[Simplicity]

Scoring: IMP

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You are playing a 24 board cup match against expert opposition. You are in a new partnership with very few agreements beyond standard.

Partner opens 2NT(20-22) in second seat.

The opposition are playing a strong club relay system at the other table, and your uncontested auction proceeds:

2NT-4♦
4♥*-4NT 1st/2nd and suitable hand
5♦*-? 0/3

Feel free to comment on the auction so far and do you want to/ how will you try for grand?

[jjbrr]

4♦ was the best we could do the first time? I'll ask for kings, unless you didn't discuss that, in which case id bid 6♣

[Codo]

I had liked to ask in clubs, because the easiest way for seven is A,A,A,KQx to and it is much easier to ask for the queen of clubs if clubs are trump.

Now I would ask for kings and if I have no further tool blast 7 diamond opposite the King of clubs.

[Fluffy]

I don't like my blasting opposite heart king, its more like a guess, and my guess is that these cards only make 12 tricks, 6♦

[Jlall]

The key to this hand is partner's club holding, which he would know had you shown both minors rather than just showing diamonds. Now you will just have to guess, and I'm not gonna wildly guess on a grand so I'd bid 6D.

[lmilne]

For those who play some sort of system to show this hand after a 2NT auction, how would your auction go? In my regular partnerships it would be 2NT-3S (puppet to 3NT)-3NT-4NT (55+ in minors). After this, opener is supposed to evaluate his hand and bid 5m simple preference with a bad hand for the bidding, or 5M/NT (not exactly sure what these show!) with good hands.

I guess the main advantage of this is that the strong balanced hand gets to make the decision, instead of the unbalanced hand having to guess (as here).

[655321]

lmilne, on Feb 2 2010, 10:33 PM, said:

For those who play some sort of system to show this hand after a 2NT auction, how would your auction go?  In my regular partnerships it would be 2NT-3S (puppet to 3NT)-3NT-4NT (55+ in minors).  After this, opener is supposed to evaluate his hand and bid 5m simple preference with a bad hand for the bidding, or 5M/NT (not exactly sure what these show!) with good hands.

I guess the main advantage of this is that the strong balanced hand gets to make the decision, instead of the unbalanced hand having to guess (as here).

After 3♠ (minors), when opener bids 4m we have already agreed a suit, as opposed to getting to 4NT with no suit agreed.

Your methods seem very bad for this type of hand, and presumably you play these methods because you feel that they help you bid other hand types and are willing to pay the price here. It does seem odd to argue that getting to 4NT without showing a fit is an advantage.

[gnasher]

In most partnerships I'd bid 3♠ showing the minors and then wing it.

In my most serious partnership, we've sacrificed some accuracy on the hands with the minors in exchange for increased definition of 5m4M hands. All hands with both minors have to puppet their way to 4♦. Over that:
- 4♥ asks, showing suitability. This hand would bid 5♣, slam-forcing with 5-5. On a good day, opener will agree diamonds and then bid 5NT, keycard.
- 4NT is a signoff. Over that I'd bid 5NT, pick-a-slam, planning to pass 6♦ but convert 6♣ to 6NT.
- 5m agrees the minor and is forcing

[P_Marlowe]

Ask for kings, but dont blast.

You pay a price for being a new partnership, but dont risk going overbord,
maybe they had a mix up on the other table, happens, and maybe you
can strike back at another bord.

With kind regards
Marlowe

[hotShot]

We would bid:
2NT - 3♠ transfer to ♣
4♣ (3 ♣ cards) - 4♦ 2nd suit, GF+
4NT ...

[Codo]

So the majority gives up in 6 diamond?

Partner showed 3 Kcs allready and was positive about diamonds, so he has a fit.
If he has the king of clubs too, you make 7, if he has KQ(xx) of clubs, often if he has Kx or Kxxx, often opposite Kjx and sometimes if he has another running suit where you can park your club losers.

I do not see the reason to be so pesimistic.

The hand all of your are hoping for is something around AQJx,AQJx,Axx,Qxx and ever here you have small chance for a club heart squeeze... There are not many more hands with 20-22 HCPS where 7 diamond is bad..

