Guess the Bid
by mark horton on
December 3rd, 2008
Do you recall the classic Marx Brothers movie A Night at the Opera?
It includes the following exchange between Groucho and Chico (along with Harpo keen bridge players):
Groucho: “That’s in every contract, that’s what you call a sanity clause.”
Chico: “You can’t a fool a me there ain’t no sanity clause”
Now try your hand at this simple quiz and you may begin to understand why I have mentioned it.
You have the following hand as West at game all:
West | |
♠ | 10 8 6 5 |
♥ | A |
♦ | Q 10 6 3 |
♣ | K Q J 4 |
West | North | East | South |
1♠ | Pass | 1NT* | |
? | |||
*forcing |
Your mission, should you decide to accept is to guess what West decided to bid.
Is Pass not the correct answer?
Ok, pass is usual, so it can’t be that.
I’m also reluctant to choose 2C, because that would have a semblance of logic (perhaps West considered this a pre-balancing situation). Ditto 2NT for minors.
At the university of Warwick we had an award called ‘the chimp’ which was given to bids with [flawed] logic at the time that turned out very wrong in their outcome. So for this ‘guess the bid’ I choose, 2H, a planned psyche, expecting to SOSXX out of it to a “guaranteed fit.” That, in my opinion is the worst bid that might have reasoning behind it that I can think of!
2D 🙂
And follow up with a 3C bid, if needed and available 🙂
Did I get this one right?
Pass is obvious…but what about 2NT for the minors…burying the opps probable heart fit…
I can’t believe you got it Shyam. I have heard so many people try it and you actually found his bid.
Kudos! I know I am giving away the answer but it has been a while now since the result was published in the next Blog.