[clayniac]

Fri, 5-11, 9 am ACBL game-Partner opens and you have akqxx akxxx j at!
Partner opened with: stiff, q8, aqxx, kqxxxx-minimum 13 count with 6-card suit and standard opener. We play 1 club is 3 +, 2/1 with gadgets including minorwood.

one club-one spade
two clubs-three hearts
three no trump-?
I bid 6 nt. 9 of 11 pairs were in 6 nt. one pair was in 2 clubs on a pass misclick and one pair in 4 clubs when gerber got passed.
I was playing with my long-time regular partner jmk114, Mike from Phoenix; and we have well-established agreements. 4 clubs would be minor wood 14-30 in clubs with mike and me. he shows me all kcs and queen, and i can bid 7 nt.
We still won the event, but I certainly should have bid the grand.

Thanks,
Pats

[Apollo81]

formatting? my eyes hurt

[pbleighton]

I'd be in 6NT as well. Sometimes you bid 6 and make 7, no big deal.

Peter

[pclayton]

Do I have a plane to catch? Why 6N?

I'll start with 4♣ over 3N and see if that gets me 4♦.

(edited) 4♣ is minorwood? OK I'll bid that.

[P_Marlowe]

Hi,

#1: the format is terrible.
#2: I dont like the jump to 3H,
you want to find a fit, not
a mere preference, and
you also need to find out, if
opener is min or max
=> NMF or CBS will do the job
as it happens, over 2D partner
partner will bid 3C, showing a
6 carder
=> 4C and you found 7C

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: 3H is not bad, but I would suggest
a slower rout, you know, you wanna play
slam, you just need to decide between
6 and 7 and in which contract.

[jdonn]

For the benefit of all:

Bid a grand please!

---

How about
1♣ 1♠
2♣ 2♥ (if you play it forcing)
2NT 3♣
3♦ then blackwood, and at least you get to 7♣, or 7NT if you want to take a slight chance.

Presuming the 2♣ rebid shows 6 and if you are worried about a complicated auction, it wouldn't be bad to even bid blackwood right then and keep things simple.

[cherdano]

After many years of hating minorwood I finally see a hand where it is exactly what you need, and then you don't use it?
1C-1S-2C-4C-blah-7N.

[Fluffy]

Apollo81, on May 11 2007, 02:43 PM, said:

formatting? my eyes hurt

agree with that

[inquiry]

The type of game might be of interest. No one will doubt you should be in grand if it is MP, but the odds are so good that you will want to bid the slam at IMPS too, even in the ACBL event where you could predict the field would miss the grand, and that you would get better than average just for bidding 6NT. The chance of making the grand slam without some form of herioc double dummy play is significanlty higher than 67.83% (that is the odds of clubs splitting 3-2 or 2-3). To that you can add 1/5 of the odds of clubs splitting 4-1 (it is only 1/5 as the JACK has to be singleton) which comes out be another 5.65% bringing the total to 73.48, plus the odds that if the club suit goes wrong, then hearts could be 3-3 and the diamond hook is on (3C, 5H, 2D, 3S), or if hearts are right, you can get a club-diamond, club-spade simple squeeze or some form of a double squeeze, with both guarding spades.

But the problem is bidding the slam... Assuming you are playing reverse flannery by responder.

1C - 1S
2C - 2H *
3C - 4C *
4NT - 7N
Pass

2H is forcing since you didn't use RFR
4C is minorwood
4N is 2 keys plus the queen
7N would be 7C at imps maybe, I count 6C, 3S, 2H, 1D and I should be able to ruff a diamond in my hand (why clubs at imps), but you need something more than KQJ of clubs and A of diamonds to open. If it is the Spade Jack, heart queen, or diamond King, we ahve 13, without any of those, I would take my chances on a squeeze

Playing nmf

1C - 1S
2C - 2D
3C - 3H
3N - 4C
4D - 4H
5C - 5D
5H - 7N

This time, 2D was nmf, and 3C shows six again. 3H was forcing, 3N showed D control, 4C set trumps, 4D/4H was cue-bids, 5C nothing else to cue, 5D cue, 5H cue now heart queen. End.

These auctions keep the bidding low and extracts extra info out of opener, a second club rebid. Your auction speed things up, and pointed out to your partner how badly you fit his clubs, when really, your hand fits great with clubs AKQ-AK-stiff-pllus AT support. Let's try it your way.

1C - 1S
2C - 3H
3N - 4C* (no fire, establish trumps, this time not Minorwood)
4D - 4H*
5C - 5D
5H - 5S
7C

This time, responder didn't know about the sixth club, but he can try to encourage grand slam. 5H is the same now it must be the queen partner cue-bid, and partners 5S cue-bid is looking for GRAND. Responder has the queen of diamonds and a sixth club. If partner was just worried about top honors in clubs, he would have bid 5NT, so 5S must be I can count 12 tricks, do you have a 13th.

Finally, if you play minor wood, the way to invite the grand by responder is more direct.

1C - 1S
2C - 3H
3N - 4C* (no fire, this time it is Minorwood)
4N - 5D* (after bidding two suits with a jump then C supoprt, this is GST not in D)
5H - 5N * (5H useful heart card, 5N I can count 12 tricks, pick spot
7C - 7NT *7C I have a surprize extra club, 7NT lets go for broke.

Some of these auctions are "double dummish". My auctino would be the first one since I play reverse flannery by responder, a simple 2H bid is very forcing.

[ArtK78]

Maybe I am alone in this, but I see this as a marginal grand slam at matchpoints. It is better at IMPs (and I mean a head-to-head match, not IMP pairs).

