Page 28 - ABF Newsletter August 2025

Australia-Wide Novice Pairs
Brad Coles
The Australia-Wide Novice Pairs is run each year in the last week of May, played in 100 clubs around the country. As usual, the randomly-dealt boards in this year’s event produced many instructive situations for the players reading the souvenir booklet and the results booklet. Here are two interesting deals from the event: a slam and a partscore.
There is probably no situation in bridge more rare than a seven-level sacrifice at unfavourable vulner- ability, but that’s what we have here. EW can score 980 in 6[, but NS can escape for just 500 in 7}:
In general, while it is normal to pass with a balanced 11-count (such as South’s hand, for example), when you have a 5-4 shape you should consider opening. As a general rule, if you add the length of your two longest suits to your HCP, you should usually open the bidding if the total comes to 20. So here, the two longest suits are 5+4, and the HCP are 11, which totals to 20 and an opening bid.
Following the same guideline, if you have a 6-4 or a 5-5 hand, it is normal to open with just 10 HCP. If your suits are majors, so much the better.
Let’s assume that East is opening 1], so West knows that East has five spades:
WEST NORTH EAST SOUTH
pass 1] pass
With such a strong hand, West should be thinking
about what useful cards partner might have for his opening bid. At a glance, West can see that if part- ner has five spades to the the ]KQ and the {AK, then the only possible loser is the ace of diamonds.
If you look more deeply into the hand, you might start wondering about tricks instead of losers. If partner has ]KQxxx (a perfectly likely holding for a 1] opening) then you might be able to take six hearts and five spades for eleven tricks. In that case, even the {K might be unnecessary – all you actually need for the twelfth trick is the {A.
Finding out if partner actually has these cards is an- other matter. If you jump straight to Blackwood and bid the slam, you might find that partner has the }A, and you have twelve top tricks, but the defenders cash the {AK before you can get them.
For an experienced pair, there are many tools that you can use to avoid this problem – most importantly, control bids can tell you whether partner’s ace is in clubs or diamonds. This is why the textbooks advise you to not use Blackwood when you have two quick losers in one suit – those textbooks are assuming that you are using control bids to find out early if you have two club losers. In the real world, if you don’t play control bids or splinters, then sometimes Blackwood is the best that you can do.
In any case, the first step in any slam investigation is counting your likely tricks or losers, and recognising that you do actually have some slam potential.
As it turns out, 6] can be beaten, as South can give North a heart ruff. That’s very unlucky, and not
Board 5. North deals. North-South vulnerable.
]4
[—
} A 10 8 5 4 3 2 { 10 9 6 4 3
?
] A 10 9 8
[ A K Q 7 5 3
}7 }Q9 {J8 ]J75 {A2
[J84 }KJ6 {KQ75
This board was played at nearly 700 tables, and at 26 of those tables someone was in slam – 22 slams by East-West, and four by North-South! The few EW pairs who did bid slam were rewarded with a 98% matchpoint score for 980, and they would still have scored 95% in the unlikely event that NS bid on to 7}. However, if NS were able to buy the contract at the six-level, they were the ones with the 90%+ score.
So, how did these pairs get to slam? Well, the first step is that East should open the bidding. With 11 HCP, many Easts are passing this hand, but that’s not appropriate when you have both majors. When both sides have about 20 HCP, the side with the majors will usually be the ones making a contract, so you do not want this hand to be passed out.
Hypothetically, If East passes, and West opens the bidding, East’s hand might be harder to describe by that point: a 1] opening shows about 12 HCP and five spades, but a 1] response can be just six points and might be just four spades. If North is planning to make a preempt, things may get even more complicated. East should take the opportunity to describe his hand accurately in one bid, before the other three players start getting in the way.
Page: 28
Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: August 2025
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