[Free]

Thanks all for your votes!

So far 29 votes were counted:
1♠ = 3.28
4♠ = 7.21
Dbl = 7.90

At the table I bid 4♠ because I thought the chance of slam to be quite remote. Without a passed partner I'd Dbl for sure. Partner had the nuts: xxx-Jxxxx-A-QJxx!!! 13 tricks were easy ofcourse. At the other table the auction was the same, so no imps won/lost. One of my team mates found Dbl to be extremely clear, I thought it was close. To be honest, I expected the forum to like Dbl a lot more than 4♠.

[whereagles]

I would just bid 4S and dbl stuff afterwards. Direct dbl is great if pard replies 3C/D but that's wishful thinking and opposite a more normal 2C/D I don't think I'll be able to find out if he's got 5 cards there.

[chasetb]

awm, on 2011-October-13, 22:46, said:

Agree that 1♠ is ridiculous.

An interesting option is to bid 3♥. This caters to the possibility that partner has heart values, in which case 3NT may well be our best game. Bidding 3♥ followed by 4♠ should also show the values of this hand, while perhaps pressuring opponents a bit more than double.

I tend to think 4♠ is a little better than double opposite a passed hand. There are definitely hands where slam makes, but it's not clear we can bid all of these without getting to some bad ones, and there are also plenty of hands where the double lets the opponents find their big heart fit or diamond fit.

Since you brought up bidding 3♥, I think I'll use a convention that JLOGIC posted on his blog. He mentioned that over 1M, 3M is a transfer to 3NT. Why don't we do that, but then bid 4♠ over the 3NT showing a good hand with solid Spades and no Hearts? Let's get some more usefulness out of the bad boy and find the slam everyone else is missing!