The actual matchpoint result on the hand comes close to supporting me on this. By getting to the conservative 6NT you get 60%. Assuming that this is a 67% grand slam (and it may actually be a little better than that), if you bid the grand, you have a 67% chance of scoring 100% and a 33% chance of scoring zero, which works out to 67% on average. Not much different than the achieved score. And I would guess that, on average, 6NT making 13 tricks will score better than 60% most of the time.

At IMPs, in a head-to-head match, if you assume that your counterparts at the other table will be in a small slam, then you want to be in 7NT as it is a heavy favorite (unless you are much better than the other team, in which case you don't want to give them a fair chance at a large pickup on a board like this one).

The bidding problem on this hand stems from responder's rebid. Since he cannot bid 2H forcing (at least, I am making that assumption due to his actual bid of 3H), a lot of room is being used up. I suggest using Extended New Minor Forcing. In this case, 2D over 2C is forcing and artificial. On the actual hand, opener would bid either 3C or 3D over 2D. Now it is a simple matter for responder to use minorwood, if that is in his arsenal, as opener must have 6 clubs for this auction to make any sense. He should not be opening 1C and rebidding 2C on 2-2-4-5 or 1-3-4-5, and with 3-1-4-5 he should raise spades. A grand is then reached by sheer momentum of the auction. Whether it is right to bid the grand is an entirely different issue, as I mentioned above.

[jdonn]

Combining the chances of a 3-2 club break, singleton club jack, heart break with diamond finesse, or squeeze (I won't calculate that I'll just round up by about a percent since it's unlikely), this is an 80% grand. Meanwhile the bidding would go the same way if opener had a similar hand but also with the club jack, which would be a 100% grand, or with 2236, which is much better since there are 3-3 spade break chances as well. In short, you definitely want to be bidding this one. You got 60% because two pairs were in partscores, that is not an accurate representation of your matchpoint expectation for 6NT in any decent field.

[ArtK78]

On the contrary.

If you check the recap sheets in any tournament in which you would have a "good field," you will find that on hands where a grand slam is absolutely cold several pairs wind up playing in a cue bid, a part score, or just game.

This brings to mind a story from many years ago. I was playing in the final round of the first semi-final of the LM Pairs against a husband and wife pair from New York City. The bidding went 1C all pass. My partner made the opening lead and the wife, prior to putting down the dummy, announced that "I took a position - I have 8 spades!" I thought, "sure you do." But she then tabled 8 spades to the AK! The hand was cold for 11 tricks in spades (and they were off 2 aces) and we were defending 1C making 130! So what did we score for that? 24 out of 27.

The term "good field" is thrown around a lot. I would hope that the semi-finals of the LM pairs would qualify as a good field.

So, the next time you bid to a normal contract at matchpoints, remember that, no matter how routine the contract may appear, there are always strange things happening at some of the other tables.

[jdonn]

ArtK78, on May 11 2007, 03:52 PM, said:

On the contrary.

If you check the recap sheets in any tournament in which you would have a "good field," you will find that on hands where a grand slam is absolutely cold several pairs wind up playing in a cue bid, a part score, or just game.

This brings to mind a story from many years ago. I was playing in the final round of the first semi-final of the LM Pairs against a husband and wife pair from New York City. The bidding went 1C all pass. My partner made the opening lead and the wife, prior to putting down the dummy, announced that "I took a position - I have 8 spades!" I thought, "sure you do." But she then tabled 8 spades to the AK! The hand was cold for 11 tricks in spades (and they were off 2 aces) and we were defending 1C making 130! So what did we score for that? 24 out of 27.

The term "good field" is thrown around a lot. I would hope that the semi-finals of the LM pairs would qualify as a good field.

So, the next time you bid to a normal contract at matchpoints, remember that, no matter how routine the contract may appear, there are always strange things happening at some of the other tables.

You are LOLing me a lot lately. I like you

Any field in which someone would do that is not a good field, no matter what you call it. Or it's a good field with a major fluke? Whatever.

Think of it this way. Think of all the hands you have ever held with 13 top tricks. How many do you think you have played in a cuebid or partscore? 1/100? Maybe 2/100? There is no reason to think any field that knows what it's doing would have more pairs than that having some ridiculous misunderstanding.

Of course there are other ways to beat a pair, they could bid 6♣ or something, but short of a misclick or something no one will avoid slam on this hand (look what responder holds opposite an opening bid) and many will bid a grand, regardless of the silly BBO field.

[Fluffy]

ArtK78, on May 11 2007, 08:52 PM, said:

I would hope that the semi-finals of the LM pairs would qualify as a good field.

Very nice hopes, but I have no idea what tourney that is.

LM, GMT, life master, master point, silver blabla, I hear a lot of things like that from US players, they seem to think everyone understands it, and I have no clue what they mean.

Very pretty names, but from what I can understand fom the forums most of those events are at the same level of a first division tourney here, and that is pretty low.

[clayniac]

Thanks all. With Mike, I should have bid 4 clubs over his 3 nt which with him is minorwood. He shows me all missing keycards and the club queen, now I can bid the grand-at mps (which this was) 7 nt and at imps 7 clubs.

I don't respond to posts much because I don't feel as qualified as others to give correct input, but I do read the posts. Very interesting hands and other topics on the Forum. Thanks bbo.

Patsy

[Halo]

After 2C, whatever your keycard is and 7NT over the response (wouldn't argue much against 7♣).

I think sometimes the target really is the size of a barn door.