Preempting in a Nutshell

By Helen Chow

If you had 9 high card points, one mediocre 6-card minor suit, a singleton, and you are the first person to bid, what would you bid? Would you even consider bidding? Before we jump into that, here is the link to the hands to follow along. We’ll be discussing Board 2 from August 11th’s team game.

Table 1: “My table”

Table 2: “Other table”

At my table, East, holding 9 high card points, one mediocre 6-card minor suit, a singleton, chooses to preempt in diamonds. South overcalls 2S and North responds 3H. South makes a non-forcing bid of 3S and the auction ends there. 

Preempts take up space, not allowing the opponents to show as much through bidding. To make a preempt, I recommend having 5-10 points and a six card suit when bidding on the two-level, a seven card suit on the three-level, and an eight card suit on the four-level. Here, 3S is not strong enough for South’s hand. The preempt makes it hard to show South’s amazing 20 HCP which can be evaluated to be around 25 points. South technically can’t make a takeout double or cue bid here, so South is left to simply overcall 2S. However, I think doubling, then bidding 2S over North’s 2H wouldn’t be too bad; it’s probably the best we can do to our ability. 

Back to the hand: Regardless of what North bids, South must make a game-forcing bid or go to game himself. There’s little to no ways that I know of to not miss slam or show South’s values. The preempt was effective here because it didn’t allow NS to find their spade fit early on and explore higher in the bidding.

On the contrary, East at the other table chooses to pass instead of preempt, giving NS more space to make their way to slam. However, they kind of blew their chance. As shown in their bidding above, South made a jump to 4S. I would interpret that as a sign-off rather than showing a ton of values. I would argue that a jump to 3S would have been forcing for one round and showing 17+ points. NS can bid cue-bid a few times and land in slam. 

Both tables ended up making 6, but neither bid there. At least one of them got the game bonus though. Ten IMPs to Team 1.