CORRECT CONTRACT

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 11154, 1 July 1933, Page 4

CORRECT CONTRACT

After Two No Bids

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THIRD CALLER. (By John Barrack.) An American authority, Mr Hal Sims, has recently published a little bridge book, in which he advances a new point of view about the responsibilities of third caller after two No Bids. Look at it this way. You are sitting fourth with. Spades; A K x x Hearts: A Q x x Diamonds: A x Clubs; A x x There are three passes and obviously you call Two Clubs. But suppose after two passes the player on your right bid One No Trump, wrhat are you to do It is obvious that he must have all the outstanding honour tricks, viz., K Q in Diamonds and Clubs and K in Hearts. Neither your partner nor his can have anything. Are you to double, in the hope that your partner holds five Spades, say, to the Q? Look at the odds against such a holding. And in any case you are not going to reach a game contract. And what about your honours? Imagine, however, that the player on your right held less than his statutory strength and yet bid One No Trump and made four tricks. Granted that you score 300 altogether, you are none the less deprived of game. The position is most acute, if you are vulnerable and they are not, in which case you lose to the extent of GSO points. Now there can be no doubt that few situations are more aggravating than when, holding a perfectly good call in your hand, you are anticipated by an opponent. The course which it will 'be most profitable to pursue presents an involved problem, in which many factors must be brought into consideration—unless, of course, you are in a position to force. This is the point which was in Mr Sims’ mind. His idea is that when invulnerable the third bidder should call on less than statutoiw strength, if the other side is vulrerable and there have been two No Bids. Here, according to Mr Sims, is the opportunity for the ideal psychic bid. But your partner, of course, must know what you are up to. The fourth bidder will then be in a. quandary. He might know that you do indulge in psychic bids at the position, but can he be sure that this is psychic bid? Being vulnerable he will proceed with caution. And the upshot will probably be that you prevent a certain game call against you. Put in that way the theory has its attractive side, but, as it seems to me, the objections are many and obvious. To start with it is open to the grave objection to which all psychic bids are open. Your partner, any more than your opponents, does not know whether it is or ,it isn’t. In the interests of public safety then, he must assume that any bid you make invulnerable a.fter two passes when opponents are vulnerable i® a defensive bid. You are nullifying any genuine 'bids you might be able to make in the position, throwing away perhaps from time to time possibilities of game. Then further, to bid at all when vulnerable, fourth caller must have a strong hand. The odds are slightly that he will pass in any case, and one must always work on the greater probability. If you do intervene it i6' unlikely in most cases that you will be : able to stop him. And again we must always work on the greater probability. Incidentally it is for this reason that Mr Sims suggests that the weak-

er your hand is, in the circumstances indicated, the more pressing is the necessity for you to call.’ But the argument, excellent though it is, suffers from not being carried to its logical conclusion. The second caller may have a strong hand. Should not the dealer, if he is invulnerable and the opponents have a game, make a point of getting a call in first? And should not the necessity be greater, the weaker his hand may be? Perhaps on a Yarborough he should open with a strong two. Psychic bids are great fun. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they are based on acute card sense and an accurate summary of the position. But on the whole they are not Bridge. They belong to the world of Poker, when you, have not a partner to consider. I have been reproached for advocating psychic bidding in my support of the Two Club call. But a convention cannot be psychic. Its! meaning is known at once to everyone at the table. If you call Two Spades over your opponent’s call of One Spade, neither your partner nor anyone else will think that perhaps it might be a bluff. And the whole essence of psychic bidding fe that nobody knows or can know its meaning. It destroys confidence between partners. It should be eschewed.