Bleeding Hearts by SchTsch

Source: pulabridgefestival.com      

When you pick up your hand and notice an eight card suit in it, you can say that your desired trump suit is pretty obvious regardless of partner’s holding. The only problem seems to be choosing the proper level and preventing your opponents to discover a good sacrifice.

So, how do you treat this hand:  106  AK987543  Q4  5

You hear your partner open 1 and your RHO bids 2. What now?

It is obvious that you will bid either forcing 2 or nonforcing 4 because some artistic approach could produce a chaos on this pretty straightforward hand. You hold Qx in your partner’s suit and if you have no heart loser you need partner to have AK and a black ace, mere 11 points for easy 12 tricks.

So you choose 2 to leave yourself some space for investigation?

If you bid 2 your LHO bids 2, partner passes and RHO bids 3 suggesting no spade fit. Now you bid your 4 which becomes the final contract.

When the dummy appears with: AJ54  –  AK876  K874 …You can say that you are in the right spot. And you are right, on 3-2 trump split you make easy 11 tricks for +650.

So, what makes this hand so interesting? Who’s bleeding? Let’s take a look at the whole deal:

What do you expect East would bid over 4 instead of 2? We can see that pass is the right bid, but can the endplayed East see it? Looking at the IMP pairs field here in Pula, a lot of Easts could not find the right bid and overcalled 4 with a dangerous but relatively understandable 4.

Well, that’s what your partner has been waiting for. Let the bleeding begin. An easy double and an easy +1100 for a nice heart-provoked bloodshed for +10 IMPs. Yes, if East passes you ‘ve gained nothing and could have missed a slam, but then again, who pays an entry fee in a touristic tournament to pass a seven card spade suit on a reasonable level? Worth a shot, ain’t it?

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