Here’s
your hand sitting west as dealer:
♠ KJ5
♥ AK2
♦ Q8632
♣ 74
Here’s the
bidding:
West North East South
1D P 1H 1S
?
Many players play a convention
called “support doubles.” This means that if you open and partner bids a suit
and your RHO overcalls, if you double you are promising three cards in the suit
your partner bid. Since partner may have only four cards in the suit, you
should not raise with only three cards in her suit, so this gives you the
opportunity to tell her that you have exactly three cards in her suit. This is
a nice conventional bid, but it can cause problems.
Without a support double, you would
have to decide whether to raise her suit with only three cards, or to bid 1NT
over South’s 1S. This 1NT call limits your hand to not more than 14 HCP but
promises a stopper in your RHO’s suit.
So what do you do here? You have two
possibilities, the support double or 1NT. The answer is that you should bid
1NT. Why? Two reasons; the first is that if you bid 1NT, your partner may use
New Minor Forcing to show that she has five cards in her suit and 10 HCP, if
she does. The second is that it limits your hand to not more than 14 HCP. If
you make a support double, it has two negatives; first is that it does not
limit your hand, so your partner doesn’t know if you are minimum or huge.
Second, it does not tell her that you have a stopper in your RHO’s suit.
Here’s the four hand layout:
North
♠
1083
♥
764
♦
AJ10
♣
A1085
West East
♠ KJ5 ♠
Q4
♥ AK2 ♥ Q953
♦ Q8632 ♦ 4
♣ 74 ♣
KQJ632
South
♠
A9762
♥
J108
♦
K975
♣
9
If West bids 1NT, the bidding will
probably end there, although with a pretty good six card suit, East might raise
to 2NT, which West will pass. That’s the way it should be bid.
Alas, in the actual hand, West chose
to make a support double. That really screwed things up because North then
raised partner’s 1S overcall to 2S (something he probably would not do with his
meager 3 little spades knowing West has a stopper in spades, although he might
still bid on since he has two aces) and East bid 3C! The bidding got out of
hand and West bid 3NT, which went down one.
The hand was played 12 times. It is unlikely that South overcalled 1S at many of the other 11 tables because it is a very aggressive bid. Five
were in 1NT making two. Four were in 3NT, down one. One was in 2H, making two
and one was in 4H, down one. One was in 2NT, down two, which is
incomprehensible; right contract, but how in the world was it played to go down two?
This hand also shows the way
aggressive bidders can mess up opponents’ bidding. South’s 1S overcall was
precarious with only 8 HCP. But if South doesn’t overcall, West will bid 1N and
the auction will end. South’s overcall enabled North to enter the bidding and
get West and East to bid to an unmakeable contract. Good bid, South!
