Landing on My Feet
(If not in my suit)

Much will be written about the dramatic semifinal and final matches in the U.S. Team Trials that took place in Texas in May, 2005. In the quarterfinals, two deals piqued my interest. Both deals caused me great discomfort in the auction.

First, with nobody vulnerable, I held:

Q 3
A Q J 9 7 6 4 3
Q 8 6
--

My partner, David Berkowitz, opened a strong club and my RHO overcalled 1. I bid 2, natural and GF. LHO raised to 2 and partner bid 3, natural--not a surprise. I persisted with 3, planning on reaching at least 4, maybe 6. Over my 3, partner jumped to 5. Ugh! He has long clubs and wants to play in 5.
 
Can his be better than mine? Am I really going to table an 8-card suit in dummy (one of the no-no's of bridge)? Are we really going to play in 5-of-a-minor when I have ace-queen-jack-eighth of hearts? I reluctantly passed and this was the full deal:

After long thought, West led a spade and declarer claimed 11 tricks. On the A lead (and a diamond continuation), the contract would fail. Declarer would have to play spades himself and would be disappointed that the Q would not provide an entry to dummy's A. East could win the A and exit in diamonds and sit back with his second spade trick. Anyway, they don't always make the right lead, and I was pleased with our plus 400. So, not only was it right to be in five clubs, but hearts plays so poorly that the limit of the hand in that strain is only 8 tricks! (The other table also played 5 making 5 for a push).

Soon after that freak result, I picked up this hand:

A Q J 9 8 7 5
9 8 7
--
A K 4

At unfavorable vulnerability, I opened a strong club (points schmoints). At least I had 1 more HCP than David has for his big club on the previous deal.  LHO jumped to 5. This is not a good auction for a strong-club system. After long thought my partner jumped to 6NT. Again, this was not what I had in mind. Should I table another long suit in dummy? Should I bid 7? I didn't know what to do. I guessed to pass and the full deal was:

On any lead the result would be +1440 -- 12 tricks. Had I bid 7, we'd make it on the A lead, but go down otherwise (there was no squeeze). We'll never know. The other table played in game, so we won 13 IMPs.

But, for this pair of deals, it was strange that on neither one did I get to play in my AQJ-eighth or AQJ-seventh suit. In both cases, I landed on my feet. We went on to win our quarterfinal match, but that set us up for the drama of the semifinals. (See Page 2 of http://www.usbf.org/usbc_db10.pdf)

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