My first session with Kathy
I am mentoring Kathy as part of the BIL program on BBO. Anyone interested in being a mentor or having a mentor should go to www.bilbridge.com
I think I have the nicest student that ever was. I was still figuring everything out so we held our first session at a teaching table in the main BBO room. As it would happen Jahangir Ahmed from the Pakistan Open team was our West. He was quite happy to help out. Thanks Jahangir! Both Kathy and I wish you the very best in Beijing.
The purpose of the session was to learn more about Kathy’s game. She played very well. After the session when we talked in a chat room we decided to focus on her bidding. I was surprised that Kathy didn’t know any conventions at all with the exception of Stayman and Blackwood.
We did walkthrough some of the points from our session yesteday in the chat room but today I spent a few hours and walked through every hand in detail.
I had some sections I called advance which got further into a subject than you might normally go with intermediates. My idea is that Kathy can have a look at these sections and ignore them if she isn’t ready for them yet. I don’t know if this is really a good idea but it seemed worth a try. It is also hard for me to know yet what is and isn’t advanced for Kathy. Here is an example from the notes I sent.
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| ♠ Q8 |
| ♥ 1083 |
| ◊ Q87 |
| ♣ AQJ83 |
With 11 HCP you passed in first chair. This hand is worth about 12 total points with an extra point for the fifth club.
Rule of 20:
This rule says take your high card points and add the length of your two longest suits and if it adds up to 20 then open it. Here you would get 19; 11HCP and 8 length points (5+3). .
| Advanced thinking
Should you open a hand like this. I am an aggressive bidder so I like to use the rule of 19 instead of the rule of 20. I also think about other things on borderline hands.
So you can see this hand is really borderline. Overall especially because of rule 3 I would not open. |
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Several interesting ideas came up. For example,
| ♠ K |
| ♥ J108 |
| ◊ AQ109853 |
| ♣ 106 |
Kathy held this hand in fourth chair and opened 3◊. She didn’t realize that she was in fourth chair and could pass it out. But it got us talking a little bit about preempting in third chair. We talked about what a weak 2 bid might look like. I probably would just pass this hand out but if it was just a little different I might open 2◊.
| ♠ 10 |
| ♥ KJ8 |
| ◊ AQ109853 |
| ♣ 106 |
What about this hand? What do you think? There is also a question about what bids by responder mean in this situation.
I have to confess that I couldn’t resist talking about Western cuebids on a hand where it is appropriate. I know that was a bit much but I did put it in an advanced box.
| Advanced:
A cuebid of an opponent’s suit at the three-level is often used to ask partner for a stopper for 3NT. This is called a Western cuebid. |
I had a lot of fun and I admit that the playing was more fun than the writing up. I also learned that Kathy is a very good intermediate player and we have decided to focus on bidding.
Next week we will be working on bidding over an opening bid of 1NT.