What should I Bid? - Best enquiry for June 2005

The best submission for the month of June was made by Margaret Miller.

Hand: At all vulnerable and dealer West.

	K5  9854  A63  A532

Bidding:	West	North	East	South
	1	3	4	4
	P	P	?

Comments: The question here is whether I should pass, double or bid 5. I think I should double at the five level, but what about the four level? Many thanks for your advice.

And Peter’s Response:

Hi Margaret,

A critical matter here is that when you bid 4 you had not had an opportunity to indicate to partner the nature of your hand type i.e.whether it was a good quality hand with adequate trump support, or a hand with a bunch of trumps not necessarily with much hand strength. e.g. had the intervention been 2, with appropriate hands you could have bid 3 to indicate a quality raise to 4, or 4 to suggest a trump oriented raise.

Thus partner will not have acted with a variety of hands. Accordingly, Pass here ought to imply you raised on a trump oriented hand (which you do not have). You have a limit raise and took the push as you ought. The choice is therefore to Double or bid on. As usual your holding in the opponents' suit is the key to this. Bidding on with two cards in their suit when there is no reason to believe partner has one or fewer is very poor. There is no good reason to assume they have more than nine trumps here although ten wouldn't surprise. Thus, Double is the answer and when they score 590 or 690, bad luck. More likely you'll get 300, and on a good day your side couldn't make 4.

Regards
Peter Fordham

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