[0deary]

Could there be a hole in either of our majors? If so not NT of course and if the weakness is in H we might not be able to set them up and use them in a S contract on a Diamond lead for lack of entry, and if in S he might simply not be able to get them going. I can’t go to 7 unless I’m pretty sure

So what is it? It’s not particularly a strong Club/precision issue now and my Bridge is far too rusty to offer much more on such elegant sequences. I’d reflect closely on what partner did and didn’t bid and then ask Sherlock Holmes! Super question thank you

PS: Reflecting on this now Phil as I read it you have shown 16+, shown a hand dominated by your H suit, you have the Ace Diamonds and two other, and you have shown the QH (but he doesn’t know you have the KH)

On the basis of that partner has happily driven to 6S and offers you to move if you are sure. That and the silence from opponents suggests that partner has a similar hand in Spades that you have in Hearts

If I’ve read all that right then on a good day you can make ~13NT, but if we have majors holes everything looks very iffy, and much will depend on entries. He might only have one Club entry, nothing in Diamonds, a Heart ruff and just the one spade. And although your hand is strong after a Diamond lead you are down to just a club entry.

If I’ve read this right I pass and hope for reasonable splits

[msjennifer]

Had partner held a solid spade suit then the bidding would have been different.His 2NT bid denies a tree card heart support and also a side four card biddable suit. .oOver 3 H bid his 4C has to be cuebid with Qx in hearts.4D is a cue bid.4S is also a cue.I just cannot imagine the further bidding as I regularly play Precision.This sequence appears to be a NEW type of a strong club system.

[gszes]

 mikeh, on 2018-March-26, 15:28, said:

One needs to listen to the auction and to think about what the bidding tells one.

Here, he did not keycard over 3♥ but did once we cuebid diamonds. Ask yourself what this tells you.

HEY mikeh welcome back ))))) sorry I cut the rest of your response but I think it started with the wrong assumption that N keycarded over 4d. The next bid was 4s (unless there are more bidding corrections I missed (sigh). I see nowhere in this bidding where our intrepid 6s bidder categorically denied a dia stop but kept making bids to keep the bidding alive. The later 5d bid makes it appear obvious that responder had a dia control all along so those other assumptions about missing a dia control do not seem correct. IF 4s is suddenly key card (unspecified and unusual (imho) then forget all the below but otherwise the 4s cue is merely seeking out more information. If responder is strong enough to convert any slam heart bid to NT then temporarily pretending to have heart support is a fine way of gathering information. That is what I think is happening here. By pretending to have a couple of hearts responder has learned enough to try for a grand BUT needs solid hearts and once again we go back to my train of thought that if all responder needed was the heart AKQ and 2 side aces for a grand they would have keycarded over 3h:))))))))) and once again welcome back

[Cyberyeti]

 gszes, on 2018-March-27, 13:50, said:

HEY mikeh welcome back ))))) sorry I cut the rest of your response but I think it started with the wrong assumption that N keycarded over 4d. The next bid was 4s (unless there are more bidding corrections I missed (sigh). I see nowhere in this bidding where our intrepid 6s bidder categorically denied a dia stop but kept making bids to keep the bidding alive. The later 5d bid makes it appear obvious that responder had a dia control all along so those other assumptions about missing a dia control do not seem correct. IF 4s is suddenly key card (unspecified and unusual (imho) then forget all the below but otherwise the 4s cue is merely seeking out more information. If responder is strong enough to convert any slam heart bid to NT then temporarily pretending to have heart support is a fine way of gathering information. That is what I think is happening here. By pretending to have a couple of hearts responder has learned enough to try for a grand BUT needs solid hearts and once again we go back to my train of thought that if all responder needed was the heart AKQ and 2 side aces for a grand they would have keycarded over 3h:))))))))) and once again welcome back

READ THE NOTES THE OP PUT IN "4S is 0314".

