"Hug Your Post(wo)man" by Marti Ronemus

Here's to the person you see six days a week, and probably don't even notice -- your PostPerson. Collectively, they deliver 154,000,000,000 pieces of mail a year! Imagine! And oh, the dangers they face.

Mailboxes are filled with danger, from wasps to (honest!) a snake. They are trained to use their satchels as defensive weapons against dogs -- and sometimes drunks who don't want that cable bill. They drive vehicles that are mostly 25-30 years old.

Surprisingly, cats also present a danger. They often lie in wait to swipe that hand putting mail through the slot. Many PostPeople wear a special glove for those houses.

They are also life savers. About 25 percent of PostPeople have called 911 when they saw something wrong at one of their regular deliveries.

And they love junk mail. They call it "job security mail."

Speaking of junk mail... we as bridge players need to be able to differentiate between junk hand and good hands.

Question 1

Your Hand
♠ J 4
♥ A J 2
♦ A K J 4
♣ J 5 3 2

Q: 1 - South:

South	West	North	East
?	-	-

A: 1♦: Yes, I know this hand has 15 high card points. BUT!! Let's talk about that elusive concept "texture." This hand gets 2 of its points from unsupported Jacks. 15 is a "crease" number, and can be upgraded to be considered an intermediate 16-18 point hand, or downgraded to be a 12-14 hand. (The other "crease" number is 10 for responder. Is it 6-9? Or is it 10-12? Depends...) We think this hand should be downgraded to a minimum opener, and doesn't quite deserve a 1 No-trump opener.

(This hand comes from one of our Faithful Readers, who opened it 1 No-trump, and his Pard, with only 3 points, but five worthless Spades transferred him. The results were down 2, vul and doubled. How's THAT for a piece of junk mail?)

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 2

Your Hand
♠ A 8 5 4 3
♥ Q 8
♦ 7 4
♣ Q J 9 4

Q: 2 - South:

South	West	North	East
-	-	1♥	Pass
1♠	Pass	2♦	Pass
?

A: 2♥: We are not expecting to get much with this hand. Pard has shown nine (plus) cards in two suits. We need to choose which of his suits we want. When we support Hearts, he won't be expecting us to have three. If we did, we would have supported him immediately.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 3

Your Hand
♠ A 8 5 4 3
♥ Q 8
♦ K 4
♣ Q 10 9 4

Q: 3 - South:

South	West	North	East
-	-	1♥	Pass
1♠	Pass	2♦	Pass
?

A: 2 No-trump: What a difference a King makes! Now we don't have to choose a suit. We can bid 2 No-trump, which suggests stoppers in the unbid suit, and shows 10-12 points. Perfect! Lots of checks in this delivery.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 4

Your Hand
♠ A Q J 10 8 7 4
♥ Q 10 8 7
♦ 3
♣ 5

Q: 4 - South:

South	West	North	East
?

A: 4♠: For those of us who learned not to preempt with an outside four-card major, Eddie Kantar suggests otherwise. "A preempt in one major denies four cards in the other major-- unless the longer suit is independent and can play easily opposite a singleton in partner's hand."

Your result so far:

Open Question

Question 5

Your Hand
♠ J 9 7 6 4 3 2
♥ A K 10 8
♦ 4
♣ 9

Q: 5 - South:

South	West	North	East
?	-	-

A: Pass: Following up on our last question, Eddie shows this as an example you'd have to pass. It has a lousy suit, with the outside four-card major, and to add to the misery, two defensive tricks outside the bid suit.

So, continuing our good mail/bad mail theme, our hand is an example of what happens to good people who do good things.

Your result so far:

Open Question

Play this Hand

Now that you've bid five hands, let's see how your play goes.

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Overall Results

Your results: out of Average:

What next? You may enjoy playing our prepared hands series.
More informations on our website: www.VuBridge.com

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