Bid More with a 6-4!

Pair competition
Oudkarspel
September 10, 2002

I just started a new partnership and with 56%, 58% and 64% I do not have any reason to complain. In the third session I pick up

1097x Kxx - J10xxxx

My left hand opponent opens 1, partner doubles and right hand opponent raises to 4. Now what?

I decided that although my hand only contains 4 points (which were probably worthless) the hand was good enough to bid 4. May be not everyones choice, but the Law of Total Tricks and/or the Losing Trick Count seemed to be in my favour.

I really started to wonder if I had done the right thing when partner grabbed his stack of bidding cards and put me in 6. This became doubled and redoubled. The contract was easily made, because partner tabled:

AQJx - AKxxx Axxx

This resulted in a nice +2070 our way. Obviously much better than the table which bid: pass - 1 - pass - pass - pass!