[pescetom]

When this turned up as hand #1 yesterday, I knew that the tournament was going to be fun.

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Sitting in West, IMP pairs, you are still counting when your partner opens 1♠.
How would your bidding go in an uncontested auction?

[hrothgar]

Perhaps

1♠ - 2♦
3♦ - 4♣
4♥ - 4N
6♦

Perhaps

1♠ - 2♦
2♠ - 3♣
3♦ - 3♥
3N

Depends a lot on what is required to raise a 2/1 in a minor

[The_Badger]

With 3 quick tricks and a feature (singleton ♣) and 4 card trump support I'd be raising ♦s every time. Rebidding 2♠ is anathema to me.

[hrothgar]

The_Badger, on 2019-January-31, 12:14, said:

With 3 quick tricks and a feature (singleton ♣) and 4 card trump support I'd be raising ♦s every time. Rebidding 2♠ is anathema to me.

I have played in partnerships that require an honor to raise a 2/1 in a minor

[mikeh]

Obviously we start with a 2D response.

what happens next depends on methods and style. For example, in my serious partnership, we tend to fake a 2C response when we hold only 4 diamonds, such that 2D implies 5+.

Even that isn't determinative. Opener likes his hand.....all those controls, including the stiff, but say partner has x QJx KQJxx KQxx. Do we really want to be in 5D rather than 3N, even at imps?

So whether to splinter, and drive beyond 3N, is a delicate question. If, as is 'standard', 2D doesn't promise 5, then the splinter is out of the question.

Thus more likely than not opener contents himself with 3D.

Over to west: yet another question of style. 3N is still in the picture: KQxxx AKx xxxx x. 6D might make but one would be very nervous. However, we can hardly bid 3N with our robust heart holding. So can we punt with 3H or would that suggest heart cards and ask partner to consider 3N with club cards?

Again, a question of methods. This is a situation in which it is easy to fall into the trap of concluding that 3H shows this hand because we want it to show this hand. When in this situation, imagine you are your partner. Ignore your hand: disabuse your mind of your problem. You open 1S and raise 2D to 3D and partner bids 3H. Don't look at your actual hand. What does it mean? How would partner bid with Qx KQx AKxxxx xx? Anyone for 3H?

Fortunately, our hand is such that we must surely have safety in 5D and we also have slam potential, so I think we can bid 4C without too much angst.

That fetches 4H, and I suspect we are propelled to slam. Not the best contract in the world, but far from hopeless. Almost cold on a non-heart lead and with decent play with one.

[The_Badger]

hrothgar, on 2019-January-31, 12:16, said:

I have played in partnerships that require an honor to raise a 2/1 in a minor

I wasn't aware of that. Interesting. Though us Brits are so 4 card oriented - or should that be time-engrained or Acolised - that we raise and bid on any old rubbish preferring length to strength.

[hrothgar]

The_Badger, on 2019-January-31, 12:28, said:

I wasn't aware of that. Interesting. Though us Brits are so 4 card oriented - or should that be time-engrained or Acolised - that we raise and bid on any old rubbish preferring length to strength.

I think that it's a fairly old fashioned style, potentially related to the fact that I played Blue Club in several partnerships...

[gszes]

As soon as I hear 2d (I'm the 1s opener) visions of slam opposite as little as Qx xxx AKxxxx xx make me want to find out more about this hand. My first thought is how can we conserve bidding space to give us the best shot at bidding slam. This thought process will lead me to continue with 2s rather than 3d. There is no good reason to splinter immediately since 3n could very easily be the right contract (see mikeh). Partner follows with 3c and this is even more interesting since there is a strongly increased chance our A AK in the majors will take care of all of partner's major suit losers w/o even having to worry about setting up spades.

Now we can safely bid 3d and keep the search alive for 3n as well as keeping grand slam searches open. partner now jumps to 5d. This bid is highly unusual but still very informative. We know p has nothing overly useful in spades (they might very easily have preferred bidding 3s with a stiff honor or doubleton in case we had 6 spades) and we know p has given up on 3n since they failed to bid 3h to suggest even a partial stop. Partner needs a lot of extra values with no heart stop and no short heart (else a 4h bid). Hard to imagine p having less than xx xx AKQxx AQxx and even that is being pessimistic. I still think it is reasonable to give us one last shot at a grand and bid 5h. This should convince partner to bid 7 if they hold x xx AKQxxx AKQx.
We finally settle for 6d.

[pescetom]

Thanks to all for the thoughtful replies so far.

Like mikeh we play that 2D is 5-card in this partnership and like the_badger have a natural style, so there was little doubt about 3D. We don't play that one needs an honour to raise 2/1 in a minor, although I can see that has something going for it if the keycard ask is 4NT. We play that in certain well defined situations the ask over diamonds is 4C, which frees up acres of bidding space (here I knew we had all five keycards below the safety level of game) but rules out a splinter by opener, not that I would want to do that here anyway, with 3NT still in the picture.

For the record, our bidding went:
1♠ - 2♦ (5+, FG)
3♦ - 4♣ (RKCB)
4♠ - 5♣ (K?)
5♠ - 6♦
P

Play of this hand is discussed here.