Wednesday, November 12, 2003 5:14 AM

Hand Evaluation – Q Bids ( Implied )

PITBULLS:

Two hands came up tonight that merit some discussion . One involves an “advanced Q bid” and the other an advanced sacrifice. The first hand involves a rare concept which is an implied Q bid when circumstances change in an auction. I held

♠Axx ♥Kxx ♦Kx ♣QJxxx

Partner opens 1♣ vul , RHO bids 2♥ . Normally Q biding their suit shows a limit raise or better in our suit but I chose not to do it in this hand. When I bid 3♥ partner can be very poorly placed with flat minimums and no heart stopper. This could propel us past 3NT which may be are only makeable game. So I jumped to 3NT which brought about 4♥ to my left so around to me again. We contracted for a vul game, so forcing passes are on . Partners pass means that he prefers offense to defense & shows one or less hearts . You bid 5♣ now right ? Wrong ! Your hand is too good. You should make an implied Q bid of 4♠ first to let partner in the picture. You get rewarded as partner bids 6♣ which makes for 1370.

Partners hand is ♠QJxx ♥void ♦Axxx ♣AKxxx . He does not know how severe the duplication of value is in hearts , so his pass is the right action . When I double 4♥ , he takes his +800 so on to the next hand. When I bid 5♣ , I put him in a guessing situation for slam when I did not have to do so . Q bid along the way to your game.

Implied Q bids are dangerous though. I avoid them like the plague unless they are very easy to read ( above auction ) . Partner will & should take implied Q bids as suits 99 % of the time. Confusion quite often results so an advanced or implied Q bid is pretty rare.

Same match our partners held this hand ♠xxx ♥Q10xxx ♦xxxx ♣x , heard partner open 2♥ not vul against vul. Vul RHO overcalls 2♠ . Your call ? Two schools of thought on these sort of hands. One is that you conceal your big fit in hopes that you do not push them to their slam . This would be good thinking if you have a trick . With this hand , you should be trying to prevent them from getting to 7♠ ! An advance sacrifice of 5♥ is in order which takes away their Blackwood for exploring seven . This bid of course takes away their Q bid to show a big hand. The opponents hand was ♠Qxx ♥A ♦AKQJ ♣KJxxx & when the jam bid was not forthcoming , they bid Blackwood so the grand was reached at both tables for a push. Wasted opportunity for picking up 12 IMPS !!