This Week At North Penn

All games are club appreciation offering extra points for no extra cost.

Mon, 10/20

Tue, 10/21

Wed, 10/22

Thu, 10/23

Fri, 10/24 AM

Fri, 10/24 PM

Open

0-1500

Open

Open

0-750

Open pizza game (pizza at 6:00, game at 6:30)

Medical Alert

Because cold and flu season is upon us, the club would like you to follow our one simple guideline:

If you are sick, even a little sick, please be thoughtful and refrain from playing at the club.

We’d like to do our best to ensure everyone’s healthy winter.

Thank you.

Don Baker, Club Manager

Education

Joann Glasson's next Zoom classes will be held on Monday, November 3 and 17 at 10:00 a.m. See flyer for details.

Deal Analysis

by John Dickenson

"An Entry, An Entry, My Kingdom For An Entry"

Playing in the A/X Top Flight Swiss with Susan Morse and teammates Katharine Link and Barbara Daly, I pick up the following hand as dealer, none vulnerable:

♠ AKQT8754 ♥ A ♦ A ♣ A74

Not too shabby. 11 tricks in my hand, so I open 2C.

As an aside, let us consider what sorts of hands the ACBL allows us to consider as “Very Strong Hands” and open 2C. (It is illegal to psych a strong forcing opener, by the way).

“Very Strong”: A hand that contains: i. at least 20 HCP; or ii. at least 14 HCP and is within one trick of game assuming suits break evenly among the other hands; or iii. at least 5 Control Points and is within one trick of game assuming suits break evenly among the other hands.

So my hand satisfies the first condition, and I daresay it meets the other two criteria as well, although one only has to meet one criterion to be legit.

LHO passes and Susan responds 2H, promising 8+ hcp and two of the top 3 honors in hearts. RHO passes, I bid 2S and LHO wants to know “Is 2H a bust hand?” Well, no, I did not alert it and are you really thinking about entering the auction at this time? It is generally not a good idea to ask for explanations of natural bids, or really any bids when you are just going to pass. Might help the opponents and might convey unauthorized info to your partner.

Susan raised to 3S! I hope this means she has 3 spades and therefore an entry to her hand after I unblock the heart ace. That gives me 8 spades, 3 hearts, a diamond and a club for all 13 tricks. Could she have raised on 32 doubleton of spades? I hope not, because then I can not reach her hand. I decide to bid 4N, Roman keycard, and of course she shows zero keys. I then bid 5N, specific kings, and hear a 6D response, promising the diamond king and denying the club king. So now we have at least 14 tricks if she has an entry, but I cannot reach her hand in clubs and need an entry in the trump suit.

Bridge (and life) is all about taking reasonable chances, so I put 3 spades in her hand or at least Jx and bid 7S.

Here is the entire hand:

Note it would have been an error to jump to 3S over 2H – most play this as setting trump and demanding control bids. Since what I really need to know is if Susan has 3 or more trumps so I can reach her hand, I do not want to announce I have a self sufficient suit.

We were told by our teammates that at the other table, the auction went 2C-2D-6S. Not sure what sort of bidding agreements they have so I won’t comment on their auction. In any case, +500 was worth a gain of 11 IMPs.

Bidding commentary

I detest a 2H response to 2C showing a bust hand for many reasons. First, most of the time a player opens 2C they have one of three hands: strong balanced, strong hearts, or strong spades. The 2H bust response when made wrong sides the contract nearly 1/3 of the time. Second, many misguided souls who play 2H as a bust further advocate responding 2N to show a positive response in hearts – which wrong sides a no trump contract. Finally, if you like to play Birthright (colloquially known as the Kokish Relay), the 2H response breaks up that relay.

Note the superiority of 5N query as specific kings – here I know partner does not hold the club king. If you play number of kings, you would know partner held two kings, but not which ones. Only the club king would allow you to bid the grand slam with 100% certainty. Finally, I have said this before but it bears repeating – whenever one knows that our side has all 5 keycards and the trump queen, it is mandatory to bid 5N – not optional. Sometimes responder has an undisclosed source of tricks and can just bid the grand.

Ask the Expert

 Email your questions, or a pesky hand, or something you’d like to know about bidding or playing to Toysie Walker. She will forward them to the panel, one will be chosen, and the question and answers will be printed in the following week’s newsletter.

October Birthdays

Cheryl Berman

Anne Cheney

Deborah Crisfield

David Dodgson

Margaret (Peg) Dooley

David Dresher

Eileen Erhlichman

Roz Fudell

Robbie Hain

Ed Hino

Mary Lingerfeldt

Lois Meyers

Connie Opfelll

Sandra Sill

JoEllen Stockmal

Tom Sumter

Virginia Tinner

Connie Wenhold

Sheila Zamcoff