Your spades are worth an extra point. The 10 solidifies the suit and the 5th spade is an extra trick but no extra HCP. Compare the trick-taking potential with the same hand but where the 10S is replaced by the 10C. Clearly your hand is much better, but they have the same number of HCP.
Opposite a 2NT opener I would transfer to 3 spades and then bid 4NT, which is natural. Partner would bid 6NT (or possibly 6H).
I think partner should have bid 5H, with 4-card trump support. You have bid your hand.
However, how does 5S go down? If you have a heart loser playing in hearts, then hearts must break 2-0 so you have no defensive heart trick. That leaves just two club tricks on defense.
Really? With a maximum of 33 HCP, it would possible for someone to have an Ace and a King, possibly in the same suit. If that person were on lead, we’d go down immediately.
Yes, really. You have to evaluate how many tricks you can make and QJTxx Kxx AJX xx is clearly better than QJxx Kxx AJx Txx. Just to count 10 HCP and use that as your sole evaluation is wrong. If you add one point for a decent 5-card suit, you will not go far wrong.
Of course it is possible you will be missing an AK, but you cannot have perfection. Bridge is a percentage game. Put your hand opposite a balanced 22 points and it will make 6NT way more often than it will go down. I (electronically) dealt 64 hands where your partner has a balanced 22 points. You can see them here. There are no occasions where the opponents have AK in a suit.
6NT is a good contract on the vast majority of the hands (maybe all of them). I only analyzed the first 10. 6NT is 100% on nine of them and better than 70% on the other.
Exactly - partner knows you are long in hearts, so they are the one who needs to decide whether to increase the sacrifice, based on their values.
Had opener’s partner bid (say) 1S, your partner passed, and opener bid 2H, would your system then allow you to double for penalties? I would normally play that the first (non-pass) bid by a partnership is always double for take-out, but in this particular case I think it would be obvious (if partner is paying attention) that the double must be for penalties, as if for take-out you would have done it the first time. On the other hand, the double might alert the opponents to where all the values are, which could help them in the play. What do you think?
I realise I am in way over my head in terms of expertise in this thread, but if any kind soul would care to briefly critique my earlier post, I’d be very grateful.
It’s normally better to trust partner to re-open with a double in these sort of situations, which you can then pass. So if you’re in the pass-out seat you need to be quite aggressive with your balancing doubles if you suspect pard might be sitting on a trump stack. If you’re playing with someone who doesn’t grasp this concept then a double like you describe usually gets the message across.
The information you give to the opps when you double is a trade off against the possible penalty you stand to collect, all part and parcel of bidding judgement. You obv want to avoid your double tipping the balance such that declarer takes a winning line - but don’t talk yourself out of obvious doubles. It’s a truism that people don’t double enough at bridge, esp at pairs [imps is more dangerous]. Just look how shiny and new the red cards look compared to the green ones!
With 4 card support, I think partner(N) should have bid 3H. I play that jump as preemptive. A cue bid of 2S or 2C would show values.
I think a double here: 1H-P-1S-P-2H-X would show a hand like
xx
xxx
AKxx
KQxx
A good hand that couldn’t double 1H for takeout because of not having spades.
I think that in the case you posit, a double would be take-out for the minors, saying that you have near-bidding points and 4+ cards in each minor. My points are likely in the minor suits too. Doubling a low-level contract for penalties when you have already passed doesn’t make sense.
Yes, though length can substitute for strength:
x
xx
KJxxx
KJxxx
Better than 80%, actually (it is hand 1 in the link I provided). It needs one of two finesses or a 3-3 break (or a squeeze).
Agree it is better to show the hand as balanced. As stated in another post, the good 5-card heart suit makes it better than 22 points. There is a site here that evaluates hands and assigns adjustments to raw HCP based on suit length, intermediates, honor combinations and maybe other factors. It gives a Kaplan & Rubens (or K&R) count. It evaluates the hand in question as 23 points. Hence I open 2C and rebid 2NT.
If you are concerned about missing a 5-3 major suit fit by bidding NT holding a 5-card major, there are conventions to find out about that - Puppet Stayman is the most popular. There is a variation called Muppet Stayman.
The problem with your proposed 3D bid is that you have not yet agreed trumps, so 3D will be construed as natural. I prefer a 3H bid to set trumps, then if partner cue bids you can bid 4D as a cue bid. Actually, I prefer to bid 3H over 2H, assuming that is forcing (it is 30 years since I played strong 2s). Kxx is a fantastic holding in hearts and I want partner to know immediately that we have found a fit.
You are then correct that partner can find out about slam using RKCB. I would not play Gerber when looking for a slam in a suit - you want 4C available as a cue bid. And you are correct that 6NT is the best contract, especially at matchpoints.
