This week's clanger involves a truly awful bidding sequence achieved by Mike Scanlon and Michael Birch.
See if you can work out a way of ending in 7
redoubled by East/West:
Ordinarily East will open a minor (probably clubs) and rebid 2NT, after West puts in a 1
response.
West probably feels a little uneasy about NT with his singleton spade, but also sees that he must find a game contract:
he either overcomes his fears and bids 3NT or bids 3
(esp. if partner opens 1
). At any rate, 3NT or 5
both seem
reasonable contracts at the bidding stage; the 5-0 Diamond break makes 5
an unfortunate choice as it turns out.
So what happened in cloud cuckoo land?
Mike S. sitting East makes a mechanical error by accidentally pulling out the 2
card and not realising.
(Playing 5 card-majors, 1
is the correct bid.) Michael Birch, sitting West bids a bizarre 2
: weak, pass forcing,
no diamond support - not the bid which describes his hand. Mike now tries to make up for his error by putting
in 3NT, (right place to play), and Michael (reasonably enough) bids 5
. This is doubled due to the 5-0 split.
Now things get really messed up.
Mike runs to 5NT: well if you're in a hole you may as well keep digging.
Michael, not trusting partner, bids 6
which, of course, is doubled. The redouble is one of the worst bids
I have ever seen: what's the point in jumping in a hole if you can jump off a cliff instead?
Mike realises that 7
X will achieve a better score than 6
XX, so bids on.
Sadly Michael doesn't seem to be on the same (or any) wavelength and the final contract goes a disastrous five off,
for 2800 to North-South, 21 Imps in the match.
A curious 5
contract by East went two off at the other table thanks to some aggressive pre-empting by South (and inept bidding on the part of East/West).
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