NS Vul E Dealer	♠ ♥ 10 9 8 4 3 2 ♦ A K J 5 3 ♣ J 8
♠ A K 5 ♥ A J 5 ♦ 10 9 6 ♣ K 9 6 4		♠ J 10 9 7 6 ♥ Q 6 ♦ Q 8 7 ♣ Q 3 2
	♠ Q 8 4 3 2 ♥ K 7 ♦ 4 2 ♣ A 10 7 5

¹ E/W play 16-18 for 1NT
² Overcall – strong suit
³ Meant for penalties
⁴ Thinking the X was takeout
⁵ Panic bid

Not good bidding but what should North’s first bid be?

Basic System: Standard American.

North has been taught that an overcall must be a solid suit and therefore did not consider Hearts.

South did not believe that X after two passes would be read as take out and realised that North had bid thinking it was for take out. Consequently he did not see North as holding 6 hearts.

Many players got this hand wrong – other bids were 2NT (W), 2♥ (N), 3NT (W), 3♠ (E), 4♥ (N), 3♥ (N), 2♠ (E). Only successful contracts were – 2♥ (making 10 tricks) and 2♠ (making 9 tricks). What should North bid?

Hi Warwick,

Some interesting points here on this hand.

– Firstly, 1-level overcalls don’t require suit quality. This is because the aim of the overcall is to try to find a fit. Because the level is so low (at 1-level) no one really doubles for penalties, so sometimes it is important to overcall a bad 5-card suit if you have enough “strength” – meaning at least 8+HCP. For example, you might have 13 HCP and a bad 5-card suit, you definitely would not want to pass so you have to overcall in your bad 5-card suit.

Because suit quality isn’t that important, the lower your HCP is (say 8), then you should have either a good distribution or a good suit to compensate for the lack of strength. The more HCP you have, then you don’t really need extra distribution nor a good suit.

However, this only applies for 1-level overcalls. For 2-level overcalls and higher, suit quality now probably comes the most important factor to consider for overcalling!

Thus, with North’s actual hand, I would definitely overcall 1♥ as it is the longer suit (due to the 6-5 distribution, it is still possible that a potential 4♥ game could be makeable!).

– South’s double can be quite murky as it is a bit of a convoluted auction, and I doubt many players would have discussed what this double means. One clue that you can gather from this is that South did NOT double (or make a bid) over East’s initial 1♠ bid. This means that South did not have any sort of Takeout type of shape. As a result, when the 2♠ bid came around to East, this double should probably be played as penalties. Even if North was not sure about what the double was, North’s spade void should have been a clue that South has a bucket load of spades!

– Having said the above, South however should NOT double for penalties (even if the double was understood as penalties by both partners). Why? Well, North only made a simple 1♦ overcall. It’s true that South has five trumps, but those aren’t great trumps – Q8432 might only be just two trump tricks on defence, and even with the ♣A and ♥K coupled with the strength from the 1♦ overcall, the defence might just scrape taking down 2♠X by only one trick: Is turning +50 into +100 worth it? No it isn’t, because that’s usually the best case scenario, but in many other scenarios 2♠X will make and sometimes with an overtrick! If the spades were Q10987, then that would be an entirely different story!

– Note that after the misunderstanding of the X, North had now bid 3♥. Imagine if North had overcalled 1♥ first. Now, when the misunderstanding of the X occurred, North would’ve now bid 3♦, to which South will then correct it back to 3♥ (preference to the first suit) and you would have landed in a 6-2 fit. That’s another reason for North to overcall 1♥, not 1♦, as it is always important to bid your longest suit first (or the higher ranking suit first with 5-5).

My suggested auction would probably be:

Hope that helps,
Andy