[Phil]

By the way, I suppose some are thinking that there are certain inferences here because we play a strong club, but that is not the case.

Pretend like we started:

1H - 1S
3H - 4C
etc..

[PhilKing]

I sign off in 6NT.

Standard spot. Partner is making a last train. He can count 12 tricks in 6NT opposite our heart queen (haha) and is looking for an extras heart or the spade queen, neither or which we have. We could accept with AKxxxxxx AKQxxxx or the spade queen.

[nige1]

 PhilKing, on 2018-March-27, 18:07, said:

I sign off in 6NT. Standard spot. Partner is making a last train. He can count 12 tricks in 6NT opposite our heart queen (haha) and is looking for an extras heart or the spade queen, neither or which we have. We could accept with AKxxxxxx AKQxxxx or the spade queen.

On reflection, PhilKing's argument seems reasonable.

[gszes]

 Cyberyeti, on 2018-March-27, 13:59, said:

READ THE NOTES THE OP PUT IN "4S is 0314".

Whale spit was that there the whole time??? If so I need to seriously consider taking up a remedial reading course. Sorry for interrupting this diatribe with my nonsense. Maybe I will work up the courage to look at this problem tomorrow and see
if I can make sense of the bidding once 4s is key card.

[cherdano]

 PhilKing, on 2018-March-27, 18:07, said:

I sign off in 6NT.

Standard spot. Partner is making a last train. He can count 12 tricks in 6NT opposite our heart queen (haha) and is looking for an extras heart or the spade queen, neither or which we have. We could accept with AKxxxxxx AKQxxxx or the spade queen.

That's all logical...but a likely hand for that would be something like AKxxx xx xxx KQx. I.e., a 2 or 7 hand in NT. (Diamond lead seems likely on this auction.)

Might as well bid 7H to get the grand bonus when hearts split, and to save 3-4 undertricks when they don't.

[nullve]

1♣-1♠; 2♥-2N; 3♥-4♣; 4♦-4♠; 5♣-5♦; 5N = ?

[PhilKing]

 cherdano, on 2018-March-28, 00:04, said:

That's all logical...but a likely hand for that would be something like AKxxx xx xxx KQx. I.e., a 2 or 7 hand in NT. (Diamond lead seems likely on this auction.)

Might as well bid 7H to get the grand bonus when hearts split, and to save 3-4 undertricks when they don't.

Why can't he have the diamond queen?

[Phil]

 nige1, on 2018-March-27, 19:58, said:

On reflection, PhilKing's argument seems reasonable.

Same here and this was the point of the exercise.

[cherdano]

 PhilKing, on 2018-March-28, 03:41, said:

Why can't he have the diamond queen?

Of course he could but even then - 6NT wins when hearts don't split and diamond king is offside, and 7H wins when hearts split. Not as huge a loss in IMPs expectancy as playing 6N without Diamond queen.

[PhilKing]

 cherdano, on 2018-March-28, 06:37, said:

Of course he could but even then - 6NT wins when hearts don't split and diamond king is offside, and 7H wins when hearts split. Not as huge a loss in IMPs expectancy as playing 6N without Diamond queen.

Anyway, I don't really buy the argument than partner has no diamond control (with no diamond ace and no heart honour, partner needed a cue from us). There are other hands where we just belong on 6NT. And 4♦ was not doubled, so we are not getting a diamond lead even close to all the time when that is the killer.

[nullve]

I'll be less cryptic this time.

 PhilKing, on 2018-March-27, 18:07, said:

Standard spot. Partner is making a last train. He can count 12 tricks in 6NT opposite our heart queen (haha) and is looking for an extras heart or the spade queen, neither or which we have.

Why bid 6♥ over 5♦ with a trump suit 1+ trick better than ♥AKQxxx? Because 5N isn't available?

[PhilKing]

 nullve, on 2018-March-28, 07:48, said:

I'll be less cryptic this time.


Why bid 6♥ over 5♦ with a trump suit 1+ trick better than ♥AKQxxx? Because 5N isn't available?

