Ugh

[rod]

Monday afternoon at the club, board 1 presented difficult bidding problems and a variety of results.

North deals, nobody vulnerable.

♠ 76
♥ 653
♦ AK10653
♣ 43

♠ KJ2
♥ K94
♦ Q82
♣ 9652

♠ Q1084
♥ AQJ
♦ J
♣ KQJ107

♠ A953
♥ 10872
♦ 974
♣ A8

North's hand is a textbook 2♦ opening but at our table she passed; probably playing one of those abominable strong and artificial 2♦ conventions.

So I opened 1♣ and partner responded 1NT, opponents staying silent.

It's hard to know if partner's best suit is clubs or diamonds (my opening promised only 2 cards), but my thinking was that notrump scores better than clubs, and too much bidding around will only help the defence. I rebid 2NT and partner raised to 3NT.

This played very poorly after North led 4th best.

If instead I had rebid a more scientific 2♠, partner then has a bidding problem. In light of the spade fit 3♣ seems too conservative. 4♣ gives up on 3NT. Is ♦Q82 a stopper? Is ♥K94 a good enough stopper? 3♣, 3♥, 3♠, 3NT and 4♣ all seem plausible.

With questionable values in the red suits I like 4♣ best, but that's easy to say when looking at all the cards. What do you think?

And I suppose East should pass 4♣ with only one Ace and one King. This is all a very narrow path to the best result. In this game nobody ended in clubs below the 5-level.

Finally, before trashing my 2NT call too badly, consider the case where I have a small diamond instead of a small club. Then everyone would open 1NT and end in the just-as-bad 3NT contract, but might have made it only because South would be on lead and probably wouldn't lead a diamond.

[rod]

Also, it's interesting to think about what the sequence 1♣ - 1NT - 2NT should mean.

Opener cannot have 15-17 balanced, as that would call for a 1NT opening. They cannot have 18-19 balanced because that would be too strong for a 2NT rebid.

Therefore opener must be unbalanced. Furthermore a singleton diamond is likely, otherwise you'll have a guaranteed 3-1 or 2-1 fit in a major suit which is likely to play poorly in notrump.