[broze]

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What is the standard way to play new suits here? What about 4♠? 5♥? 4NT? 5♠? 5NT?

P and I thought that without discussion 5m would just be to play, but this seems pretty pointless. What's best?

[han]

I think that 5m should be to play.

[Fluffy]

with no specific agreements you have the obvious:

4♠ a general slam try with spade control normaly.
4NT blackwood
5♣ to play
5♦ to play
5♥ asking for spade control
5♠ exclusion
5NT pick a slam.


Obviously playing 4NT as a sing off in a minor and 5m as some specific slam tries will often be better, but requires agreements.

[Zelandakh]

Fluffy, on 2013-August-28, 09:11, said:

4♠ a general slam try with spade control normaly.
4NT blackwood
5♥ asking for spade control

I have posted this before but I cannot see why this is better than 4♠ denying the spade control and 5♥ being the general try with a spade control. Basically you have 4 hand types - slam drive or try plus spade control or not. It makes sense for the lowest call (4♠) to take 2 of these and the remaining two (4NT, 5♥) to be the other two. Given that we only want to ask for key cards with a spade control, having 4♠ deny the control follows naturally from these two ideas. I think that this logic works in many of these high level auctions and that it is often the case that Standard (cue shows) is not optimal here. Of course, there are many more auctions where it makes little difference and playing the opposite way round to the way you learn takes some getting used to. That is not necessarily so easy on comparatively rare auctions.

[PhilKing]

Zelandakh, on 2013-October-22, 11:42, said:

I have posted this before but I cannot see why this is better than 4♠ denying the spade control and 5♥ being the general try with a spade control.

Yeah, I've read through your reasoning, and your way seems better in this particular auction type, but I fear this way madness lies.

On second thoughts, one could have a meta rule stating "in a competitive auction where the suit is not yet agreed and pick-a-game cannot logically apply, a raise shows a slam try with a control in their suit and a cue is a try without a control."

[Zelandakh]

PhilKing, on 2013-October-22, 12:56, said:

On second thoughts, one could have a meta rule stating "in a competitive auction where the suit is not yet agreed and pick-a-game cannot logically apply, a raise shows a slam try with a control in their suit and a cue is a try without a control."

You can probably make it even simpler and just have the rule that bypassing a cue shows control and bidding the cue suit denies one. Unfortunately I do not have time these days to run a full set of tests to verify; however, since I had the idea I check on each hand where it is relevant and I did not yet find any where it did not at least break even.

But I agree that to use it in the general case really needs some more research to prove soundness. In the meantime I will continue gathering evidence ad hoc and see if any issues come up. If you could pull out all the relevant hands from your database, that might provide enough test cases to speed up the process when I do eventually take the time to sit down and work on this.

I am also very thankful and impressed that you considered an idea from me at all, since I know you are an excellent theorist and have usually already worked out optimal solutions to most situations.