In a 1999 district-level qualifier for what was then the North American Open Pairs, I dealt myself the following hand, red on white at matchpoints:
A K Q J 10 9
-
-
K J 9 8 7 5 3
What do you do with this thing? I chose to open 1. Not 1
, because I am much
more interested in partner's club holding than his spades, and certainly
not 2
, because I expect a lot of bidding and
want to get my suits in.
I was not surprised when LHO overcalled 4
,
passed back around to me.
I bid 5.
That woke everyone up. LHO asked my partner, Eugene Hung, what that
meant. "I have no idea," said Eugene.
After considering, LHO tossed in a double, and Eugene bid 6. RHO bid 6
I passed. It had to be forcing after my 5
bid.
Eugene bid 7
.
LHO doubled and led the A, whereupon Eugene
tabled
x x x x
x x
x x x
A Q x x
What a partner! I quickly claimed thirteen tricks for +2330.
This was not quite a top. Another table conducted a similar auction,
except that the player with my cards got greedy and redoubled 7. The opponents got cold feet and ran to 7
, whereupon my hand bid 7
--- introducing the suit for the first time at the seven-level.
This too was doubled and redoubled, and made for +2940 on the
diamond-ace lead. However, opening leader could have set 7
-XX by giving his partner a club ruff! Meanwhile,
spades broke 2-1, so 7
was laydown.