A Coup For You

You are playing in a Sectional Swiss Teams in the first match. As dealer, red on white, you pick up the following exciting hand:

A J 7 6 5 4 2, — 5 2 Q 6 5 2

My regular partners know that I believe strongly in bidding some number of my long suit on such hands. My passed hands may have a surprising number of Charlie points if balanced with quacks, but partner is unlikely to be surprised by an unbalanced hand of some merit.

Having said this, I did not like an opening of 2, since partner will not count the tricks accurately, nor did I think that 3 was right given position and vulnerability.

So I passed. What do you think of that?

A moment later the auction had gone 4, pass, pass to me. Well I certainly wasn’t going to pass now, but was my action safer or riskier?

This rolled around to RHO who bid 5. Everyone passed this to my partner, who bid 5 and everyone subsided. After a slow start, we had an exciting finish.

LHO led the K and my partner put down the following:

Q T 8 5, 7 A K Q 6 5 2, 9 8

So this is a Four or Seven hand!! If I pick up trumps, I’ll take all of the tricks. If not, I’ll only make four.

If we assume that hearts are 8-4, that makes the “slot count” 9-5 in favor of the finesse. Is that the answer, or is there more to this problem?

UPDATE: I viewed the hand the same way as Justin did and played for the drop — wrong this time. Perhaps Justin would have read the table better than I did, but it seemed to be smooth passing. Our teammates did not bid it up either. In fact, my counterpart decided to open 4!! My teammates could not find a call, so we lost a game swing.

Everyone should read Jack Oest’s article in the current Kibitzer. Jack has been playing with Goldfein and he has written up some of the hands. No — not Jerry Goldfein — we’re talking about Danny!

You’ll enjoy the hands and admire Danny’s skill, as well.

I chose to double on this hand since I felt that it was our only chance to beat the contract, but it is certainly a risk. I held my breath before seeing the 10 from Wickham. In practice, partner would have led a club delivering trick nine.

The opponents did not handle this very well. To review our team’s understanding, a redouble in the immediate position expresses confidence while a redouble in the pass out position expresses doubt. The opener held Qx in spades while the responder held 8732. Using our methods, it should go pass by opener and pull by the responder. With better spades, even T732, responder should redouble.

This does not come up very often, but it is worth plenty of IMP’s when it does. I remember a Meckwell hand where they had a rare misunderstanding on the meaning of the redouble.

Those of you who chose to open 1 get a response of 1 with the opponents silent.

Now what?