[Ant590]

Each of the following hands involved two different interpretations of an auction, and some misunderstandings

HAND 1

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For now ignore the quality of the 2♥ bid. What is 4NT?
North thought it was choice of minors, and chose clubs.
South thought it was keycard, and thought north had one ace

HAND 2

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For now ignore the quality of the 2♥ bid. What is 5♥?
North thought it asked for trump quality.
South thought it showed asked for a diamond control for a ♥ slam

Poll above for whether you agree with North or South on each of these hands. For the option you don't think each is / should be, how do you bid it on each hand?

General comments about the bidding welcome too

[Codo]

Do not care too much about the meaning of 5 ♥ before you get the basics right.

Hand 1: This is no diamond raisem, this is crap.
Without prior agreement, I would take 4 NT as RCKB. THis may not be best, but it may be a default agreement. But whatever it is, natural or whatever It is surely not asking for a different strain after I had found one already.

Hand2: The north hand is ugly to bid. You have the values for 1 NT, but after LHO bids 1 ♦ you would need stoppers too. So I had choosen an ugly 2 ♣, not the overbid of 2♥. 5 ♥ was a bad bid. Partner may hold xx, KJxx,Kx,AKQJx and you will be in 6 something missing two aces. He may hold so much that a GS is possible and you have no way to find it out any more.

[olegru]

I cannot see what can be discussed in the 1st board. Sorry, but 2♥ bid from North simply ridiculous. His thoughts about meaning of 4NT bid are in a good match with quality of his previous bidding
The second board is more interesting one. Meaning of 5♥ bid, I guess depends on partnership agreement. For my partnership it is trump quality asking. For us (I hope) future bidding would be easy:
4♣ from South, agreeing ♥, showing the ♣ control and asking North to show his nearest control.
Now 4♥ from North deny the ♦ control and South have to pass it out.

[mgoetze]

On hand 2, if South can show a forcing heart raise at the 3-level, then 5♥ directly should ask for trump quality (as South could show the forcing raise then use cuebids to find out about a diamond control). If South can't show a forcing heart raise, then 5♥ as asking for a diamond control makes more sense.

[HighLow21]

Honestly neither action is really debatable.

In Hand 1, since trumps were agreed, 4NT is unequivocally ace asking.

In Hand 2: a raise to 5 of a major WITHOUT interference is a trump quality inquiry. A raise to 5 of a major with ONE intervening suit bid by the opponents is a control inquiry.

This is assuming no partnership agreements, of course, but from the context of your post it is obvious you don't have any.

In terms of comments about the bidding: North's actions and interpretations are atrocious, pretty much across the board. I like South's bidding (assuming the RKC agreement in effect is 1430, not 0314), but 5♥ is a terrible overbid IMO.

[HighLow21]

deleted

[jmcw]

Without discussion I would expect.
4NT to be Keycard
5♥ seeking slam with a ♦ stop.

North seemingly has different ideas, on 1 his judgement is awful, this is a PASS all day.

North's 2♥ is a bit overbid IMO, and I don't much care for 5♥ either (3♥ for me). Can North have,

xx
AKxx
A
AKTxxx

[Phil]

I don't understand why either hand was posted. The number of calls that were sensible were far outnumbered by the outrageous actions.

If you were to ask, "assign the blame", I would answer, "yes".

[HighLow21]

Phil, on 2012-March-15, 13:49, said:

I don't understand why either hand was posted. The number of calls that were sensible were far outnumbered by the outrageous actions.

If you were to ask, "assign the blame", I would answer, "yes".

Hahaha the question is whether you have enough blame to assign before you run out of it.

[MrAce]

OP specifically told us to ignore the quality of the bids. So i am assuming he/she intended to ask the meaning of these last bids in an auction like this. As Phil said it would be better to ask this w/o posting any hands.

1- This is pure RKCB on ♦.

2- This depends on the level of players and location of players imo. I know there are places where the default meaning of this bid is about trump quality and somewhere else it is about ♦ control. To me personally it asks ♦ stopper.

[bluecalm]

Quote

2- This depends on the level of players and location of players imo. I know there are places where the default meaning of this bid is about trump quality and somewhere else it is about ♦ control. To me personally it asks ♦ stopper.

Yeah but it usually applies after high preempts when there is no space for other bidding, like:
1H - 3S - 5H or something.

Here I don't really get why you would want to bid 5H when you had convenient 3D cuebid available to set hearts.
In principle I agree though I think responder wants to be in 7 opposite 1 round diamond control and in 6 opposite 2nd round control.

[dwar0123]

In regards to the 2nd hand, can someone explain the advantage of this inquiring about a diamond control instead of trump quality? It seems you could start cue bidding to find out about the diamond situation hence with this interpretation you now have two methods to find out about diamond controls and zero methods to find out about trump quality.

[MrAce]

bluecalm, on 2012-March-17, 13:11, said:

Yeah but it usually applies after high preempts when there is no space for other bidding, like:
1H - 3S - 5H or something.

Here I don't really get why you would want to bid 5H when you had convenient 3D cuebid available to set hearts.
In principle I agree though I think responder wants to be in 7 opposite 1 round diamond control and in 6 opposite 2nd round control.

3♦ cue does not set the ♥ suit as trumps to start with. If anything sets ♥ immediately as trump, it is 3♥ bid as Mgoetze said already.

I agree with you and him that it is better to set ♥ suit as trumps in this auction first and use 5♥ as trump asking with a hand where you can not learn the trump quality via RCKB. With something similar to..

AQJxxx
JTxx
Axx
Void

[rmnka447]

Hand 1 - Assuming the 2 D bid presumably shows the majors, then the bid of a major shows a hand with values. Lacking any specific agreement to the contrary, 4 NT must be an ace asking bid. If opener really wanted responder to pick a minor a simple rebid of 5 C would suffice. This would also insure that the strong hand would be declarer. Responder could then pass or correct.

Hand 2 - The standard agreement is that in non competitive auctions (i.e. 1H - P - 4 H - P - 5 H, etc.), a raise to 5 asks about trump quality. But in competitive auctions where the opponents have bid a suit, a direct raise to 5 asks about a control in the opponents suit. If you want to vary from that interpretation, then you need to have a specific agreement about it with your partner. Responder has the option to make a cue of 3 D followed by a later jump to 5 H to ask about trump quality.

Unless you have a specific agreement to the contrary, the culprit is the rebid of 2 H by opener. Since it is a higher ranking suit, it forces responder with a minimal hand to preference back to Clubs at the 3 level. Therefore, it should show a very strong hand (17+ value). From responder's viewpoint, slam is almost assuredly a make opposite such a hand provided a D control is present to prevent the opponents taking 2 quick Diamond tricks. That's because if the overcaller has made an overcall on any reasonable Diamond holding opener must hold the right values in the remaining suits for slam.

[Quantumcat]

Hand 1: He showed invitational values at least (otherwise it would be a 3♦ bid or pass). Has to be keycard. If you've set trumps, you could only end up playing in said trumps or no-trumps and I don;t think no-trumps looks likely here! It was only North's wishful thinking, since he didn't actually have his diamond raise.

Hand 2: Logically, if a bid can show two different hands, but one of those hands could be bid another way and the other can't, it shows the one that can't. A hand exists where 5♥ needs to ask about trump quality (they have a void, so Keycard will not tell them what they need to know), whereas if you need to know about diamond control, there is plenty of room to take things slowly - set hearts then start cuebidding. Therefore it must ask about trump quality.