Sometimes, even with OCP, you hit a sequence which
might be ambiguous with a significant affect on the subsequent bidding. Imagine you are South (North was Eszter)
South 
AK
Q
KQ987643
Q9
After some reflection you decide on a 1
Opening rather than 1
(and yes, I did give 1
some
serious thought) and with no opposition bidding, the bidding proceeds
1
- 1
3
- 4
(1)4
(2) - 5
??
(1) Does Partner think this is Beta? It
is ambiguous, but I think it
ought to be natural rather than Beta, hence my bid of 4
.
(2) Does Partner think this is showing 0-2 Controls or just saying I have a huge Diamond suit and no support for Hearts or Clubs? Is their subsequent 5
a sign-off, disappointed with my apparent lack of controls?
I tanked for quite a while while I considered my options here. In the end I decided (especially given that Eszter often tends to be in the wimpish side of aggressive) that I would rather be hung for going off in 6 than playing a cold 6 in a mere game, and bid 6
.
West (my
hero) led the 2
and Eszter put down
North 93
AK652
10
K7532
South AK
Q
KQ987643
Q9
East won the Ace of Diamonds and returned the Jack of Spades. I won, and cashed 2 more Diamonds, discarding 2 small Clubs from Dummy, West discarding a Spade and a Club. Now what?
Yes, you could just concede a Club to West's Ace [it's fairly clear they probably have that, because if East had had it, it might have been impossible for them to resist (a) Doubling and (b) trying to cash the A
at trick 2]. You can see that with East having started with
AJx, unless you were prepared to run the 10
on the first round of the suit, even 5
is normally
not going to be making, so you're only going -1 in 6
, when 5
-1 is probably the "normal" result. I decided to play my luck, though:
If West had 5-card Hearts
and the Ace of Clubs, I can squeeze him out of his Heart trick. Also, the fact that Opps don't know I only have 2 Spades might put additional pressure on them.
I therefore cashed the King of Spades and then ran
all of my Diamonds, throwing 2 Hearts from Dummy and then
all of Dummy's remaining Clubs. Opps
both discarded 2 Hearts on the first 4 of those 5 Diamonds, and, amazingly,
both discarded Hearts on the last Diamond, which meant that 6 of the 7 outstanding Hearts had now been chucked. I was now down to
AK6 opposite
Q,
Q9, and took the last 3 tricks in Dummy for 15 IMPs.
6 Pairs were going off in 5
, and almost all of the rest were in making Diamond part-scores. One Pair had made 5
on the lead of the 2
by West but that was the only other pair making a game, let alone a slam.
Lucky? Yes, insanely lucky,
but...
After trick 2, you might as well play as I did. If the worst comes to the worst and Opps keep all of their Hearts, one of your Club losers will disappear on the K
so you will still come to the same 11 tricks that the opening lead has gifted you. You might as well play for a mistake from Opps. My possible squeeze position never materialised, but the secondary position did, in that West felt he had to keep hold of the Q
and A10
, and East felt he had to hand onto the 108
, which meant that neither of them could hold onto 3 Hearts and were presumably hoping that I was
void in Hearts and had no hope of reaching Dummy's AK6.
