The French National Pairs Division 1 was held on 28-29 September and 5-6 October. Jérôme Rombaut participated with his son Léo. In this second part, he continues his discussions with Funbridge staff member Vincent Gallais. To read the first part of the article, click here.
Put yourself in the shoes of the champions and take part in the discussions too!
Jérôme: Here I had a doubt about the meaning of the 2NT two-suiter. Does it show the minors or the other two suits? The 2♥️ bid is also free.
Vincent: Indeed, with game-forcing 2/1, we sometimes find ourselves bidding 2♣️ from 3 cards, so the minor two-suiter still makes sense. I think it’s clever to agree that the cue-bid of the opening major indicates the other two suits and 2NT the minors.
Jérôme: Here we score 50% in the 2H contract while the game is cold. It’s hard to know which one of us is more responsible. I could/should have said 2S and Léo could have made a 2♣️ cue-bid rather than bidding 2H.
Vincent: I like Léo’s 1♥️ bid. If the sequence gets out of control in clubs, we will have already started describing our hand and it will then be easier to describe our major 5/4. Bidding 2♣️ with your hand is quite bold anyway. Here it works well because you don’t have any wasted points in clubs, but if we switch Léo’s cards in the black suits, the game is much less attractive! You’d have to invent a level between 2♥️ and 3♥️ 😊.
Jérôme: I passively continued in spades whereas a return with the trump queen would have dropped the trumps and prevented from establishing the clubs for two down. My spade return led to only one undertrick.
Vincent: Now that Léo has told you that he has QJT of spades by playing the queen on the ace, maybe he can guide you by giving you a signal with the clubs? A low one for an ordinary return and a high one for an aggressive trump return.
Sitting South, how do you play in the 4♥️ contract after the lead of the 10 of spades to East’s ace and East returns a spade to give a ruff to his partner, then a diamond to East’s ace and a small spade?
Jérôme: Here I am obliged to ruff high with a high heart. What do you play next? I lazily played a trump instead of starting with the club finesse, which doomed my chances of winning this contract. I thought that if the spade finesse fails, it would jeopardise my contract but that was a miscalculation and it wouldn’t have really got me into trouble.
Jérôme: Unfortunately, I helped declarer by covering this queen and not ruffing the third heart by the 9 of spades to make him guess with two spades to Q10xxx. Well, declarer managed to take 11 tricks, but as he was the only one to sign off in 3♠️, it didn’t cost anything at all apart from a bad artistic score!
You lead the 4 of diamonds to North’s king. He then plays the 8 of spades to declarer’s 10 and your king. You play the 2 of hearts to dummy’s ace. Declarer now returns the 10 of clubs to your ace. It’s your turn…
Jérôme: Here the defence is very difficult and not natural, but it can be found after some thinking. Naturally, it is to play the 9 of spades, but declarer establishes his fifth club. If you play the hands again and you understand that he is 6/5, all you have to do is play a heart to set him by 3 tricks or even cash the king of spades followed by a heart.
Jérôme: I played the 3 of spades. In theory, nothing should change because declarer can still win (he will be forced and at the end of the game, either we give him all his trumps or we play another spade and he shouldn’t have any trouble playing the right one). However, the spade return puts him under a lot of pressure as it is rare to underplay one’s king with dummy’s queen. Logically, my opponent hesitated for long minutes before playing small. On that same spade return, Lionel Sebbane played the ace, condemning himself to go down. Is this bad defence? I still don’t know…
Vincent: A very inspired return! Here declarer will play small to his queen unless he fears that you have a singleton in spades (which is possible), especially since you don’t play the 2S opening with a minor, so Léo’s pass can hide 5 spades!
Jérôme: We didn’t manage to take the heart ruff before declarer cashed his diamonds. I led the king of spades and played a small spade to Léo who returned a diamond. Nothing obvious here but we can note that Léo made the right choice by not reopening with 3NT.
Vincent: As soon as declarer has 3 diamonds and a heart shortage, the heart return is catastrophic because it makes a ruffing finesse possible for declarer who could now discard a diamond… If he has 2 hearts, nothing changes at all. Here you had to play specifically the case where declarer has 3 hearts. I imagine that on that day, you can be happy that they play in clubs and miss the heart fit. It can guide the decision when choosing the return… Anyway, I would also have returned (wrongly) a diamond like Léo.
Jérôme: The 6♥️ contract is normal and I am using this deal to discuss the meaning of passing 5♣️. On this deal you can even make 6♥️ in double dummy. You ruff a spade, draw all trumps and throw South in because he has KQJT in clubs to oblige him to play into dummy’s diamond tenace! It’s hard to imagine, especially since you can make 6♥️ +1 simply with the king of diamonds onside…
Vincent: You have to be very inspired to find the line in 6♥️! What passing 5♣️ means is tricky. First, what does 3♠️ mean? Is this a bid to help partner make a decision at the 5-level or a control for the slam? Then if we admit that we are in a forcing sequence, shouldn’t we also be able to integrate the responses to Blackwood on 5♣️? Pass = forcing (but with which hand?), X = 30, 5♦️ = 41, 5♥️/5♠️ = 2 with/without the trump queen.
Jérôme: On this deal we play in 6H instead of 7NT (for 45%). This is our worst sequence of the weekend following one or two misunderstandings. 1♥️: Shows an unbalanced hand. 2♦️: Game-forcing relay (double 2). 2♥️: Shows a problem in spades (here Léo didn’t have a problem in spades but wanted to direct the trick to my hand instead). 3♠️: Not really discussed. It should be a “yes but” bid. That’s what we play now anyway. 4♦️: Second ambiguity as I denied the spade control. Does 4D show the diamond or spade control? 4♠️: Léo rightly thought that if he only had the spade control, he would have bid 4S on the previous round, so here he was indicating both spade and diamond controls. 5♦️: 3 key cards. 6♥️: As Léo announced the diamond control in my suit, for him it was necessarily an honour, so he didn’t want to show it again. I thought that as he had a good hand, he could have cue-bidded his singleton, hence this big mess leading us to a very bad result which almost cost us the podium. It was the penultimate deal and nearly all other pairs played in 7NT!
Vincent: Difficult bidding on this deal. But first, what would 3NT over 3♠️ (“yes but”) mean for you? You can play this with a half-stopper in spades (queen-second for instance), knowing that Léo can hold Ax, Axx, Kxx in spades and look for an extra card in your hand to play 3NT from the right hand… or spade control. When in doubt, I really like the 4♦️ bid, which avoids taking an unnecessary risk! Once again, I would have done as Léo did. I never show a control in partner’s suit when it is a shortage. The 4♦️ bid already announces the ace or king, so I would have also excluded the king of diamonds opposite 5NT. Don’t be too harsh either, this is not the grand slam of the year. You need the hearts to split 3-2 or either the jack or the 10 bare in East (as well as the courage of applying the principle of restricted choice). And on top of that, the diamonds 3-2 or 10-9 bare with one of the two players (here the experts will also talk about a few squeeze positions). The question we can legitimately ask ourselves here is what do we do if we have better than the king bare in diamonds (KJ or Kxx). Perhaps this time it’s an opportunity to respond 6♦️?
