He who guesses last (Part II) …

Here’s a second illustration of the benefit of making the opponents have the last guess in the auction.

At favorable vulnerability, you hear your partner open 2♦, weak.  RHO overcalls 3♣ and you hold ♠T2, ♥AKJ76, ♦J864, ♣72.  What do you call?

I see two options: one option is to offer 3♥, getting partner off to your side’s probable best lead should LHO next introduce the spade suit; a second option is to preempt higher in diamonds, by bidding 4♦ (or even 5♦ if that is your wont).  Each option has merit.

Let’s say that you choose the first option, to bid 3♥.  The auction continues:

What do you now call?

Here is where, IMHO, enters the principle of making the opponents make the last guess.  If you should bid 5♦ here, the next decision by the opponents will not be a guess.  The opponents know quite a bit about the hand: West knows that East has clubs and has spade support; each opponent knows that your hand has heart values and diamond support.  Your LHO can use that knowledge to judge well whether to compete further in spades (an attractive choice by West with, say, heart shortness and club length and some extra values … not to mention extra spade length or a diamond void), or to double your side in 5♦ (an attractive choice by West with, say, 2 to 3 hearts, limited club length and only moderate strength), or to pass the decision on to your RHO (an attractive choice by West when his hand is somewhere between).

At the table, South, chose to bid 5♦.  West had an easy double.

Alas, the sacrifice was phantom: 4♠ was sure to lose the first four tricks in the red suits.  Meanwhile 5♦X lost four top black suit cards and a trump for -500.

It is unclear still whether 3♥ was the best choice at South’s first turn.  Unless West is a player who just can’t be shut out of the bidding (and they are quite a few of those at the local club … players who come not to defend but to declare), a jump to 4♦ at South’s first turn would have resulted in West’s passing … but if East, who has a singleton diamond, competed further with a takeout double, West might have then bid 4♠ or might have converted the double to penalty: who knows?

The motivation behind this entry, however, is to focus not on South’s first call, but rather on the parlay of South’s chosen calls:  once South chose to bid 3♥ at his first turn, he should have passed at his next turn.  The auction parlay chosen by South violated the principle of making the opponents have the last guess.