Posts Tagged ‘Partnership’

The Stopped Clock Rule

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Remember that.

This comes up a lot:

LHO opens 2D (natural).

Partner makes a takeout double.

RHO passes.

You hold:

Kxxx
Qx
Jxx
KQxx

What do you bid?

This is a no-brainer — of course you bid 4S.  Okay, maybe you’ll go down one, but is there really any intelligent alternative?

Partner tables:

xx
AKxx
Kxx
Axxx

After you go down 3, partner laments:  “I was afraid you might bid spades, but I couldn’t pass with 14 points…”

Really?  Why not?

The hard part to swallow is that maybe 1 in 10 times an off-shape double will produce a superior result (especially when it’s the opponents making the off-shape double).

But I promise you that 10 out of 10 times you will be destroying partnership confidence — you might as well be playing solitaire.

One final note — if you absolutely cannot bring yourself to pass with partner’s hand, at least try bidding 2N instead of doubling.

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It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup…

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Just look at Martha Stewart or Bill Clinton.  They did stuff that may or may not have been illegal.  But what got them into real trouble was trying to hide the original misdeed.

The same thing applies at the bridge table.

You make a bad bid.  Maybe you’ve forgotten some wrinkle in your partnership agreement.  Maybe you were distracted, and didn’t notice that RHO had slipped in a double right before your bid.

Anyway, you’re staring at your last bid.  You’ve realized your mistake, and you’re sweating it.  But then it occurs to you that perhaps your bad bid might somehow lead to a good result, if only partner makes the right call…

Confused, partner goes into the tank and finally pulls out the one card from her/his bidding box that you didn’t want to see.  Disaster follows.

In the post mortem, you immediately pin the blame on partner, conveniently failing to address your initial contribution to the bad result.  Yes, maybe your bid was questionable, but partner’s bid was ridiculous!

Stop.

Apologize for your original misdeed.

Move on.

If you can do that, you’re a terrific partner.  (Better than me…)

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