Intended audience: Intermediate and up

E-W vul, matchpoints, as south you hold: ♠42 ♥KJ9862 ♦A2 ♣AK2

What do you bid?

This hand is tricky, but not for the normal reasons. It came up in the Blue Ribbon Pairs and most auctions started this way. South had good defence against spades, but north did bid vul against not, so he expects to be close...which likely means long spades, thus west has short spades.

Although 5♥ may be right, double is better. It tells partner it is our hand, but doesn’t command partner to pass. With weak defence and short spades he can bid 5♥ as a two way bid – it may make or 4♠ makes and it is a good sacrifice.

So this is all well and good, but...by taking all this time to double you have resigned yourself to a poor score! The full deal:

After the hesitation and double north naturally chose to bid 5♥ which made. However at many tables, with the hesitation, the contract was rolled back to 4♠ doubled, which was only one down with the Q♦ and 9♦ onside. +200 was not a good N-S score against +480 (some wests even doubled 5♥).

Be Ready!!!

At the table be ready for probable bidding problems. So here, as soon as north bids 2♥, south should think:

What am I going to bid if East passes, bids 2♠, 3♠ or 4♠*. If you get in the habit of thinking ahead of potential problems you can avoid bidding out of tempo and giving partner unauthorized information.

At our table my partner was south and di that, and was able to double in tempo, thus we ending up scoring +750 in 5♥ doubled.

The lesson is to be always thinking during the bidding, even when it’s not your turn to bid!!

*My answers are pass, pass 4♥ and double.

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