Artur Wasiak is a bridge expert from Poland who has won the European Junior Championship and has many good finishes in junior and open events. Artur is also a certified international tournament director.

Artur didn’t have the chance to record a video, but he kindly provided his thoughts on the most interesting moments of each board of today’s daily…

1

Obvious raise to 3♦. If I passed, the opponents would usually bid and make some contract in one of the major suits.

2

Simple forcing defence. Declarer could save one trick in the ending by playing the established heart instead of the ♠J.

3

In my opinion, it’s a borderline opening hand. I decided to open 1♠ to match what I think would be a choice of the majority of the players. After strong 2♠ (1♠-2♣-2♥-2♠) it’s good to have some relay agreements to show both strength and distribution but playing a simple system I just showed by 5th heart. Then it was time to show a weak hand (4♠).

I had 11 tricks and many chances for the 12th. The simplest of them is the finesse against the ♥Q but there are also some squeeze possibilities. The practical way to use both chances (♥Q in West hand or longer hearts with longer clubs) is to play ♥J from hand at some point. West will sometimes cover with the ♥Q if she has it. If not, my plan was to take ♥A, ♥K, ♦K, get back to hand with ♣K and play the last spade. The defender with the ♥Q and long clubs will be squeezed.

In this case, singleton ♥Q fell so the problem disappeared quickly.

4

The SOS redouble will not always be a good decision but in this case, it worked perfectly.

I didn’t play for ♥K finesse because I knew that West has a singleton heart (5♣4♠ known from the bidding and ♣9 lead revealing 6-2 clubs distribution).

5

At IMPs my 3♣ bid would be obvious. Playing BAM, I considered a practical bid of 3NT after 2♠.

After my 3♣ North could bid 3♠ and we would end in 4♠ contract. After 4♣ there was a chance for slam (for example, North hand ♠AKxx ♥Ax ♦xxx ♣Axxx). Maybe this chance was too small to bid a 4♦ cue bid?

I’m also not convinced what is the best choice after 4♠. For sure you can consider passing.

By the way, transfers after Stayman would be convenient with this hand. The bidding would start 1NT-2♣-2♠-2NT-3♣-3♦ where 2NT is a transfer to clubs and 3♦ shows short diamonds. That’s what Krzysztof Martens [renowned bridge theoretician] proposed for bidding after 1NT opening (of course there are complications with invitational hands with 4 hearts so the pair needs to adapt the whole structure).