[Simplicity]

Thanks for the replies, it was somewhat unfortunate we had this has hand outside of a regular partnership and didnt even have 3♠ available as the minors.

I decided to bid the grand opposite the ♣K on the basis that the opposition were experts and my team were definately underdogs. I was certain the other table would be in at least 6 and would always be finding 7 opposite the ♣KQ when my hand was relayed out. I wouldn't have bid the grand against weaker opposition, and kinda wanted to see if people thought the grand was reasonable.

The play was also pretty interesting:

lead ♦x

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[gnasher]

Is it compound squeeze week again already?

I can guarantee the contract when RHO has the club length: cash four trumps, throwing a club. Whichever major RHO unguards, cash the top cards in that major, then the top clubs and the last diamond.

I don't think I can do it when LHO has the club guard and the major-suit guards are both shared.

[pooltuna]

Simplicity, on Feb 1 2010, 05:57 PM, said:

Scoring: IMP

---

You are playing a 24 board cup match against expert opposition. You are in a new partnership with very few agreements beyond standard.

Partner opens 2NT(20-22) in second seat.

The opposition are playing a strong club relay system at the other table, and your uncontested auction proceeds:

2NT-4♦
4♥*-4NT 1st/2nd and suitable hand
5♦*-? 0/3

Feel free to comment on the auction so far and do you want to/ how will you try for grand?

6♦

[whereagles]

ditto on JLall, except that I'll just bid the grand

Reason: there are a couple of club holdings that can produce all tricks there:

Kx
KQx
KJx
QJx

Another reason is opps are likely to get this one right. If it were matchpoints or opps were a lesser team, 6♦ would be more appropriate.

[gwnn]

OK I have no idea what "opps will likely get this right, so I'll bid the grand" means. If the grand is ~50% or better, you bid it. If the grand is worse than ~50%, you don't bid it. What does it matter what my opponents do? Unless you think they don't get to slam at all, which would be true for almost any opps.

[Simplicity]

gwnn, on Feb 4 2010, 05:48 AM, said:

OK I have no idea what "opps will likely get this right, so I'll bid the grand" means. If the grand is ~50% or better, you bid it. If the grand is worse than ~50%, you don't bid it. What does it matter what my opponents do? Unless you think they don't get to slam at all, which would be true for almost any opps.

The thing is here that we don't know if grand is better than 50% because our methods or perhaps the way in which i went about the auction dont let us.

To me it's more a question of if I bid grand will it be a good decision >50% of the time? And given that the odds of winning the match are not in our favour with all things being equal, there may be some equity in bidding a slightly dodge grand when it's a close decision. So maybe playing a higher risk strategy and bidding a 40% grand is okay?

What I'm really polling is whether people think this is a good spot to chance your arm in 7 with or without the conditions?

Personally i would have stopped in 6 against unknowns.

[gwnn]

Well you have to make a preliminary assessment. "this grand is 50%" means one of two things:
a. I know for a fact that this grand is 50% because I can see that my only chance is the ♠ to be onside. (this is usually after dummy shows his hand/maybe some very long relay sequence)
b. Out of all the possible hands partner may have that fit the bidding until now and all the possible layouts of the cards, grand will make 50% of the time*.

There is no clear line between the two meanings of course (note that usually relay systems will not tell you about jacks and almost never about Tens, so even then it's usually b, but with a lower variance). But during bidding (a.) is completely useless. a. is useful only for questions like "where would you like to be?" on this forum (a useless question BTW ) and painful post mortems "oh no our teamies bid a grand on a finesse". During bidding the best you can to is b. or of course an idealistic approximation of b.

So now that I clarified what it means "grand is 50%", I can reiterate:

It makes no difference who your opponents are or how good their slam bidding is, unless you think they might stop short of slam.

If you think the grand is 50% or better (using definition b.), you should bid it. If not, don't bid it.

Now, if you want to create a swing:

If you think the grand about 50%, try to do the opposite of what your opponents will do. This is almost impossible to know but this is what you should do.

*Example: partner has shown some hand and either the ♣Q or the ♠Q and we have no way of knowing which.
if the grand is 100% with the ♣Q but only 20% with the ♠Q (according to definition a.), the grand will make 60% of the time.