A few days ago I was playing the Charles Higgins Session 2 boards and hand 1 was annoying me. I tried the effect of passing my partners weak 2 opening but the robot EW roared in with a double and a jump to 4C. So we looked at that and figured well we should get 2H tricks and 1 diamond and 1 spade trick so down 1 is surely good for us ..
So we defended 4C and no matter what I tried the North robot insisted on giving a ruff and discard in Hearts thus allowing 4C to make .. Later on it slowly dawned on me that 4C was cold and the North robot was not giving away the contract.
So I had a look at the results in Malahide. We have 24 results and 14 of them are an unmolested 2H contract. The EW folk just sit there and take the medicine with no argument. Most of them blow a trick on defence and shrug ...Nothing we could do ...and take their 25% scores.
1. East could try an aggressive 3C bid ...Now that is fairly hungry......
2. Coming around to West he or she could consider a takeout double
3. push them up to 3H ...you might defend better and get them down
4. Opponents who are under pressure often struggle to make contracts
5. 2H is nice and soft ..not much pressure or danger of going down.....
6. so 14 tables where we can attempt to improve the EW score up from 25% ...
Moving on ...to the other 10 tables
7. First line we have a 3D by West ...doomed to failure as only 6 tricks available
but at least they had a go .... Now a little education and we might get this West
to bid DOUBLE ..not put all eggs in one basket and enlist partners help in choosing a
suit to play in ..
8. Looks like 8 pairs went willing to 4H and got bad scores for this ...However these
folk are closer to the mark as they have sacrificed against the cold 4C contract but the poor
souls get 9 points out of 46 .. a fairly miserable return for taking the best action.
Why is bidding good getting such a poor return.
9. Finally the one EW pair who almost got it right ...5C-1 ...despite going overboard they still
hauled in a nice 75% score ..stopping in 4C would have been nearly all the eggs.
In this case the East player produced a 3C bid and partner overcooked it
going all the way to 5C ...
10. How are so many capable players missing this hand by so much.
There are no names mentioned here .. but most of the players above are playing past 30 years
and consider themselves capable ..
The hand was dealt normally and not created or fixed but I think it tells a story on not being
competitive enough.
Many years ago an old lad called Walshe in the Bankers Bridge Club ..He is dead since and suffered from what is now called dementia but he did his best and generally managed ok.
He told me ...if you do nothing else ..don't let the opposition stop in 2 level if you can think
of any excuse to bid. You can let them off if you have trumps as then I am short and have not done anything. Paddy Walshe was his name and he is neither of the more famous Galway and Listowel Paddys.
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