On reflection I think partner is looking for a doubleton spade, so that we can ruff out the spade for the 13th trick. But whatever he is after I don't have it. I don't want to be in a grand on 4-3 spades and a heart break. It's a sign off regardless.

Personally, I like the 6♥ bid (I think it should be defined as a punt with a seventh heart) and would bid 5NT with the heart queen no king.

[mikeh]

Hi to both Phils

I love this hand.

I like PhilK's idea of bidding 6N here, but disagree with his notion that partner is looking for a doubleton spade so as to play 7H, ruffing the spade good, unless we credit partner with both excellent visualization and huge respect for our visualization.

I think we can safely infer that he lacks the diamond K, since he waited for us to cue diamonds before using keycard.

The best I can give him, assuming he lacks a 6th spade (a safe bet given the 2N bid) is something like AKxxx Jx QJx KQx.

He might have the spade J but that adds only a modest amount to the chances in grand.

He is presumably going to play us for 2=6=2=3 or 2=6=3=2.

If we have the latter, xx AKQxxx Axx Ax, then grand is not very good, because we are often unable to establish spades and then get back to dummy to enjoy the last spade.

If we have xx AKQxxx Ax Axx, that problem disappears...we have an extra club entry.

Thus, if he is inviting the grand when we have a doubleton spade, we have to assume that he has visualized our likely hands and the likely play on those hands. He should only invite the grand if he trusts us to see his thinking and to realize that we need Ax Axx in the minors (or A Axxx).

I don't play with players who both think that deeply and reasonably think that I think that deeply So I stick with my notion that he is looking for the Q of spades, to run the suit by power. Having said that, I entirely agree that 6N is the right call here. It may wrong side the contract, and may go down extra tricks when he lacks the diamond Queen, but we have an extra chance when he does hold that card, compared to 7♥.

[cherdano]

 PhilKing, on 2018-March-28, 07:57, said:

Personally, I like the 6♥ bid (I think it should be defined as a punt with a seventh heart) and would bid 5NT with the heart queen no king.

Interesting. I have always assumed 6H = HQ but nothing else, and 5N = HQ plus other feature I can't show below 6H otherwise (here probably SQ, or extra trump length).

[gszes]

AQJT9 xx KQx Kxx We are optimistic about slam as soon as partner opens 1c (16+) but there are so many questions that need to be answered and we begin the festivities with

1s positive response and GF in our short club system (I hope, where did I hide those system notes grrrr?)
2h well great there goes the 2 level and I cant bid 2s plus these kings might need protecting so I trot out
2n this accurately describes my distribution and stoppers but there is so much more we need to learn and opener bids
3h well of course there goes the 3 level and ANY hope I have of easily finding the spade K ---- unless
4c if opener cant bid 4d a grand is no longer possible so lets see what happens and if p does bid 4d we have a cute 4s key card we can use for extra safety
4d OK ok grand is still possible 5 minor suit tricks 4/5 spades both minors double stopped so lets look for the grand
4s 0314 RKC
5c 1 or 4 that is GREAT but our problems are not over if p has xx AKQxxx Axx Axx we can still only count 12 tricks unless we want to bid 7 banking on the spade finesse (ughh)
5d lets find out about the heart Q first
6h heart Q no extra stuff to report and presumably no extra length since 5n was available. Opener does NOT have the spade K. 6n is certainly viable 4s 3h 5 C/D
6s SURELY p will realize they have already denied something good in spades and this is only asking for extra heart length to bid a grand what happens next is the whole purpose of the exercise and I would end up bidding
6n no extra length and I hope I figured this out.
Kind of odd that I arrived at 6n with 4s = key card and 4s = cue bid (see my useless earlier interpretations if u need a good laugh).

[nige1]

Thank you, Phil, for a stimulating discussion. For us result-merchants, as the cards lay, do you make 7♥ or 7N, on normal play?