Mistaken View

316bridgeL

Right Siding in a bridge game.

I came across a interesting but fallacious bridge argument recently. See if you can detect the mistake.

You and your partner are silent and the opposition, at teams, bid 1clubs, 1spades, 2NT, 3NT and miss an easy 6 diamond contract.

The 2NT bidder has:

spades4 2
heartsA Q
diamondsA K 9 2
clubsK Q 8 7 2

In the discussion that followed, the justification for bidding 2NT was "to right side the contract and protect the heart 'ten-ace' of Ace and Queen".

Of course if the 2NT bidder had reversed into 2diamonds, partners likely bids would have been 2hearts (fourth suit forcing) without a heart stop and 2NT or 3NT with a heart stop. In either case there is no need to protect the heartsAQ by bidding 2NT after 1 spade.

In practice the partner of the 2NT bidder had 4 diamonds including the Queen, the black Aces and the heart King and we gained 13 imps on the hand. His riposte to his partner was "2NT denied 4 diamonds - let alone 4 good diamonds - so there was no chance of a diamond slam on your bidding.

Also what the 2NT bidder would not see was that the failure to reverse into diamonds guarantees at least 5 cards in the major suits as well as risking missing a club or diamond contract.

Enjoy your bridge.
R. Wells clubs diamonds Simple Tips with Big Impact hearts spades

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