[DavidKok]

Here's a deal from last Wednesday that I thought was interesting. I will impose the auction we had at the table on you, rotated to make South the declarer:

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West leads the ♥6, attitude leads. Plan the play.
As a big hint:

Spoiler

Both East and West have bid in what I consider to be suboptimal ways, taking conservative routes where aggression might be rewarded. At the table I knew these opponents and was able to diagnose this somewhat before playing to trick 1.

[DavidKok]

After the overwhelming barrage of responses I'll finally spill the beans.

My plan was to score 4 clubs (so far so good), 1 heart, 3 diamonds and 1 spade. I need to throw West in for the spade trick, and I can't afford to let East put a spade through or my throw-in doesn't work. Without the throw-in I'm reduced to playing for both diamond honours onside, which is terribly against the odds both a priori and on the auction.
The key action is the play to trick one: we can't afford to hold up. If East gains the lead and puts a spade through we're done. We are playing for a 1-6 heart split, so that West cannot play another heart after gaining the lead with a diamond or a spade later.

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So up with the ace and run the ♦T. West wins the ♦J and returns a club. We cash all four rounds of clubs, finesse the ♦K, cash the ace and the last diamond, then play the ♠K and wait for West to give us our 9th trick.
There were several points I found interesting on this deal:

• Would you open the North hand?
  
• Would you bid 3NT with the South hand?
  
• East should definitely bid, but the lead places all the heart honours with East. There is a distribution with hearts 2-5 compatible with the lead where you can still make - do you want to play for that instead? Or is there enough information before playing to trick 1 to be confident in this exact distribution?

[mike777]

Very interesting and informative, ty for sharing.

First I was surprised one diamond was not some transfer thingy, smile. Would have responded 2nt the first time, if 12-13 balanced.
Secondly surprised no support X by north over 1S.

As for the 3NT bid, stoppers? who needs stinking stoppers. smile.

North must have something in hearts but this was nice.

[DavidKok]

mike777, on 2025-July-12, 12:45, said:

First I was surprised one diamond was not some transfer thingy, smile. Would have responded 2nt the first time, if 12-13 balanced.

I've played T-Walsh for quite a while. I played a version with the same base mikeh also plays (though long before I heard he played it too), with some relay gadgets and followups to make the most of the bidding space. It's nice, but not as good as Dutch Doubleton. As a fun little fact, DD is also legal in more places.
However, this evening I was playing with an enthusiastic but inexperienced partner, and we stuck with a simpler natural system. Nominally we open 12-counts and good 11's, so with 12 opposite it pays to force to game. 2NT here would have been a garbage raise of clubs (0-5 HCP, 5(+)♣ but usually 6).

mike777, on 2025-July-12, 12:45, said:

Secondly surprised no support X by north over 1S.

This is an age-old question: do you play support X'es of diamonds on 1♣-(P)-1♦-(1M); ?. In this partnership the answer was simple as we don't play support doubles at all. This is also my personal preference: I think support doubles are quick and easy to agree to, but ideally I make other agreements about doubles in those situations. I've also had some bad experiences with confusion on the followups - e.g. 1♦-(P)-1♠-(2♥); X*-(P)-3♣ shows what exactly? Or 1♣-(P)-1♠-(2♥); X*-(P)-3♣, where we play Walsh and 1♣ was 2(+)?

mike777, on 2025-July-12, 12:45, said:

As for the 3NT bid, stoppers? who needs stinking stoppers. smile.

North must have something in hearts but this was nice.

Yes, this was another point on this hand. I've been taught this under the name 'hand type first'. The principle claims that we want to tell partner about our hand type - balanced, semibalanced, single-suited, two-suited, the rare three-suited - rather than about stoppers. With balanced opposite balanced, game forcing values and no major suit fit usually 3NT is the best contract. On competitive auctions this is especially true if the opponents fail to raise their partners' suit - if they don't have the suit wrapped up, maybe our own partner has the stopper.

[mike777]

When you have the time could you please expand on transfers over a nebulous club systems and Dutch Doubleton, what they are and why you prefer DD?

[DavidKok]

I've written some about Dutch Doubleton a few years ago on these fora. Note that there is a mistake: I play 1♣-1♦; 1♥-1♠; 2♥ as showing a club-hearts reverse, not the 5♥6♣ as I wrote back then.

Regarding T-Walsh, this pdf is a solid introduction, albeit different from what I prefer. I might write about transfers over 1♣ some time. One key issue with writing about T-Walsh is that there are easily thousands of variants. More accurately, it feels like each partnership invents their own structure. There are some main families of options, and within those some choices are more mainstream than others, but at the end of the day there's a lot of options.

Regarding DD vs T-Walsh, I find that DD is better as it gives more options with very weak facing very strong hands, and it allows opener to better describe their hand (e.g. the BW Death hand, or different shades of minimum-versus-not-quite-minimum unbalanced openers). Especially the modern versions of DD have room for an absolutely insane amount of gadgets, though personally I only play a select few of those. Dutch Doubleton handles the split of 'showing' versus 'asking' very well, which allows for no-information-leakage auctions as desired, or highly detailed dialogue actions as desired. In T-Walsh I more often found myself sitting in no man's land, where neither me nor my partner knew whether to blast or to be scientific. Our solution back then was basically a relay system, placing the entire burden with responder. I think that's not very good, but it looked really fancy.

Lastly on balanced club, unbalanced diamond: personally I think this is a good change to make even without any specialised tools, and conversely that adopting specialised tools over 1♣ is beneficial regardless of how often you get to open it. The two do reinforce one another though, and ultimately I prefer adopting both. The unbalanced diamond also allows for some nifty followup bidding, such as my preferred Gazzilli 1NT rebid or the more widely seen transfer rebids starting with 1NT.

[mike777]

Thank you so much.
Will take a deeper look later.

I know Chip Martel really loves his transfers over club, unbalanced D system. He would also at least consider playing a strong club system.

Unfortunately he has said his couple of years playing with Zia just did not work.

Don't know his feelings on DD. I understand it is an evolution of Polish Club.