Now, With Actual Cards

If I don't start including hands in this blog, it's going to quickly turn into an ego blog, not a bridge blog. Nobody wants that.

1. At the club yesterday, east bids 1 spade, west raises to 2. It's passed around to me.

♠ xx ♥ Jxx ♦ Kxx ♣ QJxxx

I bid 3 clubs, on the principle that I once heard an expert say that you should almost always balance. Somehow, this propelled opponents into an unmakeable 4 spade contract. Not sure my bid was smart or right, but it did work I guess.

2. Partner bids aggressively, and you end up in a 24 point 3NT. Dummy has AKQ64 in spades, with no outside entries after the opening lead. You have the doubleton 53 in hand.

I felt pretty smart in immediately ducking a spade. I probably only needed 4 tricks from spades, and only 3 was going to need a lot of luck/bad defense to bring it home. As it turned out, LHO refused to promote my king of diamonds in hand, so I needed exactly 4 spade tricks.

Alas, spades were 5-1, so I went down 1. Still, I was reasonably happy with my play.

3. An amusing story from the club, at my own expense I guess.

Holding 0445 and 11 HCP, I opted to open 1 club in first seat. LHO overcalled a spade. Partner bid 2 spades, which I took to be limit raise. 3 clubs got me 4 spades from partner.

LHO is a very good young player. I wondered if he was psyching. I decided that if he was, he had me. 4 spades makes most sense as 7 or 8 strong spades, but I didn't think partner would bid 2 spades with that.

Spades were 6700 around the table. My 5 club bid was doubled, and good for a bottom. (I *think* we can make 3 spades, despite the 6-0 split).

(Note - it's possible that 2 spades was undiscussed. Partner was an expert, but knew I was rookie-ish.)


I wish I could remember more of the hands I played yesterday (24 at the club, maybe 15 or so later, online). I know I had lots of questions and uncertainties, but one of the problems with club play is that I'm forgetting what happened by the time I get to the end.

Maybe I need to start carrying around a score card, and writing questions on it.