Deal Of The Week: December 14, 2023

A Tool For Bidding Practice

Richard Pavlicek's Wheeler Dealer!

Bridge at clubs and tournaments has been coming back and after moving in Summer 2023 and being almost as busy in the Fall as I was before the pandemic, it has been a while since I wrote one of these. So, here is a free Christmas present for you, a useful online tool to help you practice bidding with your partner.

It looks more complicated than it is. Basically, the plan is simple:

• Have the Wheeler Dealer produce a random set of deals
• Use the controls to set things up so that the deals produced will be suitable for one side: you might want slam hands, or balanced hands, or hands where a certain convention will come up that you want to practice. Or you could just make a set of random hands. More on the controls below.
• Enter a seed number at the bottom and click 'Use' to ensure that the same list of random deals will come up every time. Best is to use a YYMMDD date like 231214. This ensures that the program will always deal the same set of hands as long as the same seed number is used.
• Click on a suitable number of deals to generate from the options 1, 4, 8, 16, and 24.
• Click on the button between 'Show' and 'W' to view ONLY the West cards for the generated deals.
• Send your partner the controls you have selected and the seed number and the link so that partner can generate the East hands.
• Practice bidding, either on the phone, or even better on e-mail!

The seed number 231214 produces the following West hands (generating four only):

1.  ♠ A K 8 7   ♥ Q 5 2   ♦ A 9 2   ♣ K J T

2.  ♠ A K T 9 4 3   ♥ Q J 9 6 4   ♦ J   ♣ 6

3.  ♠ K J 8 7 5 4   ♥ Q T 8 2   ♦ 4   ♣ A T

4.  ♠ Q 5   ♥ 8 3   ♦ 8 5 4 3 2   ♣ Q 8 5 4

If we type 15-17 under HCP in the white box, and 0-2 in the white box just to the left under the word 'Freakness' we can limit the West hands to 1NT openers (a freakness of 0-2 limits the hand to balanced or semibalanced distributions). We'll still get the same West hands but the last three will be discarded and new ones from the series begun by the seed number will appear instead:

1.  ♠ A K 8 7   ♥ Q 5 2   ♦ A 9 2   ♣ K J T

2.  ♠ K 6   ♥ Q 3 2   ♦ Q 5 3   ♣ A K J 9 2

3.  ♠ Q 8 7   ♥ 9 4   ♦ A K 9 8 2   ♣ A K 8

4.  ♠ A T 6   ♥ 7 6   ♦ A K T 2   ♣ K J T 9

The plan is to send partner the seed number and the controls used and let partner view the East hands only. Now we can exchange e-mails with bids, and see if we can eventually get to the right contract.

Hi partner:
As we discussed, I generated four hands for us to bid to help you in responses to 1NT. Go to rpbridge.net/cgi-bin/xwd1.pl, type 231214 in the box beside 'Seed', check 'Use', then type 0-2 in the first box under freakness and 15-17 in the first box under HCP. Now click on the box beside E right of the word Show (this will show you only the East hands), and then click 'Deal.' You'll see four hands, save them to a file and we'll bid these starting with me opening 1NT on all four of them.

(The other player in this partnership follows the instructions and sees this:)

1.  ♠ T 6 2   ♥ A 7 6   ♦ K 7 6   ♣ 9 6 4 3

2.  ♠ A Q 8 7 4 3   ♥ —   ♦ A K 8 7 6   ♣ Q T

3.  ♠ J 9   ♥ Q J T 3   ♦ Q J 5 4   ♣ Q 7 3

4.  ♠ J 8 7 3   ♥ T   ♦ 9 8 6 3   ♣ A 7 6 5

OK pard, here are my responses: On #1 I am going to pass 1NT. On #2 I am responding 2♥. On #3 I am bidding 2♣. And on #4 I am passing again.

Hey partner: looks like we're playing 1NT on #1 and #4. Here are the other two auctions after my rebid: #2: 1NT - 2♥, 2♠; and #3: 1NT - 2♣, 2♦. Your turn. (We'll look at #1 and #4 at the end and see how we did on all four at the same time.)

OK, here's where we are: #1: 1NT - pass, #2: 1NT - 2♥, 2♠ - 3♦, #3: 1NT - 2♣, 2♦ - 2NT, #4: 1NT - pass. Your turn.

I'm bidding 3NT on #3 which I suspect will end the auction, but on #2 I am bidding 4♦ and I await your next call.

Over 4♦ I am bidding 4♥.

5♣ over 4♥.

5♥.

5♠

Wow. Not sure I would try this in a game, but ... 7♦! How'd we do? (Or are you bidding more?)

Nope. To view the full deal, click the box beside V4 instead of just the E box. On #1 we're in 1NT and we should make it despite some wild distribution. On #2 we got to 7♦ which is a nice contract except that trumps break 5-0! But I like our bidding, cuebidding stuff and failing only because of a bad break. 7♠ also goes down on a 4-1 break; really unlucky hand. On #3 3NT is untouchable, even if they lead three rounds of spades we have a spade stopper and eight more tricks in clubs and diamonds. On #4 we stopped in 1NT and they get to cash five heart tricks and then lead a spade and it's going to come down to the club finesse, which can be taken either way but few will play king and then run the jack to the doubleton queen, so it should make. Opponents can make 3♥ on the hand, so making would be a good result.

We should do this often on other types of hands. Can we set it up so either of us might get the 1NT opener?

Yes, the Swap button does that.

Can we have the opponents come into the bidding and make it harder?

I guess so, we could each view two hands, West and North, and East and South, and bid our hands and then put in a bid from the next opponent's hand.

It looks like we can set ranges for highcard points and distributions too, and maybe try a set of slam hands!

Or we could try rebids of 1NT and check our New Minor Forcing conventions.

Maybe four deals isn't enough; we could do eight and really have some fun!

OK, I'll see about arranging a set and let you know.

Great.

You could be quite simple and give both players 11 or more highcard points and you'd have an interesting set of deals where they might be partscores, games, or slams. Or you could set up long suits and practice pre-emptive bidding. Instead of e-mail, you could do this on the phone and get through a bunch of hands in an hour. It's a nice little utility for practicing.