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How
is your slam bidding (with your wife)?
by Bernard Marcoux, Ste-Adèle
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Are you good in slam bidding? Yes, you say?
Well, I don’t really believe you
J.
In fact, people don’t know slam bidding.
Proof?
They are familiar only with Blackwood, or any variation
of Key-card. You tell them Blackwood is not a tool to go to
slam, but to avoid slam.
You try to teach them
that the 2 partners have to tell each other, before getting to
game, that they are interested in slam. You try to teach them
to use cue-bids, before arriving to game, to show extra values.
You tell them they can’t Blackwood with 2 quick losers in a
suit. They don’t listen. They continue Blackwood and continue
to go down. Or they stop in game, afraid to go down in slam.
And this is slam bidding with unopposed bidding.
So, I don’t know why I bother to ask: How is
your slam bidding when opponents open? Well…
LHO Pd
RHO You
1 1
p ??
6xx
 K10xxxxx
 Axx
--
Do you know Fit-Showing Jumps? No? You play
Weak Jump Shifts? Too bad for you, I think you are playing poor
methods. You should always prefer constructive bidding to
destructive devices. So, my partner and I play FSJ. A FSJ
shows 5+ good cards (ideally 2 tops) in the suit you bid and a
4-card fit in your partner’s suit, with at least a limit-raise.
FSJ is used anytime in competition and by any passed hand.
Examples:
Partner
RHO You
1
1 3/3 = FSJ
1
X 3/3/3 = FSJ
2
2 4/4 = FSJ
2
3 4 = FSJ
Partner RHO
You LHO
P p
1 p
2/3/3 = FSJ
Even if you play Drury, you can use FSJ,
which tells much more to your partner. FSJ is in line with the
old saying: if you can tell all your hand in one bid, you
must use that bid. Hearing a FSJ, partner will be perfectly
placed to know if you have a double fit, in which case he can
bid on, stop or sacrifice.
So FSJ says: I have at least 9 cards in 2
suits, 4 with you and 5 good in my suit. Always 5-4? Well… if
you are a purist or French… Oops
J.
Us, in Quebec, we speak French but we live in North America. So
we are not French. We are French speaking North Americans.
At
bridge, we prefer the North American approach, practical, not
dogmatic, realistic, not rigid, sensible, not strict.
Who wants to be a purist anyway? At the
table, you have to bid the hand you have and hands are never
perfect. Sometimes, once in 3 years, you will have the perfect
hand to fit into the perfect bid. So bid what you have, even if
you sometimes bend the rules.
All this gibberish to tell you about my wife
and partner. The other day, she didn’t make a FSJ because she
had a 6-3 distribution, not 5-4. So I told her, gently (!):
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You know, honey (I didn’t say honey), you could use a FSJ
to show me what you had.
-
I didn’t have a 5-4, she replied, sternly.
-
I know, but nothing’s is perfect. Except you, of course
(I didn’t say that either
J.)
So, last Monday, we came upon those 2 hands.
RHO
Me LHO
The Wife
1
1 p 3
4 p 4
4 p 5
5 p 5NT
6
AQJ10xx 6xx
Axx R10xxxxx
3 A10x
Kxx ---
After 3, my hand looks very good. If she
has KQxxx in Hearts and 4 Spades, we have a great double fit.
So I cue-bided 4:
I like your hand partner.
Her next
bid was music to my ear: 4. I followed with 4, showing a top
card in her suit (never cue-bid shortness in a natural suit bid
by partner; you can splinter, but not cue-bid).
She continued
with 5. I then bid 5, 2nd round control. At that
moment, she knew everything, except the quality of the Spades.
But all those cue-bids obviously implied we had no problem in
Spades. But could we bid the grand? We had bypassed 4NT,
key-card.
So she invoked Josephine, 5NT, the Grand Slam Force.
I concluded with 6:
Partner, I don’t have AKQ. I made
7, the only pair to bid that slam in the room.
After the hand, she said:
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You told me the other day (women never forget nothing), I
could make a FSJ with this type of hand.
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Yes, dear (I didn’t say dear). Your bid was perfect
(women like to hear they are perfect).
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I know, she said.
They like to tell it also, I said to myself
J.
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