{"id":841,"date":"2010-12-13T01:18:11","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T09:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/?p=841"},"modified":"2010-12-13T03:25:05","modified_gmt":"2010-12-13T11:25:05","slug":"poll-13-defend-against-3-notrump-12132010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/?p=841","title":{"rendered":"Poll #13, Defend against 3 Notrump, 12\/13\/2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script src=\"http:\/\/survey.constantcontact.com\/poll\/a07e3772pw0ghlkl39u\/start.js?v=1&amp;w=300\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><noscript>JavaScript needs to be enabled for polling to work.<br \/>\n<a href='http:\/\/www.constantcontact.com\/survey\/index.jsp?cc=ViraWidPOL'>Online Surveys<\/a> by Constant Contact.<br \/>\n<\/noscript><\/p>\n<p><strong>During the bidding phase, it\u2019s usually not too difficult to be a good partner.\u00a0 We carefully value our hand, listen to the bidding and follow our agreements.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, when we are on defense, playing the correct card and making correct card signals aren\u2019t always so clear.\u00a0 Those of you who play golf can relate to your quip, <\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u201cDrive for show and putt for dough.\u201d\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ironically, their analogy isn\u2019t too far from the truth for Bridge players \u2013 declarer play and defense is where tricks are won and lost. \u00a0And for those of you aren\u2019t into sports, here\u2019s another apt saying:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>The proof of the pudding is in the eating.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>So with the opponents bidding 1 Notrump,\u00a0 2 Notrump, and back with 3 Notrump, our partner begins by leading the Heart Queen.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure enough, the dummy has a fair 8 High Card Points with a 5 card Club suit that declarer will certainly plan to promote for extra tricks.\u00a0 In Hearts, we hold the 10-6-3 and after declarer inserts the dummy\u2019s stiff H8, it\u2019s our turn to play.\u00a0 What Heart is your pleasure?\u00a0 And should declarer later play the Club Queen, what do you plan to play?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>South opens 1 Notrump with 17 HCP and all honors working (please don&#8217;t worry about lacking Club stoppers).\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>With 8 HCP, North should invite with 2 Notrump. While we would like to count 1 extra distribution point for the fifth Club, do not do so on this holding.\u00a0 Lacking primary honors in Clubs (A-K) and only one Diamond King, North should not upgrade with 5 of 9 HCP are secondary honors (Q-J).\u00a0 FYI &#8211; while we normally do not value a suit like J10x, when partner opens 1 Notrump, we value all honors.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>On lead, our thoughtful West attributes about 25 points for the opponents, LHO with 8-9 HCP.\u00a0 West holds 10 HCP so partner East must have about 5 HCP.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>West happily leads the HQ, top of a broken sequence suit &#8211; LHO did not bid 2C Stayman so responder does not have a 4 card major.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>When the dummy comes down, West knows East holds either a King-Queen or an Ace. How so?\u00a0 Well, since East is marked to hold 4-5 HCP and West can see 4 Jacks (3 in dummy, 1 in hand), East&#8217;s 4-5 points must be one of these two combinations.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>How about East&#8217;s observation?\u00a0 Holding 5 HCP and knowing opponents have no more than 25 HCP (seeing 8 in dummy), partner West has 10-11 HCP (opener may be stretching with only 16 HCP). So West could hold 2 Aces and a Queen or perhaps 1 each Ace-King-Queen-Jack. Holding 2 Kings and 2 Queens is less likely since East can already see 4 of the 8 Kings and Queens.\u00a0 Okay, back to the play &#8211; good luck with your play.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>*** To view our secure BridgeHands members bonus content below, please login***<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Please login or register to view this content.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em>BridgeHands &#8211;<\/em><\/strong><strong> Covered by Creative Commons License:<br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/2.5\/\" target=\"_blank\">Attribution, Non-commercial, No Derivative Works<\/a><\/strong><\/strong><em> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JavaScript needs to be enabled for polling to work. Online Surveys by Constant Contact. During the bidding phase, it\u2019s usually not too difficult to be a good partner.\u00a0 We carefully value our hand, listen to the bidding and follow our agreements.\u00a0\u00a0 Unfortunately, when we are on defense, playing the correct card and making correct card [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgehands.com\/bridgeblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}