Fate and her pets

We all have our pet gadgets. And we all have our pet hates. Depending on what sort of person you are, it will be close as to whether you derive more pleasure from a favourite convention scoring a goal for your side, or pain from the opposition successfully using something you deride against you. There will be times such as those but in the opening stanza of a late round of the Gold Cup, you don't want to run into one:

You are vulnerable and they are not; pass from partner, one club from next hand – what call do you make?

You have just enough high card points for a no-trump overcall but it looked too rich for me; minimum opposite a passed partner, poor stop in opponents suit and no guarantee of tricks from yours. I chose a 1♦ overcall and partner replied 1♠. Again I erred on the side of caution; I had made a non-space consuming overcall and so would have values and I could pass one spade, so I raised to two, the final contract.

This did not get the job done this time when partner held ♠ AQ862 ♥ 10943 ♦ J ♣ Q74: spades were 3-2, the heart AQ was on side, there was no club ruff – they made eleven tricks in game. How did they get there? They opened two hearts – showing exactly five spades and four hearts and 11-16 HCP. Why that indifferent collection should be so upgraded I don't know, perhaps the addict's tendency to employ their pet convention whenever possible, but this episode will do little to deter them.

Consider next the lead problem from last weekend's Brighton Swiss Pairs. This time you're non-vulnerable but they are:

West
North
East
South
Pass
3
3*
Pass
4
Pass
6
All Pass

What was three hearts? The much scorned Fishbein Convention that uses the cheapest bid to force partner to bid. Clubs is presumably West's most easily mentioned suit.

You have two decent options; your singleton or the ♦K. For the latter to work, diamonds must be 2-2 or longer in the opponent's hands and partner needs a quick trick. A part of the time, that trick will be the spade ace and either lead works. Of course when there is diamond shortage in declarer or, more likely, dummy, you will have squandered the usefulness of that card for trumps are sure to be swiftly drawn. The spade seems best. But… That scores you no matchpoints at all.

  • A73
  • 10976
  • 93
  • 10853
N
W
E
S
  • KQ42
  • KQ
  • AJ
  • AK972

The spade lead allowed declarer time to set up the heart ten and discard a diamond. And Fishbein? The rest of the (sensible) field made a take-out double and of course heard 3♥. Thereafter, even when they reached the optimistic slam, East declared and partner had no temptation to lead anything other than your suit. Perhaps it's the Great Shuffler trying to tell you it's not going to be your day…

Published Saturday 20.Aug.2005