Thanks all, informative as always.
In relation to the above post - on the layout given, I suppose if partner launched straight into Blackwood rather than cue bidding after your proposed 3H second response (which I agree with by the way, now you have explained it), it doesn’t really matter which Ace you have from partner’s point of view, as it means he has no losers in whichever suit it is. So he can still bid 6NT once he knows about the Kings. Of course, were this not the case it just becomes a demonstration of why cue bidding can be more accurate than Blackwood. I don’t play Gerber as with my lack of experience there are only a (very) limited number of conventions I can rely on remembering correctly, and of the two Blackwood is more common (and RKCB is useful in more situations, in my view).
Yes. I once had a huge hand in clubs and my partner opened. Things didn’t go well and we missed bidding the easy slam in clubs. In the post-mortem, it was pointed out that I could have bid 4NT (ordinary Blackwood) as I was able to cope with any response, passing a response of 5C, and raising a response of 5D to 6C, and 5H to 7C.
I love those (rare) situations where you can use a convention knowing that for some responses, you can pass where normally you would bid on and it will still be OK. It may leave partner horrified that you have forgotten the convention, until the end of the hand when they can see why you did it! I think a similar thing can arise if you use Stayman with few points and plenty of diamonds - potentially just passing out the 2D response.
A couple of grand slams from the Atlanta Sectional last week.
First hand in the A/X pairs - this is the top bracket. My LHO held
Axxx
AKx
AKQ98
Q
His partner opened 1H, he bid 2D, game forcing. His partner bid 2H showing a 6-card suit. He now bid 4NT RKCB (although I would play it as natural - you can bid 3H first of you want to agree hearts). His partner bid 5C, showing 1 or 4 key cards. He should now bid 5D, asking about the QH, and partner would have bid 6C showing both QH and KC. However, he bid 5NT, his partner bid 6C showing KC, and he bid 7H. Not only could he have been off the QH, but if hearts are coming in, he can count 13 tricks and should bid 7NT at matchpoints. I was sure that would be a good board. Nope. In this highest bracket, only one pair can apparently count to 13 and bid 7NT. Over 60% of the field missed the grand. His partner had
Jx
QJxxxx
Jx
AKx
Now one in our direction. I held ATxxxx Axx xx Ax. I opened 1S, partner bid 2D, game forcing, showing 5+ diamonds. I bid 2S, showing 6. He bid 3S, setting trumps. I cue bid 4C, which does not show serious slam intent but is a cue bid in case partner is interested. He bid 4NT, RKCB. I bid 5C showing 0 or 3, and he bid 7NT because he can count to 13.
He held:
QJx
KQx
AKQxxx
Q
You will have spotted the flaw. Partner may be able to count to 13, but apparently not to 5 - we were missing a key card. He thought my 5C bid showed 1 or 4. He won the club lead, crossed to hand and took the spade finesse. It lost, and they cashed six more club tricks. Down 7, vulnerable. This result, as they say in cricket, did not trouble the scorers.
An interesting hand came up last night: I opened 1NT (12-14) and my partner passed holding Sxx Hx DAQJ98 CKxxxx. I held SAK Hxxx DKxxx CAxx, making 9 tricks. 6D would have been an easy make as CQJ were doubleton - one of us held the Ten. We were playing transfers and a transfer to the minors via 2S usually requires 6 and he might have missed.a club fit. What should my partner have bid?
It’s tough to reach minor suit contracts after a no trump opening unless you have specific system agreements to handle it. With some partners I play that 3C = 5-5 minors, invitational; 3D = 5-5 minors, game forcing. That would work on this hand. Partner bids 3C and you are happy to bid game in diamonds.
Without that sort of convention, I probably would invite game in no trump and hope that one of the minors comes home. And that opponents do not lead hearts as they have at least 5 to cash. I don’t criticize a pass of 1NT, though. I imagine +150 is a decent result at pairs.
I guess your second hand just goes to show even the (relatively) simple conventions can easily go very wrong. Bad luck.
On the first hand, how can responder count 13 tricks? He doesn’t know that partner has the jack of hearts, does he? True, for this to be a problem the defenders would need to have a lucky 4/0 split in hearts, so it might be a good gamble anyway, or am I missing something?
You are right that it is possible that hearts are 4-0, and you are also correct that it is a good gamble anyway. A 4-0 break is only 9.6%, and even then you make when:
[ul]
[li]partner has the jack[/li][li]partner has no jack but has the ten and nine[/li][li]partner has no jack or nine, but has the ten and the 4 card hearts are onside[/li][/ul]
I make that a nearly 98% grand slam, so well worth bidding. And the odds are the same in no trump, so you should bid 7NT at pairs.
Makes sense, thanks.