Catching Up

I've been remiss is blogging my lessons learned of late, so here are a few that stand out:

1. On the lead of the Jack of Clubs, I pondered how to avoid counting the ten of clubs as a loser in a spades contract, holding the following:
Dummy: AQx
Hand: Tx

I had to have several people tell me it was a trivial problem before I spotted that it was, in fact, a trivial problem. Lesson: Pay attention to the lead!

2. I forget the hand, but with a really nice 12 or 13 point hand partner opened and RHO doubled. I didn't have immediate support, and wondered how to force. For some reason, redouble never occurred to me.

3. On the subject of not even occurring to me, 2 people have pointed out that a HSGT goes great with this hand:

J765
AT986
v
K842

after

1D P 1H 1S
2H P ?

Partner had AQJ of clubs. Two cards were well placed, and after I bid a meek 3H we made 3H+3. I couldn't figure out how to find 4, but 3 clubs makes total sense.

4. Another "2 people pointed out". Holding

K963
KJT74
4
AK4

P P 2D ?

I doubled, but 2H is probably clearly better.

5. Here's one of those "passive" hands I was talking about.

AKJT96
J2
AJ8
J6

P P 1C 1S
X P 2H ?

I passed, and it got passed out. Sheesh!

6. Last but not least. I apologize for being vague, but I don't have the hand in front of me. I played a contract where LHO had overcalled at the 2 level. Late in the hand, I needed to find one of two missing queens. LHO had shown up wtih 9 points so far, so I figured I had pretty good odds playing LHO for the queen in question. It turned out that RHO had all the remaining points, and LHO had overcalled at the 2 level with only 9.

Whether or not my judgement was correct (and there may have been other errors on the hand), I think that having that good a count late in the play and making decisions based on the count is a very positive sign.

It's been a while since I was over 50% in an ACBL game, but that all changes today!!!