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Quiz 131

Answer

Repeat framing … 

What’s your call? Not easy; your five spades are telling you to bid, but your lack of high cards is telling you to pass (also, your King of hearts appears poorly placed). An additional consideration is that if (as is likely) we have a nine-card spade fit, allowing East to declare two clubs is very likely to produce a poor matchpoint score.

We wouldn’t criticize a pass, but we would bid two spades, confident that we have at least an eight-card fit (and quite possibly a nine-card fit). It’s not likely that you can take eight tricks with spades as trumps, and bidding two spades here often will result in going down at three spades, but that might be a useful result. And if you buy the contract at two spades, that is quite likely to be a good result.

The full deal appears on the next page, with the actual auction from our table.

You can find more information about advancing partner’s takeout doubles in Chapter 4 of Real World Bridge 4: Competitive Bidding Part One.

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