Posted 2010-December-30, 11:29
1. I blame West. East was under pressure...he held the sort of hand on which if 5♣ fails, sometimes 4♠ fetches, so he can't afford to pass...unless the auction established a fp...more about that below.
As for West, yes he has a lot of hcp, but it's a shitty 19, if there ever were one, and (more importantly) he has to accept that partner was under pressure and may be weaker than, say, 5♣ over a tamer raise to 3♠. I think it to be a very useful priniciple that a big hand should err on the side of underbidding when partner has made a call under pressure.....we all want to encourage our partners to be aggressive under pressure, and this kind of result leaves partners such as East hung out to dry.
2. I can't even begin to wrap my head around why this auction to 4♠ should be considered to create a fp. Our double created no force at all. Surely no-one plays that a raise to 3♠ followed by 2 passes creates a force? So why would a potentially stronger move by LHO create a fp at an even higher level? Does LHO's belief that they can make game somehow make partner's holdings stronger? 4♠ was not necessarily a sign of weakness....allow them to create a fp on such an innocuous auction, and they own you for life.
Me bad..... I didn't see N was a passed hand....so a lot of my argument flies out of the window...but I still don't see this as a fp....because our double didn't create any sort of force. And, of course, the fact that LHO is a ph means that so is partner, which would, again, mean that fp makes little sense. We show an opening hand via the double, but partner denied one by his original pass, and we think that we are either likely to defeat this contract or that the 5-level belongs to us? I don't think so.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
Comments? ATB? Rip away.