of play - the heart finesse or a squeeze in the red suits. I ran all the clubs, discarding two hearts and two spades from dummy, while West threw two spades and a diamond. The diamond discard looks harmless but actually led to a position where I could not go wrong. On the last club East was forced to come down to two hearts and four diamonds. I cashed the ace of hearts and three top diamonds which revealed that it was East who still held the jack. Now when I led a heart towards my K J at trick 12 and East followed with a low card, I knew his last card was the jack of diamonds so it was clear to go up with the king and drop West's queen - a Show-Up Squeeze.

All this didn't really matter as I was always intending to play for the squeeze rather than the finesse. The  squeeze (which works when the same hand has both long diamonds and long hearts, or when the queen of hearts is singleton or doubleton) works about 60% of the time, compared with about 53% for cashing the ace of hearts and taking a finesse. When you include the chance of the diamonds playing for four tricks - about 10% - the grand has a 64% chance of making, well within the required odds at IMP scoring. So perhaps that 7NT bid was not so crazy after all.