[HeartA]

You hold:

---

Partner opens 1C:
1C-(1H)-2H-p
2S-(3D)-?

[billw55]

Need colors on this one to evaluate cracking it.

[Zelandakh]

It would also be nice to know how many clubs partner has promised and whether our 2♥ was a good raise or a general force.

[ahydra]

And yet more - what is 2S? If partner has shown 4-5 in the blacks, does 2S rather than 3C promise extras?

ahydra

[HeartA]

At the table, North bid 3NT which I don't think was a good move. And South Bid 4♠. Now what should North do?

[gnasher]

HeartA, on 2013-June-18, 13:10, said:

At the table, North bid 3NT which I don't think was a good move. And South Bid 4♠. Now what should North do?

7♣

[mikeh]

HeartA, on 2013-June-18, 13:10, said:

At the table, North bid 3NT which I don't think was a good move. And South Bid 4♠. Now what should North do?

I could merely have upvoted Andy's terse 7♣ but given that you asked this question, I assume that you'd like to see some reasoning.

Partner is at least 5-6 in the blacks: even if he is of the minority school that opens some 5=5 blacks with 1♣ (which was the style decades ago and is still played by some) he would pass 3N rather than bid 4♠.

It seems unlikely that he holds any red Kings or, indeed, any honours in those suits given the auction and our holdings. So he has what seems to him to be an opening bid with no Aces. This means that he must have decent texture in his suits.

KQxxx x x KQxxxx is a reasonable minimum to expect. I am not claiming he couldn't have a little worse. However, there comes a point in every auction when one partner or the other must make a final decision.

Ideally we obtain or provide sufficient information such that the decision-maker can make a thoroughly informed choice. It would be rare that we'd conclude that we cannot either provide or obtain useful information when we have more than 2 levels of bidding between where we are and where we expect/hope to end up.

This, however, seems to be just that situation.

We cannot involve partner for the simple reason that we have no call nor reliably foreseeable sequence that tells him that we hold all 4 Aces. And unless he knows about all 4 Aces, he is never going to be able to bid grand with a common 5=1=1=6 shape.

Btw, forget any idea about using keycard here. When a player bids 3N and then 4N, 4N is NOT keycard...it is an attempt to play 4N.

Thus we cannot ever expect him to be able to place the contract, nor is there any reliable means of asking him to tell you what you need to know. For example, if he has KQJxx void Kx QJxxxx, we're getting to a bad contract. However, I don't see any way of finding out that we are missing the club K. Since the odds favour his holding a better club suit, I am not going to make a pessimistic guess.

As an aside, the 3N bid was imo poor and for one thing created the situation in which we cannot ask for keycards. However, in order to propose an alternative I'd need to know what the partnership agreements were for the 2♥ and 2♠ calls (if 2♠ showed extras, we could afford a forcing 4♣ as one example).

[HeartA]

Thanks mikeh's detailed analysis. South's hand was ♠Q10963,♥-,♦10,♣KQJ10984.

As a matter of fact, I was South. I wouldn't open if one Q were removed. I hate to pass with 7-5-1-0 and two "decent" suits. I was mad when North bid 5♣ over my 4♠. I made 13 tricks (of course).