A Couple of Curios

[OliverC]

There are some sequences that are pretty rare in Bridge. Eszter and I experienced two of these curios in quick succession during our session today:

Hand 1: NS Game, Dealer North

Imagine you are West, holding:

West
  KQ109
  KQJ1086
  A
  AQ

Poor West, I had to feel for them afterwards. He was probably salivating over the prospects for this hand...

...until South (me) opened 1 in front of him. He doubled and Eszter found a MOTOR transfer to Diamonds:

Bidding
North     East     South     West
No           No        1         X
2 ⁽¹⁾     No        2         ??

Poor West! There is no 100% route open to them. As it happens his Partner has Jxxxx (and little else) and decided they didn't have enough to bid over 2 . West tried bidding 2 at this point, which I would take as a GF cue with a monster 3-suiter, but East just took it as natural and passed it (with a singleton in Hearts, that's not totally unreasonable). 4 of either Major is cold as the cards lie, and 2 +2 was a pretty good result for North/South. Even West passing 1 would have been a significantly better result (-3) at this vulnerability.


Two hands later, we ran into another curio:

Hand 2: Game All, Dealer South

This time you are East:

East
  Q8
  AK1062
  A32
  QJ9

After two passes, North opens 1 in front of you. You try 1NT, South passes, and West bids 2 , a transfer to Spades. It's a no-brainer to complete the transfer (after all, Partner might be void in Hearts), but East fancied his chances and passed the 2 bid.

In fact, 2 also runs into problems, because South has 5 of them and the defence get off to a really good start with Ace and another Club to North's King and a Club ruff, followed by a Diamond. 2 was also not a great success. Eszter didn't find the absolutely killing lead of a small Club and instead led a Spade, but even so Declarer was -2 by the end.