Monday, March 19, 2007

Canapé jump strikes

The CJO reared its head in the 2nd session pairs in Italy. All red, Precision 1D in front of me and I had:

Qxx
AJxx
AK98xx
-

I made a jump overcall of 2H showing 4H and longer undislosed minor (ca 11-15 hcp). Partner raised to 3 and I bid game of course. West led the J of C and dummy came down:

Kxx
K7xx
xx
Q98xx

Qxx
AJxx
AK98xx
-

Partner's raise was aggressive for sure. Winning pairs involves bidding thin games to a much larger extent than the textbook percentages suggest. Reasons for this includes declarer's advantage, sub-par leads and the frequency of less than perfect defence.

I ruffed and played 3 rounds of diamonds ruffing in dummy as West discarded a club. Ignoring the trump finesse I played the top trumps ending in hand as the queen dropped to my left. I left the last trump and made 5 by leading D's. LHO should have ruffed in but didn't. This was a top score, not so surprisingly, as even finding hearts was hard to do; bidding game even more so.

Maybe this convention should be called BJO - Best Jump Overcall's.

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