Puzzle Hands

I'm not going to give answers to the puzzles as such. I'll simply provide the hands as they were at the table and a bit of waffle to fill up the post.

Here's the first hand in full:

Vul: NS Dealer: West	9 K T x A Q x x J x x x x
- Q J x x x x x x x T x x x		K J x x x x A x K J x x x
	A Q T x x x x x x x A K Q

The answers I got for what to bid were Pass, 2S, 3D and 3NT. 2S very much depends on who you're playing with, if partner might not get this right then it's fairly dangerous. I like pass because the likely 2D or 2S contracts will probably fail and you can always bid 2S when if 2H comes back to you.

Having said that you do have 15 highs and if partner has a reasonable 10 for the double then maybe, just maybe you're making 3NT, seemed a bit hopeful to me but on the hand in question it's cold.

At my table things were very different, I opened 4H on the West cards and when South couldn't resist 4S we had +800.




I like the second problem because there's four outcomes:
1) 13 tricks
2) 12 tricks
3) 11 tricks
4) give the problem to partner.

Even better, it doesn't matter which card you lead in the suit! Only the choice of suit makes a difference.

Here's the full hand: it takes a heart lead to beat 6H or on a spade your partner can lead one. On a diamond it'll make 12 and when they led the AC (!!!) against me I made 13.

	K 8 7 4 Q T 9 T K 9 8 6 3
T 9 6 5 2 K Q 5 2 A T 7 4		A Q J 2 3 9 8 6 4 Q J 5 2
	3 A K J 8 7 6 5 4 A J 7 3 -